There is no space up here. Ian needs some room to move, but he’s pulled his drums around him as close as he can. John’s bass tilts up a bit. Looks awkward, but he’ll make it work. Jim’s keyboard takes up a lot of real estate, but it is what it is: he doesn’t own a keytar and I’m not sure he’d use it even if he did. The horns, Dale, Jess and I, are in a line, backs to the side wall, which is a bummer because I love jumping around with my saxophone while we play. Leon’s in the middle of the nest, and though he’s in his fifties, he somehow also brings the energy of the newly hatched, his baby blue Gretsch 2127 an appendage. He taps one of the guitar pedals with the toe of his checkered shoe. His pedal board is a skateboard.

“I dunno,” he says to us, swinging his body around, back to the crowd. “Should we get going?”

“Not much else to do,” I volunteer, and though it’s a bad rejoinder, Leon crows.

“Okay then! ‘Go if You Wanna Go’?” It’s not a question, really. Ian counts us in, and we’re off again, a bunch of middle-aged friends making the people dance.

* * *

Leon Rohrbaugh, aka Leon Raba, aka Lemon, is one of those guys who makes you feel like you’ve known him forever, as long as you’re cool. He’s a big hugger. A buddy from high school who’s just reconnected with him again summed it up pretty well: “It’s weird seeing someone after decades, like they were a kid when you saw them last, and all of a sudden they’re grown up,” she tells me before a gig. “Leon hasn’t changed a bit. He’s the same big-hearted guy he’s always been.”

Leon grew up near Mankato in Redwood Falls, Minnesota. It’s a small farming community: “A weird little town,” he says, smiling. Leon’s parents listened to the musical stylings of Barry Manilow and Tony Orlando and Dawn, and the only radio station in town was KLGR. Every morning, they listened to the feeder pig report and then it was news until noon. KLGR then switched to music: country until six, and then rock and roll until midnight.

“And then it turned off because it was the ’70s,” Leon shrugs, which is about the right response for that decade.

In Redwood Falls, Leon learned how to play drums when he was ten. His buddy’s dad worked at the church, and they’d go there to hang out. Leon got started by messing around on the drum kit and sat in on a few songs on Wednesdays when the church band practiced.

When he became a teenager, his chill life of pig reports and soft rock changed in the extreme: he heard punk rock for the first time. “I got blown away,” Leon leans forward. “It was so angry and loud and different. You go from Hall & Oates to Minor Threat and Government Issue.”

The timing couldn’t be more perfect. The family moved to the bustling metropolis of Mankato when he was 14, and Leon couldn’t unhear the punk music lodged in his brain. He was the New Kid and the skateboarder/punk rocker-type, so he gravitated to that same set of kids on the margins who happened to want to make some noise themselves. Bands always need a drummer, especially when “You can count to four!” so Leon was always in a band, the full collection of which were bad. “When you’re in 8th grade, how good are you going to be, writing your own tunes?” he laughs.

* * *

When you’re a drummer and everyone needs you in a band, you find your people. Just a year after moving to Mankato, Leon started playing at the 7th St Entry in Minneapolis. Yes, as a 15-year-old. He’d also spend a lot of time in Sioux Falls, a popular stopover for bands going through the upper Midwest, so Leon would meet people and keep playing with other bands, always punk rock. Why? “I never had any other interest than playing fast and making people yell.” He’s matter-of-fact about it.

Here’s the thing, though: Leon wanted to be up front. When he was 21, Fate slapped him on the back and said, “You got it, clown,” after he sold his drum kit for a car and then promptly totaled it. His parents bought him an acoustic guitar as a consolation prize. “I learned by watching other people’s fingers as they played. I was so bad at it that my friends told me to flip it over and play it like a drum.” He smiles, his eyes narrowing behind his glasses. “And then I was like, ‘I’ll show you!’ and wrote seven songs off G, C, and D chords.” In this way, Leon wrote his own recipe for fronting his bands.

When he was 22, Leon followed his favorite person and soon-to-be wife, Britt, to Winona, where there was zero punk scene. He found his people, though, as Leon does, and one of those buddies happened to have bongos. Bongos are not punk, so the flavor of the music changed just like his hair: “My dyed black hair got long and turned into orange dreadlocks,” Leon chuckles. He admits that social forces influenced him. “I wanted to be different like all my friends.” So, Leon started a band called Tuna Zen Trio in Winona and when he and Britt moved to Duluth where the scene was much more rock, the music he was making with new friends shifted again, ending up where we’re at today with A Band Called Truman, a rock band with a horn section, and he’s still writing his own songs.

Leon says he was always writing lyrics (which sounds a lot like writing poetry), starting when he wasn’t paying attention in school. Another band he was in called Billy Goats Gruff needed songs, so he’d write the lyrics and his bandmates would figure out the music. Since then, Leon’s taken on the music writing part, too, and figures he’s written hundreds of songs. He had a Duluth band called Ballyhoo “and we put out five albums, all originals.”

Leon’s songwriting process moves quickly. He’ll be futzing around on the guitar or driving his truck home from work and riffs will pop into his mind, usually the melody. He’s got to net that fish fast, though, or it’ll break the line and swim away. “Takes maybe five to ten minutes to write a song,” he states matter-of-factly. It’s a matter of getting that flash of inspiration, and then the different musical parts and lyrics come out fast.

The most recent song Leon wrote is “El Camino.” One weekend he sent us an excited message on our band group text about a new song he worked up.

“Is it about an El Camino?” I texted back, being silly.

“Well … NO,” he texted back.

An hour later, he texted again. “NOW it’s about an El Camino.”

And this is what Leon does.

Sometimes, though, the songwriting doesn’t work out. At practice one night, Leon told the horn section he had an idea for the riff we could play at the beginning of one of the songs, and he sang it like, “Da da DAH da-da.” We nodded, figuring out the notes based on his singing, and then Jim piped up from behind the keyboard: “Sounds like the opening riff of ‘Brown-Eyed Girl.’”

It took about a second for Leon to say, “Oh SHIT. Well. Forget that. Or maybe not? Whatever. I don’t play horns.” But we knew. He kind of wanted us to play what he sang, to translate it on our instruments, so we did, at least for a minute. We got that stressed note somewhere else in the line and damn! We had it.

“Usually a song doesn’t work out if I’m done and then I realize …” He grins and grimaces at the same time. “I’ve just written someone else’s song!” I have to imagine it’s part of the process of writing so much music; sometimes you fly too close to the sun, but then it’s on to another one.

* * *

A Band Called Truman has had plenty of members who have come and gone, but it’s been in its current configuration since before the pandemic. Leon loves it. “We’re hilarious. We’re friends. We put together a good group of people to play music with.” The only thing Leon doesn’t love is the fact that our drummer, Ian, makes musical references he doesn’t get. “I’m trying so hard!” he laughs. “But I just never know what he’s talking about!”

This year, A Band Called Truman will once again play at the Homegrown Music Festival. No surprise there: Leon’s been in on the party since the beginning. In 1998, it was literally just a party, but the second year was the first official Homegrown at the NorShor Theatre with 10 local bands. Leon helped with the logistics of the first four or so Homegrowns and officially joined the steering committee three years ago. He’s also played the festival nearly every year. “I really like being with the people. I’ve made so many new friends, and I like running around and doing things.”

No kidding. Leon not only owns his own building and remodeling business, Better World Builders, but the guy built his own outdoor kitchen a few years ago. He loves cooking, especially for a crowd, which really came about when his two kids were growing up. Every group of teenagers has the one friend’s house that is the unofficial hangout spot, and Leon and Britt’s house was that place. Teenagers are always hungry, so Leon got used to feeding the people.

The pandemic squashed gigs out, but Leon has a deep need to get people together. He’s a natural connector, which is perhaps something he got from his dad, who was a salesperson. So, to scratch the itch, Leon built a kitchen outside, complete with a dining room, and he’s constantly inviting people over to hang and eat and talk. Even though his kids are grown and live out of town now, their friends still come over, and now that we’re back to playing gigs, Leon’s feeding the crowd in more ways than one.

* * *

Getting ready to play at a recent gig at Blacklist, I approached the stage and Leon said, “Like my shirt? It’s for chefs!” It looked like a bowling shirt, black with swatches of red running down the sides. I told him it was rad. He laughed and handed me a headband with a giant sparkly green bow stuck to it. It’s St. Patrick’s Day Eve, after all, and he picked up some green swag at Ragstock for us because that’s what Leon does. I put mine around my neck, but Leon donned his properly.

Leon’s a lover, not a fighter. Before the gig, I watched him give a massive hug to a friend who was in town for the weekend. He hadn’t seen this guy in years, and while they were hugging, Leon lifted him up. They’re two very much grown men, and the metaphor is a slap: Leon’s a dude who’ll pick you up, whether through the drive of the music he makes or the easy laughs.

Thing is, as Leon says, “The world is full of assholes.” His subtext is that he’s not going to be one of them. Going through our days, slogging through the terrible news of selfish billionaires, shelling out more and more money for milk and bread, and walking past the people who refuse to make eye contact, we can sometimes hear a rebel yell if our ears are open to it. This is the yell of a guy who spent a winter living in a VW Beetle in Milwaukee after high school, the kind of guy who grew up with a mean grandpa and vowed he was never going to be like that. He’s a guy who married his love, Britt, raised two excellent kids, and, dang it, just wants everyone to get together. He doesn’t just want it, either. He builds opportunities and makes it happen.

If you don’t have a friend like Leon in your life, get those ears open and listen for the yell of a person who has a band and another band and who makes smoked meats and bacon-wrapped jalapeno poppers for a crowd. Leon and Britt have cultivated a community of good: good food and music and the kind of silly nonsense that can be hard to keep up with but is delightful anyway. Find the type who’ll be in your corner, the person who’s there for you because, as Leon says, “Everyone needs someone they can count on, you know?”