Tag / radio

by Tom Leu

Tom Leu on 96.7 The Eagle

Featured on the Sound Matters Show as an SMx bonus episode which includes additional interviews, “sound matters”-related commentary, and other assorted short segments and audio ear candy. Here’s a conversation I had as a guest on 96.7 The Eagle with Terry “Double T” Turen talking about the show.

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by Tom Leu

Radio Show, Ready or Not

How the hell did I go from working as a DJ on a Country music radio station, to getting my own Rock ‘N Roll-themed talk radio show on the air in just a few months?

And… what’s to learn from that? And why should you care?

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by Tom Leu

Tom Leu on The Inside Pitch Radio Show

My feature on The Inside Pitch Radio Show with Marvin Lowe from April 2013. The Inside Pitch is broadcast on WHBU Talk Radio AM 1240 from Anderson, IN. I talk about my speaking business, photography, and philosophies for personal and professional development.

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Announcer: The Inside Pitch: A Postive Look Inside Positive People from the Sports, Entertainment, and Business World. Now here’s Marvin Lowe.

Marvin: Hello and welcome to another edition of the inside pitch. I’m your host, Marvin Lowe. Our program guest is professional speaker, photographer, author, and coach Tom Leu, a gentleman I had the privilege of meeting and hearing in Fort Wayne earlier this year. Hey Tom, it’s great to hear your voice and, you know, we’re going to have a lot of fun. It’s a pleasure to have you as our guest this morning. And let’s start out with a brief bio on yourself, then I’d like to hear more about something I read on your website: It’s about your goal of sharing a philosophy and methodology that can help a person bridge the gap between what they want and what they have. Take it away, Tom.

Tom: Thanks, Marvin. It’s a pleasure to be talking with you again as well. You know, you bring up an interesting point there. There’s so many things that that concept touches on, but my background is in education and particularly in the fields of psychology and sociology. I do a lot of talks and presentations that are on subject matter that relate to that, emotional intelligence, communication skills, and the like. I just feel that that stuff, if you will, is just so important and it really affects everyone, no matter what we do, personally or professionaly. And then when we’re talking about bridging gaps, so many of us have great intentions, you know?

Marvin: Yes, I do.

Tom: A great quote that I always like to say is that great intentions don’t pay the bills. We have to actually apply what we intend. We have to apply what we know and we actually have to do things because the world judges us based on our actions, not so much our words. And so when I go out and present and talk and do my speaking engagements, I try to help bridge that gap with the information I give, and some of the strategies that I offer up. So I’m really passionate about that and the other things that I do, so I’m glad you mentioned that right at the top of the show here.

Marvin: Oh, yeah. Because I’ve gone to your website, and in fact, we’ve got it pulled up here now, and by the way… beautiful photography and some of those pictures of the cars, those are really interesting! That picture of the Chevy Nova that you have on there is just beautiful.

Tom: Oh, thanks a lot. I appreciate that. Yeah, that’s one of the other things I do. I’m also a photographer. And some people say, “Well geez, you’re a professional speaker and a photographer? Those seem like polar opposites,” but actually they’re not. I use them both interchangably and my photos are a key element and a main foundation of all of my talks and presentations. I use all my own photography as visual aids to make the points that I’m trying to make. A lot of speakers use images and things, but often they’re getting them at iStock photo, places like that. For me, fortunately, I get to use many of my own images, and classic cars as you guys mentioned is actually one of my passions. I love taking those and I try to get some really unique angles and perspectives on not only the cars, but the other things that I shoot as well. That also ties into my speaking, and so they are related for sure.

Marvin: You’re right, we did notice the angles of not just the cars but of other things that you took and they are very, very interesting. And you know maybe there’s an analogy here. When you look at life, maybe what you really need to get is the proper angle for looking at life. Just a thought.

Tom: It is really about that. I talk a lot in my presentations about the differences between perception and perspective.

Marvin: Right. Oh yes.

Tom: A couple of words that sound very similar, but definitely mean different things. Perception is about what we see literally, and perspective is coming from the standpoint of what we see in a figurative sense. And so like I said, my photography sort of leads into that as I go around the country and do various presentations.

Marvin: It’s interesting you mention that, too, because Tom, there are couple words and one in particular that you never see. It’s in the dictionary, and that’s the word apposition. It sounds like opposition, but it means just exactly the opposite. I don’t think I’ve every heard the word apposition used. And it means side by side, where as opposition means against.

Tom: That’s great. Hadn’t been aware of that word before.

Marvin: Talking about bio, you’re from Rockford, Illinois. Did you grow up in that area?

Tom: Yes, I did. I’ve lived in Rockford most of my life, northern Illinois. I’m a good mid-westerner. So I get to see all four seasons. I had a couple of stints where I lived in other states, but I’m primarily in Rockford, about an hour and half west of Chicago.

Marvin: Well I know I certainly enjoyed working with you, and hearing you present in Fort Wayne, and then the next day as well in Indianapolis. Folks, I’d like to tell you about his website: Just go to www.tomleu.com – it’s an interesting website with a lot of content there.

Tom: Thanks, Marvin. I do have quite a bit of of stuff there. I write blog posts and things like that. I also have a lot of videos you can sample. When someone’s considering bringing a speaker in for any type of an event whether it’s a keynote, a breakout session, workshop, or seminar, seeing is believing… So I have a lot of videos on there so people  can get an idea of what they’re getting with me, and I talk about different topics that I speak on and things along those lines, so I appreciate it.

Marvin: Well, you are most welcome. Now Tom, I’ve written down some discussion points that I’m going to come back to in just a moment, but there’s something more important to have you comment on right now, and it’s this: Your philosophy tagline, and I quote, “Seeing things literally through lenses figuratively despite filters,” end quote. Your comment?

Tom: Yes, the idea of “seeing things,” we touched on it earlier… I put those two words in quotation marks and obviously I’m talking about first seeing things literally through the lenses of a camera. We talked about the photography that I do and use in my talks. I purposely seek some different angles to get a different perception on things, things that might be commonplace that we all walk by or see on a daily basis but when we look at things in a different way, perhaps from a different angle, we get a different perspective. We get a different meaning. We get different information. So when I talk about seeing things figuratively despite filters, what I’m saying there is that we all have filters. We all have these glasses on if you will, that color how we see the world. These filters are the result of our experiences and the things that we’ve gone through, as well as our backgrounds and where we live and where we’re from. All of these things affect who we are to this day, and it’s important to note these filters and to recognize them and be aware of them because they influence everything we do. They influence what we say and don’t say, and how we say what we say and how we interact with others. So my photography at www.16 Imaging.com is all about seeing things this way, and then when I present, I try to bring some of this perspective to things and perhaps offer folks the opportunity to gain a new awareness. To see is to gain awareness and to perhaps understand at a higher level, to seek new insight, clarity, and comprehension if you will. So it’s first becoming about really aware of yourself, others, and your surroundings. That’s our perception based on our observation skills. Then secondly, seeing things is really more importantly about understanding and comprehending this raised awareness for our personal and professional achievement and benefit. And that, that’s perspective, and that’s the higher goal, I’m convinced. So that’s kind of the philosophy of everything that I do. It runs through all of my work.

Marvin: Yes. Yeah, that’s great. Well, you’re a very positive and a very energetic gentlemen who is doing what you love to do. I’m going to read a few discussion points that I took from your website and from our earlier conversations. We don’t have time, of course, to talk about all of them but what I’d like for you to do is pick any point you wish to comment on, or comment on whatever you might have on your mind this morning. So here we go, there’s some great thoughts here on your website at www.tomleu.com and that’s l-e-u, so tomleu.com:

“The intersection where communications and psychology, music and motivation meet.”

“Encouraging people to be the best at what they do best.” I like that.

“The keys that separate those from excel from those who just make excuses.”

And then, “Getting LIT,” and I like this: Lifestyle Initiative Training™, LIT.

“The quality of your communication equals the quality of your stories equals the quality of your life.”

Did I forget something there?

Tom: No, you covered a lot there Marvin (laughing).

Marvin: Right, right. Okay, take it away.

Tom: You grabbed a bunch of key things from my site. You mentioned earlier I have a lot of content, and I really do because I love what I do! You mentioned being positive. I just feel that it’s so crucial, especially in this day and age, that being positive and optimistic is something that maybe we don’t see enough of. It might sound cliché, but the glass is half full where I come from. For those who think stuff like is only cliché, those are the kind of folks I like to work with because perhaps we can look into that a little bit deeper. Being optimistic isn’t the same as being unrealistic and I talk about that a lot. We certainly do need to see the world through realistic lenses, but at the same time, we can choose where we’re going to go from there. When you talked about the intersections of communications and psychology, that’s the core field, if you will, that I come from. I invented a term based on this: I call it “Communichology™.” I speak from the intersection of where communication, how you and I communicate as human beings, and the psychology that runs through all of us. I speak from the vantage point considering the way we think and how we behave, and how those two fields work together. I talk quite a bit about that and I use a lot of music and motivation, but it’s way more than just motivational and rah-rah stuff. When people come to my talks, they get practical application strategies, things to do, so I just try  to encourage people to be the best at what they do the best. What I mean by that is we’re all good at something. We’re all great at one, maybe two things, certainly not everything. I try to help people zero in on those one or two things that really shine for them so that they can put some legs on that to go out and do something with it, and contribute in a way that they feel is best for them. Contribute in a way that brings them joy and meaning because, again, life’s short. So that’s really that the other term that you talked about, getting LIT, and I’m glad you like that. It’s purposefully kind of a racy title, and it’s deliberate. L.I.T. stands for Lifestyle Initiative Training, and that’s what I’m saying. I’m saying our lifestyles, the things that we do, don’t do, the way we interact each day… initiative is required. As I mentioned earlier, we have to get out and actually do things. We actually have to produce evidence of what we know. I hear a lot of people talking about, well this is “common sense” and that is “common sense” and all these kinds of comments. I’ve coined a phrase called the “common sense defense.” I run into many who say: “Oh, it’s all common sense,” but then you don’t’ see evidence of that sense in their day-to-day behavior. So I would argue then, that common sense not applied is knowledge that’s worth less. It’s not worthless knowledge. Information and knowledge is good, but if we’re not applying what we know, how common is it? How good is it? It’s actually non-sense…

Marvin: Excellent.

Tom: And so I really try to force things out, that may get glossed over or minimized, and really challenge people. Those are some of the core elements of my talks and again, they’re designed to be positive and inspirational. But many times, challenge points, tough times, and well-placed negative energy are required to move people into effective action, and to take steps to move forward.

Marvin: Right. You mentioned emotional intelligence earlier, and I’ve gone to a few seminars on emotional intelligence. I absolutely love that. I love that thought of being emotionally intelligent. Now you can have your IQ and it could be 135, 140, 170, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be emotionally intelligent, right? Your thoughts.

Tom: Yes, absolutely. One of the seminars that I do around the country is based on emotional intelligence, and there are different ways that people can be smart. We’re smart in different ways, and one way to be smart is the traditional IQ that you mentioned. Our abilities to read and to write and do arithmetic and things like that, the typical stuff we’re taught in school is what traditional IQ is based on. But psychologists and researchers today are finding more and more that folks have emotional intelligence competencies, meaning they have varying levels of self-awareness and self-management skills. They have awareness socially and skills with relationship management and skills along those lines in addition to the IQ. Those two things in combination (IQ and EQ) really are the ball game today. It’s not enough anymore, research is showing us, to be just “book smart.” We also have to have this ability to, what I like to say: “play nice with the other kids” if you know what I mean.

Marvin: Right.

Tom: When life throws us those curve balls, and things don’t go our way, and when our expectations aren’t met, what do we do? What happens? We don’t like it. We feel it in our body, literally. But then we have choices to make, you and I. And how we behave next, what we say or don’t say, do or don’t do next, that’s the crux of emotional intelligence. And the “smarter” that you and I can get in this area, and it is a trainable skill set that can be developed, the better outcomes personally and professionally we will experience. And this intelligence can be improved over time, unlike IQ, which is relatively stable. Emotional intelligence can be developed and there’s a lot of mythology about what emotional intelligence is, and that’s why I love doing seminars on that subject. I do think it’s a critical component to all of us, so I love doing seminars on it.

Marvin: And something I hear a lot of these days is that the company promotions are being offered to people more and more who are demonstrating their emotional intelligence than their brilliance, if I might say it.

Tom: Yeah that’s absolutely true. Again, these aren’t just opinions that you’re talking about. There’s a lot of research that’s out there. As a social psychologist, I do a lot of reading of the studies that are being done. UCLA actually did a study and they concluded that seven percent of success in the workplace is attributed to intellect, intellect alone, the IQ that we  were talking about. The other 93 percent is attributed to things like emotional intelligence competencies such as managing emotions, integrity, presence, communication skills, the so-called “soft skills” that are often so hard to sell, as I like to say.

Marvin: Right on.

Tom: Again, it’s a combination of the two areas, but I’d encourage listeners to look into it more. Emotional intelligence or EQ, is worlthy of more attention, search it on the internet, go to some seminars, come to my seminars, go to others. There’s a lot of great stuff out there on that.

Marvin: I attended a seminar yesterday and one of the comments was about getting your message across effectively. And in getting your message across, they used commercials as examples. Now, you look today on TV or radio or whatever, and the dumber the commercial, the more it comes across and you remember it. And this lady who was giving the seminar, she went way back and she said, “Okay, who remembers this? Plop, plop, fizz fizz,” and the others said…

Tom: “Oh, what a relief it is.”

Marvin: Exactly… And she said so many times that commercial will be remembered. You’ll remember the commercial, you’ll be able to repeat it, but you’ll say, “Wait a minute. Who was that for?” Of course, that was for Alka Seltzer, right?

Tom: Right, yeah.

Marvin: But sometimes you have to say something provocative, or you have to use a term that may mean something else in the real world to get your point across. And I would say I think you’ve done that with your content and on your website. You’ve got some interesting things there Tom, very much so.

Tom: I appreciate that, Marvin. I’ve chosen to be deliberately provocative with some of my material and in certain areas. Again, it’s designed to do exactly what you said: to get attention, to sort of break the patterns and maybe pull some us out of our normal routines to gain some perspective. To see things differently about ourselves first, and about the world around us second. We all get stuck in ruts, and I’m out there to help us break out of those. I’m including myself in that of course, which is one of the reasons why I do what I do, because I needed to be reminded of these things ongoing as well. It’s a journey not a destination.

Marvin: Right-o. Well we’re getting close to that time that I always dislike the most, and that’s when I have to bring the program to an end. But we’ve still got a minute here. How do people get in touch with you? How do they contact you to secure your services?

Tom: Thanks Marvin. You’ve mentioned my website, tomleu.com, that’s T-O-M-L-E-U.com. That’s my main website, and the best place to start. It has videos of my speaking and some of my articles and things along those lines. I also have a photography website located at www.16imaging.com, that’s 1-6-I-M-A-G-I-N-G.com. That’s where my photography galleries are located. I’d love to have everyone stop in there, take a look at my pictures and leave comments if they’d like. And of course, I’m also out on all the usual suspects of social media today like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and of that. So I’m out there on the net quite a bit, and make myself pretty available. Any and all of those ways to contact me are great and I’d love to hear from folks.

Marvin: Okay, and Tom with that, another edition of this program comes to a close and our thanks go to you for being our guest on today’s program. Folks you can learn more about professional speaker, photographer, author, and coach Tom Leu and his expertise by visiting TomLeu.com, that’s T-O-M-L-E-U.com. I’m Marvin Lowe and thinks for listening to The Inside Pitch.

Stay tuned-in…

Click HERE for info on my Communichology™ course.

Get my articles and exclusive content with science-based insights to shiFt your communication from adequate to ass-kicking!


 

by Tom Leu

Tom Leu on Rockford College Radio

I’m interviewed on the Rockford College Radio show Rockford Originals by Vince Chiarelli from June 2012. Tom talks about his music (bands and books), the Ground Level TV show, and his speaking business among other things.

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Vince:   Hello, and thank you for listening to Rockford College Radio. My name is Vince Chiarelli, and this is Rockford Originals. So like I was telling you before we started, I basically start out just with the inception of your music career and Tom Leu, as we know him now. So why don’t we get started way back when you started playing music?

Tom:   Yeah, you know, these kinds of beginning points are always interesting. It’s like, where do you begin? But like a lot of people that I’ve heard you interview on this show and other shows I’ve listened to, I think for me it all started with just a love of music and just being intrigued by it as a kid and listening to the radio all the time. And I’m of the age where I go back to the days of AM radio, specifically, WROK here in Rockford.

Vince:   Oh, okay.

Tom:   Listening to AM radio and listening to all the bands and the artists of the day back then, and just being fascinated by that and thinking how cool it all is and, “I want to do that,” that’s what really got me started. I was intrigued originally by drummers. I loved drummers. I always listened to the drums, starting with the Beatles and Ringo Starr, and all that kind of stuff. I was just fascinated with that and became very focused on that. And then when I got older, I kind of graduated into that part when you’re like: “Well, what am I going to play?” I wanted to get into a band, and that sort of thing. And for me it was a pretty quick and easy decision that I wanted to get into a band and be the drummer… and that’s exactly what I did.

Vince:   Now you’re talking about AM radio, it’s interesting because where we’re at here, WRCR, and there’s a sign behind me up there. It was 640 AM. Ironically, WROK gave the equipment and everything to the college here. They had their old stuff. So here’s all the reel-to-reel players, etc.

Tom:   That’s cool.

Vince:   That’s how they started out here.

Tom:   Kind of started off with some hand-me-downs from WROK and that was the beginning of it?

Vince:   Yeah, that was the beginning of it.

Tom:   And here we are now using none of that stuff, broadcasting over the Internet.

Vince:   Exactly. So your main instrument then was drums?

Tom:   Yes, I started playing drums when I was a teenager in high school, and I got into some bands with guys from the area here. I went to Harlem High, got into a band, started playing drums. And like a lot of bands starting out, we got together and we were having a good time and fun. And we were emulating the bands of the day, and playing covers of their songs. This is back in the early ’80s and mid-’80s and whatnot. So I was playing drums in these bands, playing mostly hard rock and rock music, and that sort of thing. That’s what I always was into and stuff at the time. You know, the long hair and all of that…

Vince:   Oh, you were in that phase and stuff?

Tom:   Sure. Absolutely. The long hair. And the metal bands, and the rock bands, and the hair bands, and the glam bands, and all those kind of bands. That’s what I was into as a kid.

Vince:   All right.

Tom:   Yeah. Not your style, right?

Vince:   Yeah, no. I mean, I went through that phase too when I was a kid because of my dad’s old LP’s that I found. I started with Def Leppard and Poison, and all that kind of stuff. And I’ve seen all those guys too.

Tom:   But the Poisons and Motleys and stuff, they’re big business these days… And they have been for a long time. There’s all these tours out there with a lot of these bands from those days. It’s nostalgia at this point. And the promoters and the bands all know there’s fans, guys like me and other people in this age demographic, we’ll go to that stuff. We still like that music. We grew up with it. And it’s nostalgia, and these guys are making a living doing that. Some of them big time.

Vince:   Oh yeah, exactly. Did you see Cheap Trick recently when they were here?

Tom:   I missed that show, but I’ve seen Cheap Trick several times over the years.

Vince:   Oh, yeah. Like everybody in Rockford, we’ve seen them.

Tom:   Yeah, everybody’s seen them. And I know you’ve had Bun E. on here, and I got to interview Bun E. several years ago on a show that I used to do that I’ll talk about. Love Cheap Trick!

Vince:   You have to [love Cheap Trick] if you’re in this town.

Tom:   Well, you want to know what, though, Vince? I mean, that’s true and we talk a lot about Cheap Trick in this town, but the bottom line is Cheap Trick’s a great band.

Vince:   Oh, yeah.

Tom:   They’ve written great songs, they’re great players, and whether you’re from Rockford or not…

Vince:   Oh, exactly. I think they’re underrated too.

Tom:   Absolutely. Agreed. A hundred percent. And that’s amazing to think about. But yeah, no, those guys are awesome. I remember seeing them at one of the earliest shows at the Metro Center back in the ’80s when they were on the All Shook Up tour.

Vince:   Oh, wow.

Tom:   Some of my earliest concert memories, not the big concerts or whatever, but guys around my age, the early 40s-ish at this point, remember the days up in Beloit, Wisconsin, and up at clubs up there when the regional bands would come through the Pier and Captain’s Pub and places like that. Any of the guys around my era would remember those clubs up there, and going and seeing a lot of the bands up there. And I know Todd Houston and Rockford Rocked has a lot of that stuff on there, bands that came through, Moxy Rocks, Armed Vision, and Raven Bitch. I can say that right?

Vince:   Oh, yeah.

Tom:   All these bands. It was a really cool time, going up there and seeing those guys and those bands. At the time, those stages seemed like they were enormous and seemed so big. But in fact they were small. Now, we know better, but it was really neat then. Those were the early days when I got started. I was just intrigued with that stuff. That’s how I was inspired to start playing.

Vince:   Okay, well, your drum set, let’s talk about that because drummers like to talk about their drum sets. What was your first drum set? Because I’m a drummer too, so I’m interested.

Tom:   I’ve used Ludwig kits all along. Back in the day I used to have the big double-kick drum thing kit with multiple pieces and all that. And I started off using that and everything. But time’s gone on,  I’ve gotten away from that. I use a single-kick drum kit these days, five pieces. And I like Sabian cymbals.

Vince:   Sabian? Oh, okay. Cool.

Tom:   I just enjoy the sounds of those. I’ve tried them all, and that’s what I use these days. And it works for me. But you know what’s really interesting? One of my favorite things to do, when you’re playing in bands over the years and you’re gigging all the time, sometimes you have these gigs where you have to share kits with other drummers, based on the lineups and stuff. And a lot of guys don’t like that, but I love that.

Vince:   Really?

Tom:   I love using other drum kits because I get exposed to these different setups, the different sounds, these different styles of drums if you will, and all that. So I really love doing that. It’s more interesting to me than playing my own kit sometimes.

Vince:   Oh, yeah. I like that too.

Tom:   Do you?

Vince:   I’ve had to share before, and it’s interesting because you get to hear the different snare’s…

Tom:   Snare’s are different. The sound of the toms, the different head choices, all that.

Vince:   Oh, yeah. Sure.

Tom:   So you’re a drummer too?

Vince:   Mm-hmm.

Tom:   I thought you were a singer/guitarist.

Vince:   I am. But my first instrument was drums. At two years old I got started on drums. Fibes. Old clear Fibes set from the ’70s. That was my dad’s.  My dad was a drummer. And that’s how I started out.

Tom:   Very good.

Vince:   Now let’s get into this, you said you started in high school. What was the first real band that you really started that was actual going around, playing gigs and stuff?

Tom:   Well, oh, man. That’s a good question. I had a band. It’s an interesting story. At least it is to me. The first band I was ever in and I formed was called Wickid Romance. It consisted of a few guys from town here. It was a band that only played a couple of gigs in downtown Rockford on 7th Street. A couple of those clubs that were supposed to be under 21 clubs back then. But it was real short-lived. And then we were on our way to go do other gigs and then all that just kind of blew up. Some big barn party and all that. All these people were coming and we were on our way there. And we pulled up, and the cops are already there. The whole thing is busted before it’s even started. So it was the great gig that never was. The band never really went anywhere after that and we kind of fizzled out.

Vince:   That’s funny.

Tom:   For me then, the way my story goes, I ended up going to college shortly thereafter. I went to Illinois State University down in Normal. I was in bands down there, and that’s when I really got active in bands. A couple of different bands I was in down in IllinoisState in the late ’80s were very active. I played down there for several years. Gigged all around Bloomington/Normal area, and down in Peoria and Champaign, and all those kinds of places. So I spent a good deal of my early cover band days, if you will, not actually in Rockford. It was mostly down in Central, IL when I was in college.

Vince:   So you were born and raised in Rockford then?

Tom:   Born and raised.

Vince:   And then you went away, you just said Bloomington for college?

Tom:   Normal. Yeah.

Vince:   And what happened after college? What did you major in, first of all. Not music, correct?

Tom:   No, I didn’t major in music, no. I got a liberal arts degree in Sociology, and then later I got a Masters degree in Psychology, so that’s my background. That’s what I do today. I use that stuff for the other work that I do.

But yeah, after college I came back to Rockford and there were a few years where I wasn’t playing in any bands. I don’t know why that stuff happens, by the way. You come back and, I don’t know, you get married and you have some kids and all that kind of thing. It just wasn’t planned.

And it wasn’t until maybe around 1997 or so, a friend of mine from college, Mitch Brechon, I knew him down in ISU, he calls me up. A band that he had been playing in was sort of dissolving, and he wanted to know if I wanted to get together to jam and play. And so that’s the beginning of the band Suite Oblivion.

Vince:   Suite Oblivion? Okay.

Tom:   I was in Suite O’ for many years. That was the genesis of that. When we actually started off, it was called Patron Smith. It was Mitch and I, and couple other guys from town, Chris White and Jim Montana. So we were Patron Smith for a couple of years. We then decided to change the name and started to gig around town here pretty heavily.

Vince:   Wow. Interesting. Now has all your time been spent in Illinois or have you traveled to other states and lived in other states or anything?

Tom:   I’ve lived out of town. I lived in Denver for a while. I had a band there for a short period of time. But mostly I’ve lived in Rockford. But when Suite O was going at full force, full throttle or whatever, we played around. We played in Iowa. We played in Wisconsin of course. We played in Indiana. We played all around. Kind of just regionally. We didn’t tour the country or anything like that, but we certainly made our rounds in this two-, three-state area.

Vince:   Cool. Well, let’s take a commercial break real quick and play a song by Suite O, Suite Oblivion, off the album “Shine.” Let’s just play the title track, “Shine.”

Vince:   And we’re back here on Rockford College Radio. My name is Vince Chiarelli. If you’re just tuning in, this is Rockford Originals. My guest today is Tom Leu, musician, psychologist. Everything I guess.

Tom:   I do a lot of things.

Vince:   Yeah, we’ll get into it all now. But what you just heard was Suite Oblivion with the song “Shine” off the album Shine. Is that still for sale anywhere?

Tom:   Oh, yeah. That record is on CDbaby.com and iTunes and all that kind of stuff. It’s still out there. We still sell a few copies here and there, and I still enjoy listening to it. It was a lot of fun to do. We did it at the Noise Chamber, like a lot of bands from Rockford. The famous Jimmy Johnson produced it. And it was interesting too because we were in the studio recording that, and at the time, the guy who was working with Jimmy in the studio, Ed Dulian, the studio engineer at the Noise Chamber, Ed went on and he was in a band called The Snaggs with Holland Zander and all them.

Vince:   Exactly. Sure.

Tom:   Ed’s a super great guy. Ed actually played all the lead guitar parts on that record. Not a lot of people know that. We were sort of in transition at the time, and so it was just the three of us. So Ed not only engineered it and did a great job, but played all the lead guitar parts on our Shine record. It was really cool. So we’re always forever indebted to Ed. I haven’t seen him in a long time. He was awesome.

Vince:   So how long was Suite Oblivion’s reign in Rockford? Or whatever you want to say?

Tom:   I don’t know if it was a “reign.” It rained on some things, some times. We put the band together in late 1997, and then I was in the band from about 1997 until 2003, so it was a good six years. We had our lineup of the band and we recorded the record. We went out and we played all around. Like I said, mostly regionally. We did really very well and we had a lot of fun. We built up a pretty good following here in Rockford. Really enjoyed the whole experience.

In 2003 myself and the bassist at the time, Chris White, decided to do some different things, and so we left the group. And Mitch and our guitar player, Jay Mock, decided to carry on and they kept Suite O’ going for another two years or three years, with Joel Rostamo on bass and Kevin Hutchins came in on drums. And there was also a stint also when a guy named Drew Corirossi from the band called Poor Man’s Fortune was in the band playing keys.

And so there was kind of a second version of Suite O’ that was around for a couple, three years after that. They went to, like, I don’t know, 2006. So it was a good nine or ten years that Suite O’ was actually around Rockford in a real regular way, playing and gigging all the time. So quite a while. Sometimes I tell people that. They’re surprised. They don’t realize it was that long.

Vince:   Yeah, it’s a long time.

Tom:   It was a long time to be in a band, a local band, and the same band. And as anybody who listens to this show, or that are in bands know, one of the hardest parts about being in a band is staying in the band.

Vince:   Oh, sure.

Tom:   And keeping all the personalities together and making that work. It’s so much more than just playing the music. If that’s all it was, everybody might be in a band, but it’s a lot more than that. And that was actually the foundation of a lot of stuff that I went on and did after Suite O’.

Vince:   Now, Suite O’ this was a strictly original band, right? Or did you guys do covers?

Tom:   We did a handful of covers, but Suite Oblivion was primarily an original band. We wrote all of our own songs. We did a few covers. In fact, we did one cover on our CD, an old Doors tune called “Five to One”.

Vince:   Oh, wow.

Tom:   It was the last song on the CD. We did a handful of covers, but I would say 80% or more of our material was original stuff.

Vince:   Now how did the name Suite Oblivion come about? Were you involved in that process?

Tom:   Yeah. It was kind of a collection of things. As I told you originally, the early version of the band, the band was called Patron Smith. It was based on another band that our singer had. We decided we wanted to change the name. And like a lot of bands do, we were writing down things, and putting pieces of paper in a hat and drawing them out, and trying all these random things to come up with some really cool name or some clever name that nobody had.

And somebody, I don’t remember who, somebody said the name Sweet Oblivion. And sweet like S-W-E-E-T. I liked the word Oblivion right off the bat, but I didn’t want the word “sweet” like that because it sounded too ’80s hair band to me at the time. So I suggested how about suite like the room, S-U-I-T-E. That sort of stuck and that’s what we went with, and so the band name came from that. People used to say, “Well, what does that mean? What does that band name mean?” I don’t really know, exactly. A Suite Oblivion is like a place you would go to escape, to escape and go somewhere else for a little while. Like the Hotel California in a sense.

Vince:   Well, there you go.

Tom:   So that’s why we called it Suite Oblivion, like the room.

Vince:   Okay. Now a lot of musicians don’t like talking about this aspect of the music business, but we’ll get into your other projects that you’re doing now, which kind of focuses on the business side of things. But when you’re in a band, how was it, especially you were in it for a long time, with the whole division of monies and keeping it strictly business?

Tom:   That’s a great question. Well, let me go on record by saying first of all, there was never a lot of “monies.” There was never a lot of monies to worry about. However, of course we played a lot and for a long time, and we made money gigging. And we started selling CDs and we had merchandise, T-shirts and all that kind of stuff. So there was some. More of the money went out than came in of course.

I don’t know how other bands do it, but we were just really open about it right from the start. We always treated the band like a business. That was kind of one of the biggest things that we wanted to do. We put a lot of time and energy into it. And we were all fairly smart guys, we thought, and we wanted to do it right and we wanted to be fair.

So we talked about songwriting. We talked about how that was going to work if and when it ever became a big deal. And when we were recording the record and all that, we talked about that, and publishing. It was pretty much an even split all the way around. We agreed on that.

At one point we had a lawyer, and we had some paperwork put together. The band was like a company, and we had trademarks and all those kinds of things. And then, you know, of course with the Internet in the late ’90s/early 2000’s, we got domain names, and the website, and artwork. All that stuff. We just talked about it.

Vince:   You did it the smart way.

Tom:   Well, we tried. And we talked about it, we were honest about it. Fortunately we had a good group of guys that were reasonable, and we went about it that way.

Vince:   That’s good.

Tom:   We invested, like a lot of bands, any money that we made, we put it all back into the band and used it to help promote the band more.

Vince:   Exactly. Well, that’s smart. A lot of bands don’t do that and end up collapsing.

Tom:   Which is why a lot of great bands break up, over money.

Vince:   Over money. But it’s an important thing to talk about. Because, I mean, if you’re really into music and that’s what you want as a career, I mean, you can’t live on the streets. Unless you really want to.

Tom:   No. Definitely not. The thing is, all those years in Suite O’ and my other bands, we did a lot of things wrong. We did things, we misunderstood things, and we made mistakes, like a lot of young people in bands do. But we did a lot of things right too.

I started writing down all the things that were happening to us because I started to meet other people, other musicians in bands and stuff, and they would ask me questions. Kind of like the one you just asked about money, and what about this, and what about that, etc. After a while I started realizing, we’ve learned a few things along the way. Even though the bands I was in never “made it,” we didn’t make it big, we didn’t sell platinum records or anything like that, but we were fairly successful in this area. We learned some things about what to do and what not to do. I started writing all that down and that turned into a whole other area.

Vince:   We’ll get into that gradually. So Suite Oblivion, you said around 2003 is when you left?

Tom:   Yeah. I left the band in 2003. And a couple of years before that, while the band was still going, in ’01 or whatever, I started doing a newspaper column for the Rock River Times.

Vince:   Oh. Interesting.

Tom:   I called it “The Musician’s Corner®”, and it ran in the Rock River Times for, I don’t know, a couple of years. They were just short little articles, tips, strategies, promotion ideas and things for bands. Younger bands, more specifically, is what I was targeting. Not necessarily younger in age, but earlier on in their experience. Bands that were just starting out that didn’t really know the business part of it, or hadn’t booked a lot of shows or played a lot. So I started writing down some of these tips and strategies. I was just basically pulling most of it from my own experience in my bands and talking to all my friends that were in other bands and all these kinds of things. And that ran for a couple of years.

And that turned into 60-second radio spots that aired on WXRX back in 2002, 2003, Stone and Double T helped get that thing set up. Had those in there. And then that became syndicated and those ended up getting on a whole bunch of other radio stations around the country. And then on Internet stations and stuff.

And so it was really cool. It was just a neat little entity I guess. I ended up trademarking the name and whatnot. I took the articles, and the columns, and the radio spots, and I turned them into a couple of books.

Vince:   Cool.

Tom:   I self-published the Musician’s Corner® books that are still out there too. I started speaking at music conferences and things. And again, my whole angle was I’m a guy from a local area, local band, local regional thing, and these are some of the things that I didn’t know when I was starting out that I wish that I would have known because it would have helped lessen the learning curve for me. I put that out there. It was a lot of fun, and I got a lot of great feedback on it, and I still do. I still do it to this day to a certain extent.

Vince:   Now did you ever expect it to get to that point? Were you writing an article just for fun? Or did you have ideas of it becoming a radio spot and things like that?

Tom:   No. I didn’t have any ideas of it becoming a radio thing. I didn’t have any ideas of it at all. I just started writing down some things. I forget how it went, but I knew somebody over at Rock River Times that said, “Hey, why don’t you contribute a column or something?” I can remember the story, and it’s kind of interesting. I had a meeting set-up. It was with Lisa Palomino actually.

Vince:   Oh, sure. She’s doing another newspaper, the “Market Street Press” or something like that, I think.

Tom:   Yeah. Yeah. Well, Lisa became a good friend. She was working at the Times then. I had a meeting with her to pitch her these ideas. I had about a half a dozen of these articles in mind. I was going to meet with her. I remember I was driving there the day for my meeting with her, and I didn’t even have a name for the column. I just had these loose ideas about what it was going to be about, a few topics. So I made it up in the car on the way there. I said, “How about Musician’s Corner?” “Okay, sure.” LOL

Vince:   That’s funny.

Tom:   That’s the most thought that went into it. The columns, people read them. I started getting emails and stuff. People liked them and appreciated them. That fueled more of them. And that turned into the radio thing, and then the books, and then speaking things and all that.

Vince:   Interesting.

Tom:   Yeah. It kind of came out of the blue a little bit.

Vince:   That’s cool. All good things happen that way, when you don’t expect it.

Tom:   Right.

Vince:   Now I want to talk about a little bit about Rockford’s music scene too before we go any further. You started in the mid-’90s then, basically in Rockford as a traveling around band. But back in the late ’80s, early ’90s, it was pretty strong here in Rockford.

Tom:   Right.

Vince:   Rockford’s got these hills and valleys with the music scene. What did you think about the music scene during the years you were in it here in Rockford, and how it’s really progressed to today? I mean, like, LT’s is gone. That was a huge place.

Tom:   Yes, that was a main staple back when I was playing with Suite O’ and stuff. The scene here in Rockford, back when I was in college in the ’80s and early ’90s, like you said, was very strong. And the bands that were from Rockford and playing back then were awesome. So many of them were doing really cool things. Bands like Sarcoma, Essie Ecks,  Midnite Angel and all those guys, and For Christ’s Sake, ICU… all these guys were doing really cool stuff.

And unfortunately for me I didn’t get to see a lot of it firsthand at the time because I wasn’t here. But mid/late ’90s, early 2000’s, when I was in town again and really active in my bands, it was a great scene then as well. Just some amazing bands, to this day I still listen to on my iPod. I’m talking about bands like Agent Zero, 420, 11th Hour Reprieve, the Snaggs, and Harmony Riley of course, with the Nielson guys. And many others.

We were all playing. We were all running around. The scene was strong. We all played at Kryptonite. Of course Kryptonite is still kicking. We played at LT’s. Elixur was a club that was really happening back then as well. A lot of bands played there. That place was really happening back then. The local music scene during those years was really strong. Most all the bands then, like my band and other bands at the time, were mostly original bands. There were cover bands, but they were not as prevalent, or at least it didn’t seem like they were as prevalent. The all-original bands were much more prevalent, and people were going out and seeing them, often.

I’ve got to tip the hat to the guys over at 104.9 The X back then especially. They really helped promote that stuff. They had things, Bandemonium contests where the local bands competed. They did that for two, maybe three years. We all were involved in that. We got a lot of radio play. We went on Steve Shannon’s show on WZOK. We were on there several times. Just a lot of the local radio really helped us, and it was a great time for local Rockford bands.

Vince:   Are you a member of ASCAP or BMI?

Tom:   BMI.

Vince:   What are your thoughts on the publishing realm of the music industry? This is a big switch.

Tom:   That is.

Vince:   That’s how my mind works.

Tom:   My thoughts are if you’re an original musician, and if you write music at all, whatever way, shape, or form… keep your publishing. Don’t give it away. Don’t sign it away. We’ve all heard those stories about bands when they’re young and they sign away all their publishing.

I mean, it’s a different landscape today. It’s a totally different landscape with the Internet, with downloading MP3’s, filesharing, and all that kind of stuff. Talking about that Musician’s Corner® stuff that I originally wrote in the early 2000’s, I’m in the process now of updating and revising the second edition of that to update the content. Again, I wrote this stuff originally in the early 2000’s, the Internet was in existence, but it was still young. It wasn’t like it is today.

Music publishing and how money’s distributed, and how you make money, and selling records is very different today than it used to be. I mean, even when I say the word “record,” guys my age and older get that, but I say “record” to my son and he’s like, “What are you talking about?” You know what I mean? It’s a foreign concept. So publishing’s a big deal. It all comes down to the ownership of the intellectual property.

Vince:   The copyright.

Tom:   Copyrights, yes. Now I sound like a lawyer. But that’s the deal. In any way possible, musicians should own their own stuff and keep rights to it, whatever it is.

Vince: I need to play another commercial anyway. So we’ll play a quick commercial and another song by Suite O’, and then we’ll be back with Tom Leu here on Rockford Originals. 

Vince:   Moving from his beginning music career and into Suite Oblivion, which we just played. And now moving into a different realm which is kind of more music business-y, sort of playing more on the music business side of things. You had Musician’s Corner® which turned into a journalistic kind of thing, and to then radio, and now let’s talk about the TV series that you had.

Tom:   Yeah. Well, it wasn’t a series.

Vince:   Ok, a local TV program that you had here.

Tom:   Because of the notoriety that the Musician’s Corner® around town got back in those days, early/mid-2000’s, some folks over at Rock Valley College called me up. They were going to be producing a TV show out there. They had a brand new mass communications department out there in 2002. And they were going to be shooting a half-hour TV show every week for the students in that program, to get them experience producing a live-to-tape television show. That was the genesis of it, and they needed a host for it.

I knew one of the people out there who knew me and knew of the Musician’s Corner® stuff. I had just put my book out and that kind of thing. So he called me up and asked me if I’d be interested in hosting this TV show. I said, “Uh, sure.” I’d never hosted a TV show before but how many times do you get a call like that? So I said yes, of course. They specifically wanted me to be the host, but I also said I’d like to feature a section of this show called “The Musician’s Corner®” to promote not only my stuff, but I wanted to have local music acts onto this TV show every week, bands that were playing in the area, singer/songwriters, whatever, so they could get some exposure.

This was before Facebook. This was before YouTube. This was before any of that. Coming onto even a local TV access cable show that was on cable every week was a big deal, so I said, yeah, I’ll do the show. It was a half-hour show. We had business guests on. We had people from the college. We had people from the community, people from all kinds of different industries and organizations in the stateline area.

And every week there was the Musician’s Corner® segment where I did a five-minute interview with somebody who was in the music industry in and around Rockford, whether they were in a band or the music business in some capacity: radio people, artists, photographers, managers, booking agents, club owners, whatever. Tons of the people that you’ve either had on this channel, on this radio station today, or guests that you’ve feature, or bands that you play on here, were all guests on “The Ground Level” back then. That’s what the show was called: “The Ground Level” TV Show.

It was shot in the basement of the Rock Valley College. We did that show for five and a half years from 2002 to 2007. And we did 100 half-hour episodes, and I hosted all 100 of those. I did over 300 interviews on-camera, and we had tons and tons of bands and groups perform on that show. I’m really proud of that. I’m not going to lie to you. From a production standpoint, it had its moments where it wasn’t so great, but they were students learning how to do it. That was the whole point.

I’m really proud of the fact that over all those years, those 100 shows, I had just tons of bands and musicians that are still gigging today, still playing today. Some of them I’m hoping are listening right now like, “Yeah, I remember that show with him,” because there were so many. I’ve got audios and videos of all that stuff. I’m putting it all together. It’s another project of mine. I’m putting it all together and going to figure out something to do with it. It was a good time.

Vince:   What was your most favorite interview?

Tom:   Oh, wow. Favorite?

Vince:   Memorable or something.

Tom:   You know, it’s hard to say. There’s two answers to that. The first one was, and this might sound predictable, but Bun E. Carlos from Cheap Trick was nice enough to come on the show. I knew Bun E. through some other friends. Bun E. did some voice over stuff for me that I used for the radio spots for my Musician’s Corner® radio stuff to say: “Hey, check out the Musician’s Corner®. It’s cool.” That was really cool of him to do. And because of that I asked him to come on the Ground Level Show. This was back in 2004. He came on and we did an interview. That was very memorable. That was really cool for me. It was fun to have him on. He was great.

And then another memorable interview was a guy who was a clown. It wasn’t just a music show. This guy was a clown. He had a business in the area being a clown. Like, literally a clown.

Vince:   Oh, wow.

Tom:   He came in in full clown gear. Now this is TV, right? So you could see him. He had his little props, his little gag gifts, and all this goofy stuff. I don’t even remember his real name or his clown name. He came on and it was kind of funny, and it was kind of goofy.

Vince:   So you had the Ground Level TV show and that went on for five and a half years you said?

Tom:   Yeah. Five and a half years, until 2007.

Vince:   Now would you ever do a TV show again?

Tom:   Yeah. Absolutely. I loved it. It was a great experience. I met so many people, and so many people that I know today, the contacts that I made were good. From a friendship standpoint, and also from a business standpoint. Those contacts were invaluable. I met so many people from the area.

It was tough at first, the first season or two, because I was figuring out how to do it. It was kind of one of those things.  People were surprised on that show. They thought it was kind of, when we said you’re going to come on this college TV show, they thought it was gonna be like a Wayne’s World type of thing where it was milk crates and cinder blocks. But it was a high-tech, state-of-the-art TV studio down there. I learned a lot. I’d like to think that after a few seasons of that show, I kind of got good at it. It was a lot of fun and I would love to do it again.

I would love to have another kind of Musician’s Corner® show again, and having bands on and artists on from today, as well as some of the guys that are still playing today that are in different bands. Like I said, literally, I had almost everybody on the that show, past and present, guys that are still playing today in bands. It was a lot of fun and I would love to do it again, either a TV show of it, or a radio version of it or something.

Vince:   Well, maybe we’ll have to work something out.

Tom:   Maybe.

Vince:   Let’s finish off the show with just you plugging whatever you want to plug with either the music side of things, or you also do speaking. I don’t know if you have anything else coming up that you want to tell people about. Because we’re going to just  play another commercial and a song before the FCC gets on my back.

Tom:   Sure. I hear you. Well, first of all, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it, it’s been nice kind of going through and being able to talk about all this stuff.

Yeah, I do a lot of professional speaking today. My background is in psychology, and I go out and talk about that. For lack of a better phrase, I’m a motivational speaker. I go out and I talk about principles of success and communications, and things like that. I was able to go from the the Ground Level Show to emceeing the RAMI Awards here in town for four years. I really enjoyed doing that. And then I got busy speaking and going out and doing those kinds of things.

I also work at a college here in town. I’m a teacher and administrator. I’ve got a blog and a website, and a photography site that I do spend a lot of time on today. I use many of my pictures as part of my speaking engagements and things like that.

Vince:   Interesting. So people can check out your websites?

Tom:   Yeah. Website’s are: www.tomleu.com and my photography website is www.16imaging.com. I do a lot of concert photography, among other things today. I love it.

Vince:   All right. Well, I really appreciate you coming in. This was a fun show.

Tom:   I appreciate you having me.

Vince:   We’ll post it on podcast and people can listen to it any time.

Tom:   Well, you know. If anyone’s interested, anybody that’s listening, if they remember being on the Ground Level Show with me at any point back in the day, send me an email. Get a hold of me. I possibly unearth video and/or audio copies of your segment and I’d be glad to get that to you.

Vince:   That would be cool.

Tom:   People can get my email and contact information on my websites.

Vince:   Cool. And you’re on Facebook too, so people can find you on there.

Tom:   Facebook, Twitter, all of it’s at Tom Leu, that’s @T-O-M L-E-U. Thanks for having me on, Vince. It was a lot of fun. I appreciate it.

Stay tuned-in…

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