Crimson and Gold Connection; Lem Sheppard

Welcome to Crimson and Gold Connection, I am Dustin Triber. Today's guest is one of the recipients of the 2017 Maritorious Achievement Award at Pittsburgh State University, Lim Shepard. Lim, let's start with what brought you to Pittsburgh State University. And I came from a family where I was, maybe seventh, seventh, you know, the youngest and everybody went to college. So I was kind of just waiting my turn. And so some of my siblings went to, went down south to Tennessee State where my uncle and not were teaching. And three of them had gone to Pittsburgh. And so one of my brothers was still here, so it just made sense. And I was going to follow the family tradition and be a social worker, because that's what everybody was doing, going to Pittsburgh or somewhere and becoming a social worker. So that's what really brought me here. I always played guitar a little bit, you know, growing up, but I didn't, didn't read music that well. I didn't read music at all, you know, I couldn't read music. But somehow at the community college, I was going to, before I came here, you know, got out of high school into the community college. And, you know, most of the people I hung out with were in the music department.

And they were guys I knew in great school. And so that's part of what it was. It was just the group of people I was hanging out with mostly were musicians. Actually, actually when I came here, I made my mind up to study music theory and I had these grandiose ideals. I was going to be this conductor and took me a little while to figure out, you know, you got to start like a 12 years old or something if you're going to be a conductor. Or something like that. But I did, I did get a degree in saxophone. I studied saxophone, I studied music theory, composition. And it took a while. I mean, once I really got to understand, you know, music theory and professors here, you know, one of the professors even introduced me to Sophezio. You know, on his free time, I was in a class, you know, he just knew this was, I was a new music reader and he said, well, you should learn Sophezio because it helps, you know, get the eye and the ear train. So once things start rolling up for me, you know, it really, I just stayed with it. What professor standing out

is having big impacts on you? Almost all of them. I'm like the one guy that had me introduce me to Sophezio was Dr. Corcoran. He was the band instructor and he said, well, you know, come by my office at 10 o'clock, you know, I'm not doing anything, show you my Sophezio. And then that transferred over to my saxophone teacher, Bob Schott, who was teaching me to play saxophone in the method where you vocalize. So when you play an A on the saxophone, you're singing it in your throat. So he said, yeah, the French method of playing saxophone is that you're doing Sophezio. So I mean, all those things, you know, linked over to there and then I had a composition teacher, Richard Cook. And, you know, he'd have you write, you know, you'd write a song and you'd come in once a week and you'd analyze the song for you and you'd tell you what you did. And I remember writing just a little piano piece, you know, just came off of my head and I wrote it out. And I remember, he analyzed, he looked at it, he went to his library in the office, vast books, fake books and things and he pulled out a song

that was exactly like the one I thought I wrote. And I was so embarrassed, he knew that I didn't, I couldn't play piano and didn't read piano, I had never had no access to that song, but he said that sometimes that happens, that's in the back of your head. And when you're tankling around on the piano, those things come out. And so that was very interesting to me and, you know, what introduced me to thinking about the sociology of music, the psychology of music, why that happened, how does that happen, you know, we, you know, we get introduced to music our whole lives and all that music is swirl around it back your head. So, I have, you know, a million of those experiences, you know, the piano program, you know, really got me to, you know, knuckle down and learn to play piano. Every, every, because, you know, I was one of those people who was, you know, I was interested in music history, music theory, saxophone, jazz. I did my senior recital on saxophone, tenor saxophone and piano company by piano. My graduate thesis was a classical guitar and flute piece.

I had a jazz band, a jazz combo, which was kind of a fusion jazz at that time. And then I started singing and playing folk music, you know, so I was doing all those things that, so I had access to just every department there, it seemed like. With all those influences, how do you find your own voice? One thing I used to think that with folk music, you can play them all because folk music has this organic nature to it where, goes back to when we didn't have labels on music, you know, always, when I sing the crud at song, I'd say, well, you know, bluegrass guys sing that song, jazz guys sing that song, blues guys, country guys. So just by singing the crud at song, you can do a jazz version of it. You could do a bluegrass version, a bluesy version of it. You can rearrange it a little bit and use music theory. Now I know, and what I know a little bit about guitar is that you can change the key you're planted in and make it sound more country or more bluegrassy or change the key and make it sound more jazzy if you want.

So I wanted to play them all at the same time, I guess. So that's what got me in a singing and playing guitar, yeah. How do you think your education at Pittsburgh State has served you? I think it was very important because not only what I did with the degree afterwards, but what I expected to do coming in, and the fact that, you know, I was prepared so well. I mean, they had a piano proficiency exam that I worked really hard on, you know, you passed a proficiency exam when you did your music theory, you know, it didn't matter that was one of, you know, playing folk music, but I was prepared because they don't really, you know, when you're prepared that broadly, your professors and the university, they're not going to narrow you into one vein. So they give you this wide broad exposure to just all the possibilities out there. So I felt that was prepared to, you know, I could have stayed with the jazz combo band I had and some of those guys are still playing, quite a few of them are still playing professionally. And I could have went that vein,

I could have stayed with the classical tenor saxophone and duol, you know, thing and found a piano player and went that route, you know, so that's just the way I was prepared broadly to make a choice, you know, and that was valuable. The fun thing to think about it was that all those things I was doing, folk singing, singer-songwriter was the big thing at the moment, and college campuses were like ground zero. So the university was bringing in folk singers and singer-songwriters, I got to meet these guys, I mean, some of them are still friends of mine, you know, they were coming in, they had a coffee house type thing, there was a place off campus called the brick pocket that, you know, we could sing in if we thought we had enough songs to fill the bill. But that really, you know, because whatever you go into, you have to be in that environment. If you're gonna have a small jazz band, well, you gotta go in an environment where there's lots of jazz musicians, lots of club work, but being on campus, and I started touring and working

as a senior or graduate student. So I think that's what pushed me in that direction that I had the access, I was in the environment, I was doing college shows, and I could stay right here and being that that's a touring type job, you don't have to move to a music city, you know, you can stay right here. Lam Shepard, Recipient of the 2017 Maritories Achievement Award. Thanks for speaking with us on Crimson and Gold Connection.