Background
Thomas Leeb grew up in the small Austrian mountain village Turracher Höhe, Carinthia, as the youngest of four children of a hotel-owner"s family.
Thomas Leeb grew up in the small Austrian mountain village Turracher Höhe, Carinthia, as the youngest of four children of a hotel-owner"s family.
In 1997 he recorded his second Civil Defense Hope (out of print) and finished third in the 1998 Open Strings Festival in Osnabrück, Germany.
Over a period of thirteen years he taught himself the electric guitar, then switched to acoustic guitar. He produced his first Civil Defense Reveller (now out of print) when he was seventeen. After high school he toured Ireland for four months as street musician.
Leeb tours incessantly, mainly in the United States, in Europe (Austria, England, Germany, Ireland and Croatia) and in Asia (Taiwan, of Korea and Japan).
He has managed to build a worldwide fan community. He irregularly teaches as freelancer at two music schools in Los Los Angeles
Every summer he organizes a workshop at his Austrian hometown Turracher Höhe which is highly frequented, especially by British guitarists. Leeb taught master classes at the London Music School and the Guitar Institute of Technology in Hollywood.
He was featured in several international guitar magazines, such as Guitar Player and Acoustic Guitar.,, Leeb is an influence especially for young guitarists, for example Newton Faulkner.
Thomas Leeb is married and lives in Val Verde, California. Thomas Leeb calls his music "the bastard child of acoustic guitar", combining unusual techniques, ideas and harmonies with a frank tongue-in-cheek attitude. Roche held Leeb in high regard: "I was his teacher for about five minutes and then I heard him play." One of Leeb"s main musical influences is Michael Hedges.
Leeb follows his own path as guitarist and composer, displaying a very idiosyncratic and particular guitar style.
Characteristic for this style are percussive elements generated by hitting the guitar body with the heel of his hand or single fingers while playing intricate fingerstyle patterns. Some of his pieces possess odd-meter measures and recall Eastern and Balkan music
Much of his work is rhythmically complex and meticulously worked out. Leeb is an endorsee of Lowden guitars and Parkwood Guitars.
His guitars are amplified with a Fishman Rare Earth system (internal microphone/magnetic pickup combination).
His live sound is produced by a K&K Pure Western soundboard transducer. His additional technical equipment encompasses L.R. Baggs Para and Highlander Polygonal Area Mapping DI boxes as well as an Alesis NanoVerb system.