Two of us: South Fayette couple keep LocaL going after move of ‘best friend’
Leigh-Anne and Zack DeFelice perform as LocaL at a recent fundraising event in South Strabane Township.
Leigh-Anne and Zack DeFelice perform as LocaL at a fundraising event in South Strabane Township.
Leigh-Anne and Zack DeFelice perform as LocaL at a fundraising event in South Strabane Township.
Leigh-Anne and Zack DeFelice perform as LocaL at a fundraising event in South Strabane Township.
Zack DeFelice
Leigh-Anne DeFelice
Leigh-Anne DeFelice
When musicians are in a band, it helps if they actually like one another. Just ask John, Paul, George and Ringo. And Yoko.
Better yet, ask South Fayette Township resident Leigh-Anne DeFelice and her bandmates in LocaL.
“The three of us, when we came together, we realized, wow! We could be best friends,” she recalled about her future husband, Zack, and his fellow Peters Township High School graduate Kyle Ingram.
And they still are, just with Kyle now living in Nashville, Tenn., pursuing his studies and musical aspirations.
“To replace someone who is not only your guitar player but also your best friend is tough,” Leigh-Anne said.
So they haven’t.
The DeFelices are keeping LocaL – yes, that second capital “L” does belong at the end – going as a duo, entertaining audiences at nightspots and festivals with their own brand of high-energy, feel-good acoustic music.
Leigh-Anne, a Canon-McMillan High School graduate, continues as front woman, singing lead and providing accompaniment on percussion and guitar. Her husband, though, is shifting gears a bit.
With Kyle putting his virtuoso guitar chops on display, Zack usually kept the beat going as percussionist while providing some six-string rhythms here and there. These days, his emphasis definitely is on playing his Martin.
“I had to learn three hours’ worth of music, which seemed like a monumental task at the time,” he said about his new role.
But thanks to the magic of Skype, he was able to get plenty of instruction all the way from Nashville.
“If we were doing songs that we did before,” Zack said, “I would call Kyle up and say, ‘Hey, what did you do on these songs? Can you show me a few things to make it sound like we had it sounding before?'”
Meanwhile, his wife vouches for him as a quick learner of new material.
“I know the words to like 8 million different songs, so it’s basically, try this, try this, this, and we see what works,” Leigh-Anne said. “I’ll give him a couple of songs, and I’ll come home and he’ll say, ‘Hey, let’s practice it,’ and then it’s done. So that’s good.
“We’re constantly trying to add more, not only to keep it fresh for the people who are coming to hear the shows, but for us,” she continued, “because it gets boring singing the same songs over and over and over again.”
LocaL’s repertoire draws from a wide variety of material, from the Beatles, Allman Brothers and Grateful Dead to singers such as Taylor Swift, who might appeal more to the younger folks in the crowd.
“We do try some of that stuff,” Leigh-Anne said about the latter. “But for the most part, I think that we both are classic rock kind of people at heart.”
The DeFelices write plenty of their own material, too.
“We’ve been focusing on the cover stuff, because, you know, in Pittsburgh, people want to hear things that they know,” Leigh-Anne explained. “Then you can slide in a couple of originals every once in a while, when they’re not suspecting it. And then they’re dancing, and they don’t even know it’s an original.”
Of course, Kyle periodically comes back to visit his hometown. And of course, he’ll rejoin LocaL for three-person performances on those occasions, just as any best friend would.
“When you have what we had,” Leigh-Anne said, “I think it is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”
Visit www.facebook.com/LocaLband.