Chuck Leavell: Bringing Music and Tales from a Rock-and-Roll Life to GPAC, Mempho
Chuck Leavelll
Flailing musicians take heart at this tale: Chuck Leavell, a keyboardist of no small accomplishment, hit a rough patch at the turn of the 1980s. As he neared the age of 30, the best option in his life seemed to be … farming? Granted, he loved the tree farm near Macon, Georgia, that he’d settled on. But, as his wife Rose Lane notes in The Tree Man, a documentary on Leavell’s life, “Chuck comes in; he’s kind of downtrodden a little bit because his life isn’t going the way he wanted it to. He said, ‘I’m just gonna not do my piano. I’m just gonna have a farm; We’re gonna live out here on the farm, everything’s gonna be great.’ And I’m going, ‘No, it’s not going to be like that.’” Rose Lane knew something Leavell didn’t: She’d received a phone call earlier, arranging to have Leavell audition for the Rolling Stones. - Written by Alex Greene