This former engineering student gave up on a music career. Now he’s one of Halifax’s busiest musicians | CBC News

Leith Fleming-Smith was in his second year at Dalhousie University in 2012 leading a frosh tour of first-year students when he made a suggestion to them.

R&B funk band The Mellotones were going to be playing an all-ages show at the campus bar as part of the frosh activities, so the electrical-engineering student recommended they go.

“This is going to be a party,” he told them.

Fleming-Smith’s passion had always been music, but the then-19-year-old viewed it as a hobby, not something he could do for a living.

But something happened at the show that changed Fleming-Smith’s life forever.

Mellotones moment

Today, he’s one of Halifax’s busiest musicians, touring with artists such as Matt Mays and Crash Test Dummies as a keyboardist, while also being a sought-after session musician and emergency fill-in for live shows. He also plays a mean keytar.

“It’s crazy how certain moments can just change your whole life,” said Fleming-Smith.

The Mellotones show at Dalhousie wasn’t particularly well attended, with probably as many people watching the show as there were on stage in the eight-piece band. But Fleming-Smith was up front and dancing, caught up in the show.

Sean Weber, who plays alto saxophone and synthesizer in The Mellotones, recognized Fleming-Smith from his former job at a Halifax music store. Fleming-Smith would play on keyboards at the store before he had jazz band rehearsal.

Weber said that while working at the music store he would take note of the people who came in. He said Fleming-Smith’s play stood out, despite his youth.

So, Weber spoke with his bandmates.

“I was like, ‘Man, we gotta get this guy up. This kid can really play. I’ve seen him at at the store before and you just got to get him up,'” said Weber.

As Fleming-Smith approached the stage to join the band on Maceo Parker’s Shake Everything You’ve Got, he recognized just what this opportunity could mean.

“That was the one main point in my life that I really felt if I give this everything I’ve got, something could happen, because I’d already accepted the fact that music would never be my living,” he said.

“And then all of a sudden there’s this opportunity to go play an organ solo with the grooviest band in town.”

The band liked what they heard. Fleming-Smith started sitting in with the band during weekly shows and they took him under their wing, introducing him to people in the local music scene, which landed Fleming-Smith more opportunities to play.

Writing term papers in tour vans

Pretty soon, Fleming-Smith changed his major to economics. He changed to history after that.

He pursued his studies while playing in multiple bands and touring. He even used to write papers on his cellphone while wedged between stacks of amplifiers in tour vans.

When Fleming-Smith graduated in 2016, he didn’t look for a traditional job. He was busy enough with music.

“Nothing actually really changed, other than I put my diploma on the wall,” he said. “I’m proud I got it, but I haven’t needed it yet.”

On stage, Fleming-Smith is known for wearing Hawaiian shirts. He’s also known for an infectious enthusiasm that sort of resembles the theatricality of 1970s Elton John.

Matt Mays describes Fleming-Smith as a “bright, shining light” who makes everybody’s day better.

“He’s a surreal person because he’s such a great musician and good at so many other things and at the same time so humble and kind and caring and nice and selfless,” said Mays.

He said that while Fleming-Smith’s moves may resemble a peacock strutting its feathers on stage, it’s not an act. Fleming-Smith loves to dance and that’s just the music flowing through him.

Mays said there are nights where they will play to a crowd of 10,000 people. When Fleming-Smith solos, everyone in the building smiles, he said.

Mays said that as a soloist, the goal is to channel what you’re feeling. He said he sometimes has trouble playing lead guitar because he can’t take what he’s feeling and transfer that to his hand.

“But with Leith, he knows his instrument so well that it just flows right through,” said Mays. “It’s like Bluetooth from his brain to the keyboard or soul to the keyboard.”

Who he’s played with

Over the years, some of the other artists Fleming-Smith has toured with have included Adam Baldwin, Christina Martin and Roxy & The Underground Soul Sound, while playing on recordings by artists including Joel Plaskett, David Myles and Sean McCann.

You might just run into Fleming-Smith on any given night in downtown Halifax.

He could be on stage with the band Six Star Revue, which plays instrumental funk, soul and jazz, or he might be there because a group is suddenly down a member on the day of the show. He’s even been called while in bed for the night, but still made it to the show.

Fleming-Smith attributes the variety of music he can play to his music education. He started out learning classical music from a neighbour who was a piano teacher, but soon switched to jazz and blues, which he credits as being helpful for improvisation and playing by ear.

Fleming-Smith grew up listening to a diverse group of artists, such as Deep Purple, The Kinks, T. Rex and Huey Lewis and the News.

EP in the works

While he’s known as a sideman, Fleming-Smith is working on an EP that he hopes to release before the end of next year. Given his eclectic tastes, he said it’s not easy to narrow down how it will sound.

“I love music that people can dance to. I love seeing a crowd dance … even if I put out something that’s very heavy and hard rock, there’s still going to be elements of it that you can move and groove to,” he said, noting he plans to sing on it and play guitar and keyboards.

Fleming-Smith says music has allowed him to see parts of the world that he wouldn’t easily see otherwise. He’s toured in Europe, Australia and New Zealand with Crash Test Dummies in the last year alone.

“Everywhere you go, you gain something from being there,” said Fleming-Smith. “But then as a performer, when you show up, you also have something to give the people there, so it’s kind of an exchange of energy.”

How Fleming-Smith managed to join a band pegged as being from Winnipeg has its roots in a 2018 performance in Halifax where Fleming-Smith played a one-off show backing the group’s Brad Roberts.

Fleming-Smith made enough of an impression that when the group needed a keyboardist in 2022, they called Fleming-Smith to offer him the position.

“You never really know in this business what will lead to something down the road, so you always have to just keep your mind open,” he said.

Fleming-Smith was playing a show earlier this week with Six Star Revue and the group played Shake Everything You’ve Got, taking him back more than a decade to when his career began.

“It was a career that I thought was never going to happen and it’s my favourite thing in the world … it just hits me how thankful I am for my career,” he said.

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