& lt;a href=mailto:shaulis@vindy.com & gt;By DEBORA SHAULIS & lt;/a

& lt;a href=mailto:shaulis@vindy.com & gt;By DEBORA SHAULIS & lt;/a & gt;
ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR
OME PARENTS BOAST OF having children who grew up to be doctors and lawyers. Dan Leone believes the greatest pride of his father, Carmen, is that all 11 of his children learned how to play a string instrument.
"The message we got from both parents is 'Enjoy yourself, do something that's meaningful to you,'" says Dan Leone, a Youngstown native who writes a restaurant column for the San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper and fiction stories for literary magazines. "For my dad, playing music has been a big theme through his life."
Carmen, a local author, taught each child to play the ukulele. It was the right size for little hands, recalls Chris Leone, who followed his brother to San Francisco and has a combined career in music and carpentry.
"Not that he pushed or pressured us," Dan Leone said of his father. "He taught us and let us go."
On their own terms
Many of Carmen Leone's children have embraced the arts -- especially music -- on their own terms.
Daughter Maria teaches English and religious studies at Canton Central Catholic High School, where she also is music director of liturgy. Son Carmen played locally and recorded with a band called The Elements. Dan and his late songwriting cousin, Dom Leone, were half of Ed's Redeeming Qualities, an alternative-music band that produced five nationally distributed recordings during its heyday.
Daughter Teresa, like Dad, is a published writer. Daughter Gina is master electrician with Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland and teaches at Kent State University.
Family members -- including sons Gene and Nick -- participate in Guitar Tuesdays. Those are weekly, informal jam sessions that their father and some friends began a dozen or so years ago. These days, even Carmen's 4-year-old granddaughter joins in on her toy guitar.
"We do it because we enjoy doing it. To me it's wonderful therapy" for ridding oneself of stress, Carmen Leone said.
Carmen recalls how he always loved music, even if he couldn't play it well by his standards. When his uncle wanted one of his sons to take guitar lessons, Carmen was enrolled, too. His parents believed he'd been a good, serious influence on the other boy.
Back then, Carmen was even more interested in writing. He majored in English in college, became a teacher and started his family.
Encouraging the kids
Like his parents, Carmen Leone was firm with his children, "but they also got a lot of encouragement," especially in their interest in arts, he said.
Carmen said his musical interest intensified during the early 1970s, when he joined The Mustard Seeds at Immaculate Conception Church in Youngstown. Eldest daughter Maria and one of her friends conspired to get their fathers to join that Folk Mass group.
Chris Leone remembers hearing music constantly at home, whether it was live or the recordings of his parents' favorite musicians, such as Harry Belafonte and Herb Alpert. He also vividly recalls a time when his father's guitars gathered dust in a closet because of demands on his time. "At some point, he started playing more. It became more of an influence on me," Chris said.
Not all of the Leone children were initially enthralled with music. Maria and the younger Carmen were natural musicians; "I was sort of a klutz," Dan said. He was more interested in sports until he was a graduate student at a college in New Hampshire. He began to hang out with musicians and "started to see or sense the value in that that had eluded me as a child."
On a visit home, Dan picked up that old ukulele and asked his father to show him how to play; "He got a kick out of that and sent me home with it ... next thing I knew I was in a band, playing out, writing songs," Dan said.
Carrying on a tradition
Dan and Chris have started a West Coast version of Guitar Tuesdays, although their monthly music nights with friends feature more than string instruments. Dan is playing and learning to make steel drums these days.
Dan and Chris also play in Lipsey Mountain Spring Band, which focuses on the western swing and calypso music their parents listened to at home.
With Ed's Redeeming Qualities, Dan experienced the successes and pressures that come with being in a professional, touring band. Today, he's happy just to play. "I'm enjoying music more now," he said. "I'm doing it for the sake of the song, which is in the spirit of the family."
Which is how the elder Carmen Leone does it.
His band is called The Spurs of the Moment, "mainly because people keep coming and going," Carmen said. It's a combination of family members and friends who play country and old standards -- similar to the songs that were performed in the movie "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" He plays mandolin and guitar and sings.
For the last four Christmases, the Leone children have given Dad money to pay for time in a recording studio in Sharon, Pa. The CDs that Carmen records are copied and distributed to family and friends. He doesn't think commercially or fret about how technically well he plays.
"Being good is not a kind of pressure we got from him," Dan Leone said. "It's not about making it or succeeding in any sense. ... I'm sometimes hard on myself. I wish I could play or sing better. My dad, it's real easy to play with him because it's all good to him, it's all beautiful."
Honoring family member
Music also is how the family honors the memory of Dom Leone, who died of cancer in 1989.
Carmen and Teresa Leone are co-coordinators of the annual Dom Leone Writing Competition for children in Youngstown City and Youngstown Diocesan Schools. Awards in fiction, poetry and cartoons -- all passions of Dom's -- were presented earlier this month in a ceremony at Youngstown State University.
The cash prizes are funded in part with proceeds from an annual Thanksgiving weekend benefit concert at Ursuline High School's Deibel-Morley Auditorium. Leone family members provide much of the entertainment. The Spurs of the Moment and Lipsey Mountain Spring Band perform at it. The post-Dom version of Ed's Redeeming Qualities reunites for it every other year.
Dan Leone describes his family as a close-knit one, whose members have plenty to say on a number of subjects. "At some point, the talk is going to stop and the songs are going to start. That seems important, too. There's something spiritual about it."
shaulis@vindy.com