Carson City’s Leonard Paschini featured at BAC

Carson City’s Leonard Paschini, custom instrument maker and long time lead guitar player, will perform on Oct. 17 at the Brewery Arts Center (BAC).

The craftsman and musician intends to share his insights about custom guitar building, as well as the crafting of other string instruments by hand, as he plays and sings the blues, blues-infused rock and straight rock ‘n roll. Paschini has been playing and singing in bands since the 1960s and building custom guitars for himself or others since 1975.

In his one-man show, which he brands an old school performance, Paschini will feature several of his own guitars.

As the lead guitar player with several California bands, Paschini performed on the Monterey peninsula and in the Bay Area. He spent years with The Bitter Seeds, also called The Rock Shop when the group made a record with songs that were recently re-released in Europe. Paschini and another band member wrote the songs. The Bitter Seeds performed with various headliners during the bedrock period of the blues/rock era.

“They shared the bill with such heavyweights as The Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Aum and Sandy Bull,” according to MontereyBayMusic.com.

The Carson City musician and craftsman retired here a few years ago from Monterey, where he had high end fence contracting and antique furniture restoration businesses as well as Paschini Custom Guitars. He still makes instruments here and they have been sold locally at Play Your Own Music, a shop through where he also does instrument repair work. “I’ve worked with wood all my life,” said Paschini.

In his performance, the guitarist intends to focus on blues and rock but also will make occasional forays into other genres. He will intersperse his music early in the show with some remarks about tonal qualities of woods and information on craftsmanship he has learned during years of making his rock, classical and jazz guitars or other instruments.

Paschini is set to perform in the BAC’s Maizie Harris Jesse Black Box Theater, 449 W. King St., at 7 p.m. on the third Saturday of this month. Tickets are available at BreweryArts.org or by telephoning (775) 883-1976.