Thomas Leeb grew up in the small Austrian mountain village
Turracher Höhe,
Carinthia, as the youngest of four children of a hotel-owner's family. Over a period of thirteen years he taught himself the
electric guitar, then switched to
acoustic guitar. He was fifteen when he decided to become a musician and had his first concerts, even though his parents made him finish high school. He produced his first CD
Reveller (now out of print) when he was seventeen. After high school he toured Ireland for four months as street musician. In 1997 he recorded his second CD
Hope (out of print) and finished third in the 1998 Open Strings Festival in
Osnabrück,
Germany. In 1999 Leeb published his third CD,
Riddle, on the
web portal MP3.com and studied at the
California Institute of the Arts, focusing on
world music and
traditional music from
Ghana. His teachers were percussionists
Kobla and
Alfred Ladzekpo, and guitarist
Miroslav Tadić. Leeb graduated in 2003 with a
Bachelor of Fine Arts. He produced his fourth album,
Spark, in 2004 and went completely
indie, selling the CDs from his website. In 2006 he recorded the CD
Upside Down and in 2007
Desert Pirate. Leeb tours incessantly, mainly in the US, in Europe (Austria, England, Germany, Ireland and Croatia) and in Asia (Taiwan, Korea and Japan); he has managed to build a worldwide fan community. He irregularly teaches as freelancer at two music schools in
Los Angeles. Every summer he organizes a
workshop at his Austrian hometown Turracher Höhe which is highly frequented, especially by British guitarists. Leeb taught master classes at the London Music School and the
Guitar Institute of Technology in
Hollywood., , Leeb is an influence especially for young guitarists, for example
Newton Faulkner. Thomas Leeb is married and lives in
Val Verde, California. == Influences and technique ==