Leadfoot Granny playing show in BG

FOSTORIA — Barring a musical miracle, up-and-coming area rock and roll group Leadfoot Granny will never have the opportunity to play with the surviving members of legendary 1970s band Led Zeppelin.But Leadfoot Granny will have something of a similar experience Saturday when it opens for veteran Led Zeppelin tribute band Houses of the Holy at the Cla-Zel Theater, 127 N, Main St., in Bowling Green. Tickets may be purchased online in advance at $26 apiece on etix.com, or at the door for $31 each, with a $5 additional charge for persons under age 21. A link for advance tickets is available at www.leadfootgrannyofficial.com.The band's members said Innovation Concerts of Toledo contacted them about playing, and the group was happy to oblige."It was awesome and an honor," lead singer Hope Smith said. "This tribute band is pretty damn good. I'm very excited to see them."Smith, of Perrysburg, is joined in the band by fellow Perrysburg High School graduate Luke Ermie (lead guitar), Rossford High School alumnus Owen Krupp (bass guitar) and Elmwood High School alum Odin Woodbury (drums).Though it will play mainly its own compositions, as it typically does in its performances, on Saturday night, opening for a Zeppelin-oriented act seems to be a natural fit for Leadfoot Granny. Led Zeppelin was a jumping point for the men of Leadfoot Granny when they first got to know each other through Mark Mikel, a veteran of the Toledo music scene who has continued to assist the band."Mark, who we're playing with here tonight, got me in contact with Owen," Ermie said before Mikel and the group took part in Notes 4 Tomorrow, a benefit concert for the Fostoria-based Joseph Wolph Foundation for Music Education at Howard's Club H in Bowling Green. "Owen and I clicked, like, immediately. And Mark knew Odin through Steve (Feehan, Howard's owner) because Odin's played in a lot of shows at Howard's with some other groups, and he said, 'You know, this drummer's real kick-(butt), you ought to go check him out. So, then we texted Odin, and we asked him, 'What kind of music do you like?' And, definitely, Zeppelin was a big influence that we all shared."That was really exciting because it was, like, 'OK, we can jam,' and that kind of stuff."When Smith joined the band, she arrived with a powerful voice and little experience in singing rock songs."I knew the hits, of course," she said. "If I turned on 94.5 (Toledo radio station WXKR), I could sing the hits. And I listened to a lot of soul singers growing up, Etta James and Aretha Franklin, but rock 'n' roll music was kind of a different language to me, for sure."But she's adapted and joined the band's men in appreciating Led Zep. "I had The Awakening," Smith said with a smile. "They gave it to me."When the group does play covers in its shows, they're frequently of Led Zeppelin songs, in one way or another,"We've got, like, this medley thing where we jam three Zeppelin songs together," Smith said. "We do 'Sugar Mama,' 'We're Gonna Groove' and 'The Lemon Song' in one big jam."Ermie said the effectiveness of all elements in Led Zeppelin's songs appeals to him."I think, for me, what's really exciting about covering their stuff is, how they wrote their songs was really based on each of the members and what they did and how their styles were," he said. "You can listen to their music if you're really into bass playing or drumming or singing or guitar. Nothing is lacking in those songs. All of them are well-rounded, so it's really exciting for all of us to play them. Each part adds something to the song; personally, that's why I really like them."Led Zeppelin, for all intents and purposes, disbanded after the alcohol-induced death of drummer John Bonham in 1980. "He's probably one of my favorite drummers," Woodbury said. "He had really good feel, and he and (bass/keyboard player) John Paul Jones, I think, just laid down the groove and everything like that."The surviving members of Led Zeppelin reunited for Live Aid in 1985 with Phil Collins and Tony Thompson stepping in to play drums, but myriad mishaps led to the group referring to their 20-minute set as "a disaster." "They proved they couldn't go on without Bonham when they played that Live Aid show," Krupp said.Similar to last summer, Leadfoot Granny will hit the road for a number of shows in the coming months in an effort to add to their fan base, which has come to be known as "Grannies."Their travels will take them to locales such as Sarnia, Ontario, Canada; Lexington and Louisville in Kentucky and Nashville and Chattanooga in Tennessee.Leadfoot Granny was among 10 acts to take part in the Wolph Foundation benefit. The Wolph Foundation assists music-education programs in a variety of ways."I guess the thing we were trying to go for was to see how much the Bowling Green community would support something like this," said Glenn Burris, a Bowling Green resident who helped organize the event and one of the founders of the Wolph Foundation. He was an uncle to Joseph Wolph, the late Fostoria musician and instructor for whom the foundation is named. "Music education's pretty important to the (Bowling Green State) university community, as you might imagine. So far, so good."More information on the Wolph foundation is available at www.jwolphfoundation.org.