Mt. Lebanon resident chosen for international Youth Blues Showcase
Pierce Dipner with his Taylor acoustic guitar.
Pierce Dipner with his Taylor acoustic guitar.
The old saying about kids being seen but not heard applied to Mt. Lebanon resident Pierce Dipner.
Then he played his guitar.
“He just totally threw us for a loop because he was so good,” said Jonnye Weber, president of the Blues Society of Western Pennsylvania.
She had gotten to know Pierce as a quiet preteen attending blues society events with his parents, Bill and Angela. Soon enough, Weber and other members of the group got to know him as a musician.
Now 13, Pierce has been selected to represent the society in the Youth Blues Showcase that takes place during the International Blues Challenge, scheduled for Jan. 31 through Feb. 4 in Memphis, Tenn. On opening night, he and other young musicians will have the opportunity to play solo sets.
“Blues fans from around the world get to see him,” Weber said. “They are excited because this is the next generation coming up.”
Pierce wasn’t always a blues fan, himself.
“When I started listening to music, I only liked punk bands,” he explained, referencing the 1970s-era bands like the Ramones that prominently featured electric guitars. And so that’s the instrument on which Pierce decided to take lessons at age 8, at a Mt. Lebanon music store.
“We signed him up at Empire Music, and he did well from the get-go,” his father said.
The following year, his teacher selected him to be part of an Empire student ensemble to perform in front of a live audience at the Hard Rock Café at Station Square, an event that marked his debut as a vocalist.
“Right before I started practicing for it, he called and asked, ‘Do you want to do singing, because we don’t have anyone else who knows how to sing,'” Pierce recalled. “So I said, ‘I’ll give it a shot.’ And I just kept doing it after that.”
To help hone his vocal and guitar-playing skills, he stayed on the lookout for chances to perform.
“I saw something for a youth blues jam through the Blues Society of Western Pennsylvania,” he said. “I never played the blues before and didn’t gave that much time to prepare, so I just went there to see if I could catch on. After that, I really just liked the music.”
In 2015, at age 12, he was by far the youngest participant in the society’s Youth Blues Challenge. But he finished third, wowing the crowd with his takes on Leroy Carr’s “Blues Before Sunrise,” B.B. King’s “Paying the Cost to Be the Boss” and Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile.”
This year, in lieu of hosting a challenge and after reviewing many bands and solo acts, the group chose Pierce to head to Memphis.
“He’s easy to work with, and that’s a big plus,” Weber said. “He presents himself well. There’s no ego, no boasting. He just gets up there and plays.”
Along with guitar, Pierce plays cello, performing recently in the Mellon Middle School Orchestra holiday concert, and he also takes drum lessons.
His proficiency has come as somewhat of a surprise to his parents.
“Neither of us plays music, at all,” Bill Dipner said. “So this is his own thing.”