Leify Green

"There was a second room downstairs where Leify Green caused quite a sensation.

Leify is a current hit maker who reinvents such classics as “DJ Got Us Falling in Love Again” by Usher – and produces some original music as well.

He is quite charismatic and appealing. People who normally don't care for dancing to live music, found themselves drawn.

Even though the air conditioning left a lot to be desired, the room was packed and everyone seemed to love dancing to the simple vocals and guitar accompaniment!"
- Dance Cafe

Leif Huber started playing ukulele when he was 1.

Not really, but his parents definitely stuck one in his hands to see what sounds he could make ... little, airy things, childish strums. One can just imagine a child, barely walking, plucking curiously at the instrument.

When he was a little older -- like, 4 -- his parents insisted he pick up an instrument and take lessons. So he looked to one of the few instruments he knew: the violin.

His uncle, Mitch Fanning, is an accomplished fiddle player.

Both of them will perform tonight at the Cultural Arts Center, Flanning as the opening act and Huber with his most recent band, Leify Green Conspiracy.

Huber went through a few more instruments before discovering his love for the simplicity of an acoustic guitar. He took violin lessons throughout his childhood with various teachers, including Phyllis Freeman, Fred Wilcox and Julianna Chitwood, but by middle school, "I didn't want to do violin anymore because I was angry," he said recently. "I wanted to play drums."

Finally, at age 15, he picked up guitar, which was by coincidence, really. He found one in his uncle's house (a different uncle) in Mencier, Canada, near Montreal, while spending a summer there during high school. He figured while he was miles away from home, without any friends, and because he didn't speak much French, he might as well learn an instrument.

"I started playing around," he said.

Early on, he was influenced by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Dave Matthews, then John Frusciante and John Butler. Chad Urmston of Dispatch and State Radio became a major influence a couple years later and ever since.

By the time he attended University of Maryland, Baltimore County, as an economics major, he was writing a lot of original songs. And after a month-long trip to California and Oregon, he wrote even more, as he busked his way up the West Coast.

When he returned, he joined the jam band Mother Nature's Recipe and played with them throughout college. Post-college, he focused on his solo work and formed Leify Green Conspiracy.

Now based in Derwood, Huber has performed at the Frederick Coffee Company, the Frederick Festival of Arts and Frederick Artist Markets, as well as venues in Baltimore and its surrounding area.

In addition to Huber on guitars and vocals, the band includes Luke Solomon on bass, Yerodin Sanders on percussion and vocals, Trey Kulp on percussion, and Zan McLeod on guitar and mandolin.

His recent work has a Jack Johnson, folky/beachy feel, enhanced by percussion by Kulp and Sanders.

Huber described Sanders as a musical percussionist. "He suggests things sometimes; he sings; he's amazing," he said.

Huber reconnected with McLeod at a party, where the two of them played Celtic music for hours.

"He laid down these amazing guitar and mandolin parts," Huber said.

McLeod adds jazzy harmonies and a Celtic touch to the group. Among his accolades, he collaborated on the GRAMMY award-winning album "Celtic Solstice with Paul Winter."

Kulp, meanwhile, was the lead guitarist of Mother Nature's Recipe and now plays djembe for Leify Green Conspiracy.

They rehearsed as a band once and two days later played their first show, Huber recalled.

All profits from the five-piece band's show will be donated to the Thelma Gross Music Scholarship Fund.

The show marks the official release party for their "Give Me a Push" EP. The band is working on its first studio album. - The Frederick News-Post

The "Conspiracy" at the heart of the catch-all band The Leify Green Conspiracy — making its Frederick debut tonight at the Cultural Arts Center — may be just this: You didn't see them coming.

The band, after all, has only been together for about two months. This will be their second official public performance, and they've only jammed with one another a grand total of five times.

Ah, but what times. The group – front man Leify Green, bassist Luke Solomon, percussionists Yerodin Sanders and Trey Culp, and "wild card" Zan McLeod – has already recorded their first studio EP, "Give Me a Push", and will headline tonight's benefit for the Thelma Gross Music Scholarship Fund with their blend of smooth bass grooves, African and Latin hand percussion rhythms, and funk-rock, Celtic, and Appalachian-styles.

The 23-year old Green — raised Leif Nicholas Huber in Frederick – met most of his team's players while enrolled at UMBC. The addition of string virtuoso McLeod (a frequent collaborator with Grammy-winning artist Paul Winter) was an apparent act of kismet. Green met the accomplished guitarist and mandolin player at a party thrown by his uncle.

"I kind of jokingly said, ‘You should come and play in my band,'" Green recalls. "And he said ‘OK.'"

The musician's conclusion? "I'm a lucky guy."

Perhaps, but also dedicated. Green, in fact, began toying with the notion of music as a livelihood before he even began toying with toys.

"I started on the ukulele when I was a baby," he said. "I didn't really play it. I just kind of banged it around. But everybody thought that was cute."

Violin lessons would follow at the age of 4, and then the drums at 12.

"I was kind of that angry pre-teen at TJ Middle," said Green.

He struck a deal with his father, however: No drumming in the house. But while in high school, his dad lost his job.

"He was home for two years," said Green. And so, the guitar soon entered the picture. Songwriting, too.

"I was living in Montreal with my aunt and uncle," he said. "And I didn't speak French, so I didn't have any friends. It was then that I started writing my own songs. Largely because I wasn't good enough to play anyone else's."

According to Green, the vocals were a bit harder to come by.

"At one point, I sang a song for my girlfriend at the time, and she was like, ‘Oh, yeah. That was really good.' When I mentioned I might try out at the local talent show, she said, ‘Maybe you shouldn't do that,'" he laughed.

In college, Green provided backup vocals for various bands, but his biggest development, creatively, came in 2006, when he decided to board a plane and left Maryland for the West Coast.

"I found a standby ticket for $50, and I headed out to California," he said. He spent the summer traveling, from San Diego to Seattle, Wash., and even Portland, Ore.

"I was sleeping on the streets, playing guitar for money, and that's when I fell in love with it," he said. "I was always kind of the shy kid in school, but that was when I kind of came out of my shell."

"It was definitely the biggest experience in my life," Green continued. "In many ways, it made me who I am today."

Additional formative experiences followed in rapid succession. In 2007, the journeyman found himself in Peru, studying at the La Universidad del Pacifico. There, he performed in a cajon ensemble.

"The cajon is a Peruvian percussion instrument that looks like a wooden box," Green said. "Well, actually, it basically is just a wooden box. My percussionist in the Conspiracy plays one, as well. That experience actually influenced my music significantly."

That fall, Green returned to college, further honing his skills as he took up with the now defunct jam band Mother Nature's Recipe.

Fast-forward to graduation in May this year, and his grooming for grad school – Green majored in economics, not music.

"I needed a break," he said. So he took one. And he hopes his newly formed Conspiracy will return the favor.

"I realized we had something really great, and had to run with it," Green said.

The title of the Conspiracy's studio recorded EP, "Give Me a Push," is a dual tribute to one of the first songs Green ever penned, and its very nature as the band's first effort together.

"It originally wasn't even going to be an album," he said. But after hearing the mixes for what was initially intended as a demo CD, the decision was made to push onward. "I thought, ‘Oh my God. This is album material,'" said Green. "It's only five songs, but it's good stuff."

Green financed almost half of the album out of his own pocket — courtesy of his "money-making job" at the Rockville-based dance party production company Dance Jam Productions – and raised the remainder via donations from supporters, soon to receive a signed copy of the CD as thanks.

It's simply a small token of the musician's appreciation, he said – and the most he can offer, for now, until that other green, hopefully, begins to roll in.

And as for his instantly memorable stage name – a substitute for the occasionally hard to pronounce Huber, Green is somewhat coy.

"There's been a lot of speculation," he said. "So many people have said, ‘Well, obviously you smoke a lot of pot.' I can neither confirm nor deny that. But I keep telling people it's what you want it to be."

Honestly, he said, the truth behind that particular conspiracy is that his mother called him Leify Green as a child.

"She had a number of different nicknames for me," he said. "Some of them are kind of embarrassing, so I won't tell you those." - The Gazette