Nov. 18, 1972: Rochester favorites Old Salt

 

Rochester favorites throughout the 1970s, they were just starting to bring their rustic charms to our part of the world. 

Nov. 18, 1972

Old Salt Has Been on the Road for Some Time

Now They’re Performing in Buffalo Area 

TRAFFIC-CHOKED Rochester’s elegantly gloomy in the cold afternoon drizzle. On a quietly aging street on the near East Side, looking for Pete Peirce’s apartment house – the ugly blue one, he’d said. There it is.

        Pete’s on the phone. Dick Leschhorn – the other half of Old Salt – won’t be coming around after all. They played Clarkson Tech, north of Watertown, the previous night.

        “Dick lives out in Penfield,” Pete says. “His parents go to Florida every winter and leave him the house. This year they’re making him pay some of the taxes.”

        They didn’t get home until 5 a.m., which wouldn’t be so bad except that this night they’re supposed to start in at The Blue Fox east of Orchard Park on Route 20-A and that doesn’t give them much time to recover.

* * *

“LAST NIGHT was cruddy,” Pete says. “It was the first time we’d been to Clarkson and there wasn’t much of a turnout. It’s hard like that sometimes, but it still beats workin’.”

        Old Salt’s been on the road continually since Pete and Dick got together nearly two years ago. Syracuse, Cortland, Ithaca, Utica, Long Island, Vermont once, Maine.

        Presently they’re spending four nights a week in the Buffalo area. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays through Dec. 2 at The Blue Fox and Sundays at The Red Lantern in Glenwood, a stand they’ve held since early last spring.

        “We’ve had some good jobs in Rochester too,” Pete adds. “One place we play steadily is the Red Creek on Jefferson Road. Rochester’s a pretty conservative town.”

        More musical instruments around the half-decorated living room than there is furniture.

        Pete’s green electric fiddle lies in an open case next to the record player. There’s an electric guitar, an acoustic guitar, a banjo, a mandolin, an electric bass, an amplifier.

        Between them they play 10 instruments (Dick does piano, harmonica, accordion and guitars).

* * *

FOR SOMETHING like “Mr. Bojangles,” there’ll be Dick on accordion and Pete playing acoustic guitar. Then they may move into an old bluegrass tune with Pete kicking out the jams on fiddle.

        “We auditioned once at The Bitter End in New York City and it didn’t go well,” Pete says. “We had to get on, do the songs and get off. For the kinda stuff we do, we gotta relax.”

        Generally, their music is quiet and mellow, the kind of stuff you can lean back and float away on. Pete protests any attempt to categorize it.

* * *

“SOME PEOPLE call it folk music because it’s acoustic,” he says, “but there’s very little stuff that’s folk music that we like. We’re more into country and rock.

        “If we did an album, it wouldn’t be folk music. Our tape has bass and drums. I don’t like labels anyway, but we do a lot of different things. Most of them are original songs.

        “In a lot of my songs, I pick up on simple images. One on the tape Bruce (Jennings), our manager has, ‘Bridge Song,’ just came out of the phrase: ‘I hope this bridge is strong enough to hold me.’

        “That phrase could mean a lot. Any change you’re trying to go through. We do a couple of funnier songs too, like ‘Saddlesore Blues.’

        “That stuff Dick writes is a lot more straightforward, I think. He writes more songs for his girl. And every one is totally different from the other.

        “One thing true for both of us, we found out, is that the songs just come out. Sometimes you don’t even feel it’s you that’s writing it.”

        Pete suggests we go over to Bruce’s place, which, it turns out, is just around the block among some elegant old homes along a narrow boulevard. En route, he tells how Old Salt got its name:

        “Bruce had to do a poster for this place we were going to play and we didn’t have a name. So we wrote down a million of them and wound up picking that one.”

* * *

BEFORE HE founded Utope Productions, Bruce, a graphic designer, used to work in film production for Xerox. He quit a couple years ago to manage a rock group full time. It’s called Berceuse.

        His secretary keeps a foot-powered loom in one of the spare corners. Bruce brings out some wine and puts on a tape from the show last night in Clarkson.

        “That’s ‘Orange Blossom Special,’” the weary Pete winces. “That I don’t want to hear.”

        There’s a peaceful, out-in-the-country song, another one with Bob Dylan-style harmonica over piano. Another tape, one they did in a studio, has the bass player and drummer from Berceuse kicking the songs along in fine fashion.

        Pete says goodbye and leaves to catch a couple hours sleep before making the run to Orchard Park. Bruce talks about his undergraduate days at Syracuse University and his antiques.

        “I got those stained glass windows for $75 from a house they were tearing down here,” he says, “and they’ve been appraised at $1,600. Somebody told me once that there’s supposed to be more stained glass in Rochester than any other city in the state.” 

The box/sidebar 

‘Happy Doing Music’ 

        “The way we met was crazy,” Pete Peirce says. “Dick (Leschhorn) got busted back in Michigan four years ago for two joints. It was a felony. It’s still on his record.

        “Meanwhile, I was going to college, Cornell, and after I graduated I had a couple jobs, the second one being a probation officers in Kingston.

* * *

“DICK AT that time had moved to Woodstock and was writing music for a company in New York City. He was assigned to another probation guy at first, then got shuffled around to me.
        “I was playing in a bluegrass band at the time, with a bunch of real hillbillies. We got together, Dick and I, and worked out maybe 10, 15 songs.

        “Then his company moved out to California and he came back to Rochester. He was down about losing that job.

        “He was collecting garbage, doing odd jobs, but music’s the only thing he wanted to do. Meanwhile, I’d quit my job and we though we’d see what would happen with ourselves.

        “I’m 24 and Dick’s 23. I come from near Huntington, L.I. I played the banjo in high school, Kingston trio stuff, because my brother already played guitar.

        “As a matter of fact, my brother Dave is going to Cornell now, he plays with us sometimes. Plays pedal steel. It really fills a lot of stuff out. He’s a year older, but he’s been in the Army six years.

* * *

“WHEN I WAS at Cornell, I was captain of the lacrosse team, in a fraternity. I was really into that. I was in a jug band for a while and my senior year I was in a blues band.

        “Dick was doin’ rock ‘n roll in high school. He was in rock groups around Rochester, but he was never into heavy rock. His favorite group was The Beatles. I’m more into things like The Band.

        “We practiced from the end of December 1970 to the end of February. At the end of February, we ran into Bruce, our manager. We got his name from somebody at a music store.

        “Dick’s gonna be getting married in June and I don’t want to answer too much for him, but me, I’m just so happy doing music, I could do that for the rest of my life.”

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: Dick Leschhorn, left, and Pete Peirce. The other photo in the left corner is just a filler about a TV show.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: By August 1975, when Old Salt gets a feature story in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, the group has grown to a quintet, thanks to the addition of Pete Peirce’s older brother Dave, playing steel guitar; drummer Pete Esposito and a bass guitarist named Tom Kruger, who they picked up on a spring 1975 tour of Texas.

        By this point, they’re solidly labeled as country-rock and they’re contemplating a move to the Lone Star State. They also lost their manager, Bruce Jennings, during the Texas tour. He got busted for selling a quarter-ounce of cocaine and was in Attica prison, doing six years to life.

        A little preview story in the Rochester paper in December 1990 notes that they “weathered the changing seas of the music business for 13 years” and “won devoted audiences in the Rochester area and a measure of fame down in Texas and New York City, opening for Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, Commander Cody, The Byrds and a few other big name acts before giving up the ship.” The preview promotes a couple reunion concerts with 24 former band members. One of them probably was Buffalo stalwart Willie Schoellkopf, who joined in 1980 and toured with them for three years.

        In a 1995 reminiscence about the Belle Starr, the infamous Southtowns party barn in the Colden hills, Ron Mendez, who ran the annual Belle Starr reunion, told Buffalo News feature writer Lauri Githens: “Old Salt would drive in from Rochester, leave their St. Bernard in front of the bandstand when they played. That dog would lie there peaceful as all get-out. Couple hundred people in the joint, not one disturbed him.”

        The group only managed to release one album, the self-titled Old Salt in 1976, recorded in Ithaca. The lineup then included Ed Baker on bass and Jim Kraut on lead guitar, fiddle, piano and synthesizer. All of them sang. At this point, brother David Peirce, mentioned as having two kids in the 1975 story, was a guest artist.

        Dick Leschhorn these days is a one-man band, living in the Rochester suburb of Penfield. According to his ad in an online yellow pages site, “I play hit songs from the 1920s to the 1980s. Music for all occasions. Hot swing, boogie, rock and roll, country and ballads. I play parties for seniors, weddings, nursing homes, senior retirement communities and clubs.”

        He also has had a group called The Dinner Dogs, which won a Parents’ Choice Award and has played at festivals and performing arts centers, including Chautauqua Institution, the Milwaukee Summerfest and Caroline’s Comedy Club in New York City.