Eddie Leighton

Eddie Leighton

Genres: rock, guitar, blues rock

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About Eddie Leighton

Eddie Leighton Eddie started fooling around with a guitar when he was about eleven years old. His cousins would come to Detroit from New Brunswick, Canada, every summer to visit his parents. They would bring their guitars, and play country music for hours at a time. When they would take a break, Eddie would pick up one of the guitars and play one finger cords. His mother was so impressed with his ability to pick up songs so quickly, that she bought Eddie an acoustic guitar from Sears. "It was the hardest guitar I have ever played on", says Eddie, recalling the string action was so high on the fret board, that he could only play for a little while because of the pain in his finger tips. He finally traded in the Sears guitar for a Fender telecaster electric guitar. The action was much better and he could play much harder music then country. He started playing with some of his junior high school buddy's (Rick Vee) in a rock and roll band. They would play at junior, and high school parties, when ever they had the chance. When Eddie turned sixteen he was looking for a summer job, when he spotted a want-ad for a band looking for a guitarist to play night clubs. He auditioned with the band and was offered the gig. That's all it took. Eddie was making more money then his father was, and he loved every minute of it, because he was doing what he loved to do - play the guitar. At nineteen years old, Eddie got back together with his junior high school friends and formed a band called CURTIS HYFLASH. They played the club scene for about three years and broke up. In 1981 Eddie got involved with a band called "ARTIST". Again the band consisted of friends from the past. Eddie loves to write original music, so he wrote a song with keyboardist, John Fain, and enter the song named OUT ON THE ROAD AGAIN in a contest that Miller Beer sponsored nationally. The contest was called ROCK TO RICHES. Thirty- thousand bands entered this contest across the United States, but only one would win the grand prize of $25,000.00 and a record release with Atlantic Record. After sending the song into the contest, we were chosen along with ten other local bands out of the 700 bands that enter locally to go on a WLLZ Local Rock album. After the album was released, and Eddie's song was selected to represent Detroit, where his song OUT ON THE ROAD AGAIN went to one of five regional competitions, where it took on 14 other songs. If it wins there the five-piece band would perform live on April 30, 1983 in front of a crowd of 2500 record industry representatives at the Beacon theatre in New York City. Eddie's song was selected as one of the five bands that competed against each other live in New York for the grand prize. JON BONJOVI was one of the five finalists, with his song RUN AWAY. Rumor was that he cancelled himself out the day of the show because he had been signed to a Record company and the contest was for unsigned bands only. The show was hosted by Howard Hessman of TV's WKRP Cincinnati. The curtains were lifted and all the bands performed. The moment was tense when Howard Hessman walks up to the mike stand. He said a couple jokes and reached for the envelope. "The winner is, from Detroit, "ARTIST!" " I almost jump to the ceiling went I heard our name called", recalled Eddie after hearing the announcement. That was a thrill, we rehearsed for two years and it paid off, we won. But it didn't stop there for Eddie, because in 1993, almost 10 years to the day, Eddie enters another contest called, The Motor Cities Best Rock Guitarist Contest. Eddie's father past away the day before the finals. "It was really hard to deal with such an extreme positive and negative in the same day", recalls Eddie. "I got up on stage and it was like a dream, I didn't want to be there but my family wanted me to win for my Dad." And he did! Eddie won 1993 MOTOR CITY'S BEST ROCK GUITARIST CONTEST. Website: Broadjam.com - Eddie Leighton ReverbNation: The Eddie Leighton Project Facebook: Eddie Leighton

Taken from Last.fm

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