It all started with the bass for Tracy Wiebeck. The local musician, who moved to Durango in April 2021, grew up an Air Force brat, moving around in his youth so much that he’s kept moving as an adult. Bitten by the music bug at an early age, he grew up loving the blues and ultimately learning how to play the bass, originally playing bass parts on an instrument that wasn’t a bass. It was a make do with what you have type of deal, and he’s continued to play music of the blues and Americana variety.
Wiebeck will perform with guitar player Richard Leavitt on Saturday when the duo perform at Public House 701 in downtown Durango.
“My first instrument was a six-string guitar, but the group of fellows I was playing with on an Air Force base in Minot, North Dakota, in the middle of nowhere, nobody wanted to play bass, so I said ‘OK, I’ll do it.’ So I was playing bass parts on a six-string guitar,” Wiebeck said. “Then it was maybe when I was 18 that I got an actual bass, and the next year I got a good bass.”
If you go
WHAT: Rock and folk with Tracy Wiebeck and Richard Leavitt
WHEN: 5:30 p.m. Saturday
WHERE: Public House 701, 701 East Second Ave.
MORE INFORMATION: https://publichouse701.com.
Like any good baby-boomer musician, it all started with Sunday night television, in particular, “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Ask any, or most musicians who were born in the years after World War II what got them into music, and they’ll likely say it was because they saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. Wiebeck is no different, and post-Beatles, it was working backward on the blues via the British Invasion.
“I heard them on the radio and went ‘oh my god’ and then I saw them on ‘Ed Sullivan’ and went ‘holy crap! I want to do that,’” he said. “But it wasn’t just the Beatles, it was the whole British Invasion thing that really got me inspired. And another thing about the British Invasion was all the blues music the Brits picked up and put back in our face that got me interested in the blues really heavily. I was involved in the blues as a bass player, and I’ve been primarily a bass player most of my career, 55 years of doing that. So playing the guitar and singing is maybe 20 years’ worth, but yeah, you know I looked on those album covers. John Lee Hooker? Who’s that? So I investigated on my own and I found this stuff and I ended up playing with some really great blues musicians.”
It was the blues, in particular a musician named Walter Trout, that led Wiebeck to his local bandmate Leavitt. Trout’s main claim to fame was playing with John Mayall in the 1980s, and Wiebeck and Trout played together as well. Social media and Trout fandom connected Wiebeck and Leavitt, who have been playing together for the last year. While what the duo do is not traditional blues, you’d file their music under Americana, a blues-based sound influenced by anyone from Trout to The Beatles to John Prine. For Leavitt, having Wiebeck roll into Durango is just more recognition that the music talent pool is deeper than people think.
“I was surprised there was someone of that ilk wandering our streets,” Leavitt said. “I saw Tracy and he billed himself as ‘vintage Americana’ and I thought, ‘that’s right up my accompaniment.’”
Accompany Leavitt does, throwing in tasty guitar fills right alongside Wiebeck’s rhythm playing as they dig into the ‘vintage Americana’ canon. That canon is anything from familiar covers to Wiebeck and Leavitt originals; folk and country all with hints of the roots of Americana in jazz and blues.
“Jazz and blues, everything came from that,” Wiebeck said. “And everything that I like falls into that.”
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. Reach him at liggett_b@fortlewis.edu.
