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Artist
Niki Leeman
2+ albums
about
Niki Leeman, born and raised in the San Francisco bay area, recalls when he first began writing: "I started writing poems when I was 8 for no reason I can remember. I bought an electric guitar at fifteen because I wanted to write songs. In the beginning I wanted to be Bruce Springsteen. Then I heard Bob Dylan's "Blood On The Tracks" and everything changed, so I swapped my beautiful Gibson SG walnut electric and all my rock-star pretensions for an acoustic guitar and hit the road. After hitchhiking and hopping freight trains around the country for a few years, I ended up in Greenwich Village in 1981, smack dab in the middle of the incredibly vibrant Fast Folk music scene, which included Shawn Colvin, Susan Vega, David Massengill, and Jack Hardy. I played street music all over NY in those days: the subway, the square, and the Staten Island ferry (which was a quarter back then). I was the minstrel vagabond, living for poetry and song, and very much alive." “In 1984, with a guitar, a bag and 200 bucks, I boarded a plane for Europe and landed in Paris. I played music across Europe for 5 years. Those were colorful times - I got a dog, the infamous Ghandi, learned to juggle at the World Juggling convention in Liege, Carnival in Venice, a commune in Denmark, Oktoberfest in Germany - a lot of characters, a lot of stories, a lot of songs." Niki returned with Ghandi to the Bay Area, joining a thriving music scene which included artists Keith Greeninger of City Folk, and Chuck Brodsk
