Bands That Time Forgot: LeRoux

Rock Metal Machine
Sep 25
18 min read

Six people pose casually in a black and white setting, wearing casual clothes. The mood is relaxed and informal.

Dave Reynolds looks back at some of the great acts who slipped under the radar…

For many Melodic Rock enthusiasts, the Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based LeRoux’s third and fifth albums – ‘Up’ and ‘So Fired Up’ respectively – are two of the greatest records ever made. Sadly, neither of them really afforded the group the level of success each one richly deserved. That’s not to say they were utter failures in terms of sales, but the band enjoyed far more rewards on the back of their first and fourth albums than the records generally considered (at least by fans of the Melodic Rock genre) to showcase LeRoux at the very peak of their powers.

LeRoux, a truly fantastic band, have certainly made their mark musically. So it was with great sadness that I learnt of the recent passing of the band’s long-time bassist, producer and co-founder Leon Medica, who passed away on June 9th 2024. Leon was always an absolute gentleman in my interactions with him, and of huge assistance when it came to putting together the essays for Rock Candy’s reissues of three of the group’s albums, including ‘Up’ and ‘So Fired Up’, back in 2011.

Up until the release of the aforementioned ‘Up’ album, the band had been known with the lengthier moniker of Louisiana’s LeRoux. However, they had originally been formed in 1975 under a completely different name by Leon and guitarist/vocalist Jeff Pollard in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as the Jeff Pollard Band. It was during this formative period where they had gained such a large local following and solid reputation as a live band, that they came to the attention of the US State Department. This led to them being offered a tour performing for US services throughout the United States, and also further afield in Africa, as the backing band for legendary Louisiana Blues-man Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown.

Of course, both Medica and Pollard had established sizeable reputations respectively prior to teaming up together. The former began his musical journey in the mid-60s with Baton Rouge outfits such as Mossmen and The Brick Wall, before recording with local Blues legends Silas Hogan, Henry Gray and Clarence Edwards. Leon subsequently embarked on a career as a session bassist. His own bands, Smoke and then Flaming Cat, had opened for Strawberry Alarm Clock, The Who, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana and the Young Rascals amongst others and he had also made a festival appearance as a member of Chuck Berry’s band too!

As the 70s progressed he would find himself in a group called Potliquor, opening for the likes of Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac, Savoy Brown and the Eagles prior to taking up an offer from a production company in Denver, Colorado, to become part of a studio band. This is where he would make an important connection in William McEuen, who ran a studio in Aspen. Leon’s networking skills while working in Nashville on another session had already led to him meeting Paul Tannen, the head of Screen Gems-EMI Publishing. Both Tannen and McEuen would be influential in the Jeff Pollard Band gaining a major record deal.

Motivated by the ‘British Invasion’ of the late 60s and, having rapidly been influenced by a whole host of different styles, Jeff Pollard had emerged as a highly talented musician and songwriter.

Motivated by the ‘British Invasion’ of the late 60s and, having rapidly been influenced by a whole host of different styles, Jeff Pollard had emerged as a highly talented musician and songwriter. He too had been involved with a plethora of local bands (including The Levee Band, featuring Bobby Kimball, later of Toto), sessions and side musician gigs until meeting Medica and putting their new venture together.

Medica and Pollard were joined by guitarist Tony Haselden, keyboard player Rod Roddy, percussionist/multi-instrumentalist Bobby Campo and drummer David Peters in this new outfit. The Jeff Pollard Band (as they were still known) were signed to Capitol Records, thanks to those aforementioned connections Leon had made while working in Colorado playing bass on an album by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in the Aspen studio run by William McEuen, and in Nashville. Thanks to Tannen (the initial recipient of a tape of the group’s material passed to him by Medica in Nashville), McEuen and John Frankenheimer (the group’s attorney) the deal with Capitol arose.

Amusingly, the change of moniker from the Jeff Pollard Band to Louisiana’s LeRoux wasn’t owing to a heavy label directive but more, as Leon told me, to “make things more interesting”. A roux is a Cajun French term for a thick gravy base used in the making of a gumbo. Now a gumbo is a stew or soup originating in South Louisiana in the 18th century. It contains strongly flavoured stock, meat or shellfish, a thickener and celery, bell peppers and onions. To Leon’s thinking, LeRoux was a rather apt title for a band that lay down the basis for a potent mix of musical influences.

The group’s eponymously-titled debut album was released in 1978. Way more diverse in sound than the Melodic Rock offered later on in their career, there’s a very interesting mixture of Funk, R&B, Blues, Jazz and Southern Rock found in the grooves. It actually fared pretty well in terms of sales too, also offering a hit single of sorts with ‘New Orleans Ladies’. A big favourite in Louisiana, the track also reached #59 on the Billboard singles chart. The album peaked at #135 on the album chart.

“The first album was great because I’d always wanted a real project to work on,” Leon told me. “It was all good and the record just exploded! We played over 280 shows that first year before we got pulled off the road to put the second album together. Basically the second record was just made up of leftovers from the first album.”

Perhaps that’s the reason why the second record, ‘Keep The Fire Burnin’’ (released in June 1979), wasn’t quite up to the quality of the first album.

Perhaps that’s the reason why the second record, ‘Keep The Fire Burnin’’ (released in June 1979), wasn’t quite up to the quality of the first album. It only reached #162 in the US. However, the album cover was certainly memorable, the production much punchier and it just has to be added to any collection of the band’s music for the closing ‘Back To The Levee’ alone! Now that’s a truly phenomenal track!!

So, how did the group make such a hefty change in musical direction when it came to third album ‘Up’? That was, in part, down to the label…

“Disco was big, but they had noticed that certain bands like Toto and Journey were breaking through,” recalled Leon. “Rupert Perry from Capitol Records called and told us that he wanted to bring in a new producer and cut the third album in Los Angeles; basically so we could be kept an eye on by them. It was pretty much Jeff’s record. He wrote the songs.

“Jeff was a major force in the band. He’d written on both of the first two records and here he got the opportunity to make the record that he’d always wanted to make. He had that rockin’ background, so I was pleased for him because he deserved it.”

Jai Winding was brought in by Capitol to produce the album. The son of Danish born trombonist and Jazz composer Kai Winding, he had recently produced Cherie & Marie Currie’s ‘Messin’ With The Boys’ album for the label. He had more experience as a session musician – he had recorded or toured with Jackson Browne, Boz Scaggs, Warren Zevon, Cher, Molly Hatchet and Cheap Trick – than as a producer though. According to Leon, Winding’s original plan was to record the album with only Jeff Pollard. Rupert Perry however was adamant that the whole band would be involved.

“There wasn’t any friction,” Leon noted on being replaced as band producer. “I’m a pretty easy going guy. I got the whole thing together, so I knew how hard it was to get a deal. I got to play on the record. I enjoyed making it. Jai had actually never heard of us or our music before he came down to meet us and told us about the kind of album we were going to do, but I had fun doing that record.”

Seven people are joyfully posing against a red and white background, wearing colorful, retro outfits. The mood is cheerful and energetic.

With the new musical direction also heralding a slight amendment to the band name – it was Capitol’s decision to dispense with the “Louisiana” prefix – ‘Up’ appeared in June 1980. It was simply stunning. The album starts with a trio of the very best Pomp Rock songs ever committed to tape with ‘Let Me Be Your Fantasy’, ‘Get It Right The First Time’ and ‘Mystery’. Yet the quality just keeps on arriving. ‘Roll Away The Stone’, ‘Crying Inside’, ‘It Could Be The Fever’ and the closing ‘I Won’t Be Staying’....it’s all superb stuff!

Yet, if you pay attention to the lyrics, you’ll also discover that there’s something of a Christian message prevalent throughout the album, primarily due to Pollard’s increasingly religious beliefs that would eventually lead to his departure from the group. ‘Roll Away The Stone’ is, perhaps, the biggest giveaway lyrically. And yet there’s a certain ambiguity about ‘It Could Be The Fever’ (with its Motown flavoured rhythmic patterns), as lyrically it could be either referring to a female or some higher power. While ‘I Know Trouble When I See It’ doesn’t convey a particularly Christian message, it certainly expresses a particular frustration with the music business.

“Jeff put a lot of Christian songs on ‘Up’, like ‘Roll Away The Stone’, which was about the Resurrection of Christ,” acknowledges Leon, “so I actually saw his eventual departure from the group coming before it actually happened.”

The album achieved reasonable sales, but only peaked at #145 in the Billboard Top 200. It picked up plenty of fans in Europe though, a fact that Leon would only learn some years later. Still, notable amongst the record’s US-based fans were members of the North Carolina outfit Sugarcreek, who faithfully covered ‘Let Me Be Your Fantasy’ (that had reached #105 when released as a single by LeRoux) on their ‘Live At The Roxy’ album in 1981…

Although Leon acknowledged to me that Capitol always gave the band their support, when it came time to thinking about the fourth album, LeRoux found themselves looking elsewhere. This was after the group’s new manager, Budd Carr, had been appointed. After some years working for booking agencies, Carr now had his own management company, with Kansas also on the books. He had started managing LeRoux while they were still signed to Capitol.

“He told us that he’d got interest from another label and pulled us off Capitol as a result, but that particular deal didn’t come off. Mark Neiderhauser was a friend of mine who worked at RCA. He was such a big fan of the band that he worked our record even though we weren’t on his label! Anyways, Dan Loggins – Kenny Loggins’ brother – worked at RCA and we played him some songs. He thought a new song that we had written, ‘Addicted’, was a hit and we got a new deal with RCA.”

Ironically, it was actually a different track, on what would become the ‘Last Safe Place’ album, that would turn out to be the biggest hit single of LeRoux’s career

Ironically, it was actually a different track, on what would become the ‘Last Safe Place’ album, that would turn out to be the biggest hit single of LeRoux’s career, with the MTV assisted, Tony Haselden penned and vocal-led ‘Nobody Said It Was Easy’ reaching #18 on the Billboard singles chart.

I remember being a tad disappointed with ‘Last Safe Place’ when it was released in January 1982, even though the album would hit #64 on the Billboard album chart in the States. Dispensing with the supreme Melodic Rock of ‘Up’, the material on ‘Last Safe Place’ was a very mixed bag. There was a very good reason for that. With Jeff Pollard pretty well being given free rein on ‘Up’, ‘Last Safe Place’ saw Rod Roddy establishing himself more as a songwriter, including penning that first single ‘Addicted’ (which reached #7 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart in the US).

“I had this idea where I wanted each guy to have their own album, so if they went on to do bigger things they could point to what they’d accomplished,” Leon told me. “The first album was pretty much mine, the second album was leftovers but Tony had also started writing stuff by then and ‘Up’ was, of course, Jeff’s record. Rod had become a writing machine by the time we came to do ‘Last Safe Place’. It was great for the band, but in the big picture Jeff hated the record because he’d been the main writer. From my point of view, ‘Last Safe Place’ was actually an interesting record. I played some stuff on there that wasn’t my usual funky type of bass playing.”

‘Last Safe Place’ also saw Leon back as producer. “The record company had told us that we needed to go back and sound like LeRoux did on the first two albums where we were doing what just came naturally,” he added. “Dan Loggins absolutely encouraged us to go way back to the New Orleans stuff. So ‘Last Safe Place’ was a combination of our Funky stuff and straight ahead Rock.”

Upon the release of the album the band toured with Kansas, as well as Foreigner, Journey and Toto. However, just as LeRoux were about to embark on their own headlining dates, Jeff Pollard announced he was leaving. Although unsurprised by Pollard’s decision, Leon was surprised by the timing of it. “I had seen it coming to a degree,” he noted “Jeff had always been very religious and he’d started hanging out more with a group of followers within his evangelical group than he did with the band. When he told me he was quitting the group I’m not the kind of guy who tries to change people’s minds, so he pretty much left to become a minister.”

Pollard established New Covenant Ministries after leaving LeRoux. He worked in a Christian book store and after spells as a street missionary, a bible teacher and as a minister in a local jail, he eventually became a pastor at Providence Baptist Church in Ball, Louisiana, and then an elder of Mount Zion Bible Church in Pensacola, Florida.

At first Leon thought of going ahead with the tour, asking Bobby Kimball (who was known to him due to having played with Jeff Pollard in The Levee Band in pre-LeRoux days) to see if he could fill in. However, Bobby was still a part of Toto and they had commitments of their own… the dates had to be cancelled.

Reduced to a quartet after Bobby Campo had also opted to leave the ranks, a completely chance encounter led to the recruitment of Jim Odom.

Reduced to a quartet after Bobby Campo had also opted to leave the ranks, a completely chance encounter led to the recruitment of Jim Odom. “Jim Odom is a genius,” enthused Leon. “He brought a lot with him when he joined the band. We had discovered him after David Peters had gone to do a session somewhere and met Jim. He gave David a tape of some songs he had written and I got to hear it and was blown away. He’d written some great songs and he really did bring a lot to the table. We had to get him in the band.”

With Odom on board LeRoux continued to look for a singer capable of taking Pollard’s place fronting the group. A couple of local singers were auditioned, as was Steve Johnstad… formerly of the A&M signed Mayday. “He had some songs, but his style of rocking was very in your face, fist in the air type stuff. We tried it, but it didn’t work; he wasn’t the right guy for us.”

This is where Michigan-born Dennis ‘Fergie’ Frederiksen enters the story. Previously a member of MS Funk (replacing a Styx bound Tommy Shaw), Probe (featuring Frankie Sullivan, later of Survivor) and Trillion, Fergie featured on the latter’s self-titled debut album, released through Epic in 1978. He had departed Trillion by mutual agreement just as the group began writing for their second album, opting to move to Los Angeles to become a solo artist and songwriter. Once in L.A. he met a backing vocalist by the name of Jon Joyce. This led to meeting Jacques Morali who, alongside his partner Henri Belolo, had been the creative team responsible for putting the Village People together. Jacques and Henri were looking to make more of a Rock record. This led to Fergie adopting the nom-de-guerre of David London. “I’d moved to L.A. and was doing session work to establish myself and auditioned for Jacques and Henri who were looking for a singer for a Rock music project they were doing,” Fergie told me when we spoke about his career back in 2011. “They paid good money and the soundtrack songs and David London album was the result.”

The “soundtrack songs” Fergie referred to are a couple of tracks included on the soundtrack to the 1980 Village People movie ‘Can’t Stop The Music’ and then a self-titled David London album was released in 1981, utilising a band of session players that included guitarist Mark Christian, bassist Howie Epstein (later to join Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, yet who tragically passed away in February 2003), drummer Jimmy Hunter and keyboard maestro Alan Pasqua. The album saw a limited release in the US and Scandinavia. A further song from this period, ‘Rudy’, co-written by Fergie, Epstein, Morali, Belolo, Hunter and Christian, appears as the opening song on Cher’s ‘I Paralyze’ album from 1982. Fergie was also credited with co-writing and producing a number of songs on Village People’s ‘Renaissance’ album, which was released on RCA in 1981.

Following the David London project, Fergie then joined Punky Meadows, Gregg Giuffria and Barry Brandt in a post-Casablanca Records line-up of Angel alongside erstwhile Babys bassist Ricky Phillips. “We were all just songwriting together. I wish that we’d played some gigs, but the focus was on getting a deal,” Fergie recalled. “The songs we wrote together were written at a time when arena type Rock was big. It was a lot of fun to sing, but maybe the name of the band was still attached to that whole theatrical show from the 70s and that was why no deal was forthcoming.”

Although that particular line-up of Angel had recorded some very good demo songs together, it ultimately wasn’t to be. When talking about that period in Angel’s history with Punky Meadows a few years ago, the guitarist told me that he knew things weren’t going to work out with Fergie after a very disappointing showcase gig they had played for interested record labels. Still, Fergie soon found himself auditioning for Kansas. The gig went to John Elefante, but it appears that he’d made a solid impression, as drummer Phil Ehart mentioned Fergie’s name to his good friend Leon Medica.

“Phil told us that Kansas had just auditioned this guy and that he had come really close to getting the gig, but then they’d met John Elefante who had a bunch of songs and once they’d heard John’s songs that had swayed it. Phil thought that Fergie had the kind of voice that was suitable for us. Budd Carr then sent me a copy of the Trillion album and I knew that he was the kind of guy we wanted,” Medica explained. “So, Fergie came down and within a day he and Jim Odom had written ‘Carrie’s Gone’ (inspired by the break-up of Fergie’s relationship with Carrie Hamilton, the daughter of actress and comedienne Carol Burnett). It didn’t sound a helluva lot like LeRoux, but I felt that it was definitely the kind of music that was popular at the time. Anyway, we then, as a group, put ‘Lifeline’ together and took it from there.”

“Jim had a little studio in a barn at his parents’ place. We put our rough ideas together there. There was a lot of pre-production involved,” Fergie told me, adding that the album took around six months to put together.

With Leon producing, while it wasn’t the direction he had thought of for the band at the time, he certainly embraced it and thoroughly enjoyed making the record. Released in February 1983, ‘So Fired Up’ is as musically stunning as the cover art is eye-catching. Frederiksen’s performance is as red hot as that cover painting too! “When Fergie comes in with that scream at the start of ‘So Fired Up’ on the album, man, that’s intense!” enthused Leon.

There’s way more to ‘So Fired Up’ than ‘Carrie’s Gone’ and ‘Lifeline’ (which was later surprisingly covered by veteran British Hard Rock outfit Uriah Heep on their ‘Raging Silence’ album) of course. That opening title track, ‘Yours Tonight’ and ‘Turning Point’ are equally as brilliant. The moody Foreigner-like vibe of ‘Wait One Minute’, the brooding atmospherics of ‘Don’t Take It Away’, breezy ‘Look Out’ and the power ballad ‘Line Of Love’ are just too good to ignore as well. It’s equally as good as the ‘Up’ album, that’s for sure! Probably the best record Fergie Frederiksen was ever involved with too! He certainly agreed on that particular point when I suggested it to him. “Oh, I agree, I sang my butt off on the record,” he laughed.

Initially the future looked pretty bright for ‘So Fired Up’. MTV, as they had done with ‘Nobody Said It Was Easy’, picked up on the video for ‘Carrie’s Gone’, which led to the single getting to #79 on the Billboard singles chart. However, what happened next will sound familiar to those who have followed this series of articles in terms of how record labels are their own worst enemies.

Just as ‘So Fired Up’ began to gain traction with the attention ’Carrie’s Gone’ was getting, RCA hired a new president who, according to Leon, promptly fired everybody working in the record company

Just as ‘So Fired Up’ began to gain traction with the attention ’Carrie’s Gone’ was getting, RCA hired a new president who, according to Leon, promptly fired everybody working in the record company, including Dan Loggins and all the promotions department personnel, who had worked to make LeRoux’s previous album ‘Last Safe Place’ the success it became. Although LeRoux continued to tour, alternating between support and headlining shows, soon enough the inevitable happened. They lost the record deal.

“RCA cleared house and got rid of us and some three other bands,” recalled Fergie, who eventually decided to go back to L.A. to put together a new project with Ricky Phillips alongside Tim Pierce (guitar), Scott Sheets (guitar), John Purdell (keyboards) and Pat Torpey (drums). Called Abandon Shame, a video of the band caught the attention of Phillips’ friend Jeff Porcaro that led to Frederiksen joining Toto and recording the impressive ‘Isolation’ album (released in 1984). Having gone on to eventually forge a solo career for himself after leaving Toto in 1985, Fergie would sadly succumb to liver cancer on January 18th 2014. Of his time as a member of LeRoux he had told me: “Some of the best times of my life were when I was in that band. Those guys sweat music out of their pores!”

Having picked up a new frontman in the form of Randy Knapps, LeRoux soldiered on, but when things began to get a little harder booking wise and with no new recording contract on the horizon, the band members began to look at other projects. The duo of Jim Odom and David Peters, for example, formed Network with Terry Brock (of Strangeways fame), although the only material to really emerge from this project was the track ‘Back In America’ used in the movie ‘National Lampoon’s European Vacation’. The pair also cut an album together under the handle of Absolute Zero in 1991, but this was not released until 2000 through AOR Heaven. Odom has since founded PreSonus Audio, a company that specialises and develops recording products for musicians.

Leon Medica, meanwhile, gained an American Music Award for his production work on Doobie Brothers man Tom Johnston’s contribution (‘Where Are You Tonight?’) to the ‘Dirty Dancing’ movie soundtrack in 1989.

However, ‘Bayoudegradable: The Best of Louisiana's LeRoux’ in 1996 turned out to be something of a catalyst for the band to begin playing live and recording again. A line-up consisting of Medica, Haselden, Roddy, Peters, Odom and frontman Knapps (who had originally joined in 1983) alongside newcomers Nelson Blanchard on keyboards, David Peters on drums (‘Boo’ Pourciau also sat in on drums on occasion) and percussionist Mark Duthu began to reap the rewards of renewed regional interest in the group. This led to four more LeRoux releases that were made available over the years; namely the brace of archival live albums (‘Higher Up’, and ’AOR Live’), ‘Ain’t Nothing But A Gris Gris’ (a new album, issued in 2000, more in the style of the first two Louisiana LeRoux albums) and ‘The Session Years’. This latter release was curiously comprised of songs recorded in 1981 by South Louisiana based vocalist Carl Michael Dornier that featured LeRoux as his backing band, plus material cut with LeRoux members some years later.

Randy Knapps would leave the band in 2005. He was initially replaced by Courtney Westbrook before Terry Brock joined LeRoux in 2007. Keith Landry was then recruited in Brock’s place in 2010. A former backing vocalist for Toto, Landry had, for a brief period in the early 80s, replaced ‘Moon’ Calhoun in The Strand before working on an ill-fated project with that band’s guitarist Scott Shelly, erstwhile Journey/Jefferson Starship drummer Aynsley Dunbar and Canadian guitar maestro Frank Marino!

Offering something of an interesting diversion in the band’s history, in 2006 the group had teamed up with Baton Rouge-based Blues artist Tab Benoit to record his ‘Brother To The Blues’ album and essentially become his backing band on subsequent records ‘Power Of The Pontchartrain’ (2007) and ‘Night Train To Nashville’ (2008). ‘Brother To The Blues’ received a Grammy nomination along the way. By this point LeRoux’s line-up comprised Leon Medica, Tony Haselden, Rod Roddy, Jim Odom, Nathan Blanchard, Mark Duthu, drummer Randy Carpenter (who had replaced David Peters in 2007) and the aforementioned Landry.

A new studio album that had been completed and was awaiting release at the time of the Rock Candy reissues of ‘Up’, ‘Last Safe Place’ and ‘So Fired Up’ in 2011 never saw the light of day. So fans would have to wait until July 2020 for the emergence of ‘One Of Those Days’. Working with veteran producer Jeff Glixman (Kansas/Magnum), the album was issued independently on the Gulf Coast label and spawned a very popular regional hit with its title track.

Although Leon Medica is credited as having played bass on three songs (including a reappraisal of ‘New Orleans Ladies’), he had retired from touring with LeRoux in 2014 after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Joey Decker was the man who came in to fill some very big shoes on bass. Although Terry Brock had returned for another stint on the microphone in 2016, he was superseded by Jeff McCarty two years later. It’s McCarty who features on the latest album and still fronts LeRoux.

Paying tribute to their long-time friend and band mate on LeRoux’s official social media channels following his death, the group commented: “Leon Medica, a founding member and the original bassist for Louisiana’s LeRoux, passed away leaving an indelible mark on the world of music. Known for his immense talent and warm personality, Leon was a co-writer of the iconic song ‘New Orleans Ladies,’ a Southern anthem that has become synonymous with the spirit of Louisiana.”

They added: “Leon's legacy is one of creativity, warmth, and an unwavering commitment to his craft. His advice, ‘Be yourself, play what you feel, you can be influenced but don’t copy,’ resonates with musicians and fans alike. As LeRoux continues to perform and delight audiences, Leon Medica’s spirit lives on through the music he helped create and the countless lives he touched.”

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