Later he joined seminal hardcore LA punk band Fear, performed with
avant-garde singer
Nina Hagen,
Lydia Lunch,
John Belushi, LA African Beat Kwashi and
Dick Dale. He performed on
Saturday Night Live on Halloween 1981. Leitch learned production, engineering, and songwriting skills from Richie Podler, Bill Cooper, and
Bob Clearmountain. He also had some minor roles in movies like
American Pop and
The Ratings Game In 1983, Tim produced the first
Red Hot Chili Peppers demo recording that led the band to its first recording contract. Those sessions were later released in 1994 as “Out in LA”,
EMI. Tim had his first top 40 hit with “Paraiso” (WEA Latina artist Chantelle). His credits also include scoring the feature film,
Night Eyes II and the film short, “In the Meantime”, as well as ghost-composing many other feature films under Steve “Don’t You Forget About Me” Shift. After his move to
New York City in 1992, Leitch came off the road with FEAR in 1993 and began learning
Sonic Solutions and
Pro Tools. By 2000, Tim was writing jingles for Bang Music, engineering, producing, licensing, teaching Logic Pro software privately, and demonstrating for software and digital audio hardware manufacturers at trade shows. In 2003, Tim partnered with
Emmy award winning composer Patty Stotter, scoring
HBO documentaries and music and sound design for children's books online. Sol-I, Tim's solo projects' debut album,
Leap Before You Look, won 1st place at the 2004 Just Plain Folks Independent Music Awards in the category Electronica Album of the Year. Docs Without Borders Film Festival awarded his piece (Is Anybody Listening?) for its 2016 Official Selection in the Human Spirit category. His 13 years of teaching drums was accumulated into his book "Diffusion of Useful Beats" which was released in March of 2019. A collection of beats, fills, and exercises for drum kit. Tim now lives in the
Pacific Northwest. Some of his current performing projects include Fear,
Nasalrod, and
NW Sugar Shakers. ==External links==