Natrona Heights native Paul Luc content to live the simple musical life

Paul Luc sits in a small, second-floor music studio in the Strip District. Every day he comes to this space and works on songs, the progress recorded on a whiteboard that sits on the floor. In one corner are boxes of CDs, manila envelopes and promotional items.

If he gets an order for his most recent album, “Tried & True,” or past releases, Luc fills the request himself. If there's an email or text message offering a gig, Luc negotiates a fee. If it's a show outside of Pittsburgh, he hopes to at least cover his travel expenses.

Luc, a native of Natrona Heights, has been making music since he was 16, and it's natural to wonder if this bare-bones operation is worth it, especially since he walked away from a promising career in finance with UPMC a few years ago.

He has no regrets, however. He's content to make music and restore and recondition vintage motorcycles in a space on the first floor of the building.

“That whole fantasy of ‘making it' — and I don't know what that is anymore — that's long gone,” he says. “At this point, it really is down to I believe in doing this. This is part of who I am. I just want to make music, and if somebody responds to it, great. And I do think there is a small, albeit niche, crowd who still appreciates that.”

Perhaps Luc is underestimating the audience for his work. His song “Stranger to Me” receives regular airplay on WDVE-FM. When Luc performed the tune on air with mandolin player Danny Rectenwald for the 'DVE Coffee House, the reaction was “spellbinding,” according to the station's morning show host Randy Baumann.

“It shut up everyone in the room, and that never happens,” Baumann says. “Everyone in the office said the same thing, that they stopped working, too. I just thought it was a great, timeless song that kind of resonated with our audience.”

After that appearance, Baumann received a phone call from Bill Deasy, the longtime Pittsburgh singer and songwriter, who wanted to reach out to Luc.

“That songwriter rock sound is appealing to me,” Deasy says. “But what really caught me about Paul was the level of his craftsmanship as a songwriter. I kept waiting for a weak lyric, a throw-away line, but it never came. The combo of his sound and his songs hooked me.”

Growing up in Natrona Heights, Luc spent many days with “drab, olive-colored headphones” clamped over his ears listening to his parents' vinyl record collection. His mother, Lori, gravitated to the Beatles and melodic rock. His father, Rob, tended to favor Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Band, and Neil Young. Both types of sounds would become influences, but if not for an elementary music teacher, Paul Luc might have just been a fan.

Don Aliquo Sr., the noted jazz saxophonist who also taught in the Highlands School District, immediately recognized that Luc was no ordinary student, even in the second grade.

“He would pick up things quicker, and you could see he had talent,” Aliquo says, adding that Luc was creative and known for doing a spot-on impression of Pee-wee Herman. “It was very evident to me he had talent over and above most of the kids in the class.”

Luc, who started out playing the trumpet, would eventually switch to the guitar in the sixth grade because it was “cooler.” But those early lessons provided him with a base of knowledge that still informs his work to this day.

“Many years later, I realized (Aliquo) was a musician who happened to be a teacher,” Luc says. “He was really different than everyone else because, even at a young age, he was trying to plant names in your head, talking about jazz legends, John Coltrane, people outside the normal elementary-school curriculum. He was a musician, and it sort of got in my blood.”

At Highlands, Luc was in a garage band called Simon. He's not quite sure how it happened, but the band soon was playing local gigs as an opener for national touring acts such as Jimmy Eat World. Simon had potential, but Luc realized his best option was going to college. At Washington & Jefferson in Washington, Pa., he set aside music for the first two years and concentrated on his studies in economics.

By his junior year, he was playing solo shows at Hungry Jose's in Washington for patrons who weren't there to hear music.

“They didn't come to see me, they came because it was something to do,” Luc says. “But it was a really cool gig because you're in the corner of this narrow bar with people smashed up against you, playing a lot of covers.”

Those collegiate performances would eventually grow into “The Shelly Street Anthems,” released in 2007, four years after Luc graduated from W&J. “A Revival. A Roadsong. A Rearview Mirror.” followed in 2010. Luc might have stayed with the musicians from that recording, but life got in the way: jobs, marriages and children all made it harder for his bandmates to remain committed to touring and recording.

Luc decided he was better off pursuing music on his own, and even though most of his income comes from working on motorcycles — a passion passed on to him by his late uncle, Rob McElheny — music remains his primary focus.

“A lot of what I'm doing is very grassroots, very do-it-yourself, a very small batch of everything,” he says. “I would like people to reconnect with that homemade, hand-made feel.”

Luc wonders whether there's an economic future in music — “there's literally no money in this,” he says — but artistically, he seems to have reached the proverbial sweet spot. “Tried &True” is a throwback to the albums that were popular in the late '60s and '70s, a musical statement that would not be out of place in a record store next to works by Warren Zevon, Jackson Browne or Joni Mitchell.

Luc's music “transcends a genre,” Baumman says. “A lot of his songs could be reinterpreted in many different ways. That's what makes him such a classic singer-songwriter.”

“I am struck by Paul's sincerity and his work ethic,” says Deasy, “which came as no surprise after listening to his amazingly written songs. He works at it and cares a lot. That all comes through in the finished product.”

Rege Behe is a contributing writer for Trib Total Media.