By Janet Paskin
Daily Trail Staff

Like other violinists before him, Lionel Young has played with the Pittsburgh Opera-Ballet Orchestra and the National Repertory Orchestra. He has also won many classical performance awards over the course of his career in music.
Young was traveling the well-worn path of the classical violinist when he made a hard right into the world of blues and jazz.
"I started sitting in with bands, and I thought, 'I'd like to do that," Young said. "And I eventually started doing it so much that I got an electric pick-up, and I started learning the music I wanted to play. Sometimes it was rock 'n' roll, sometimes it was blues, sometimes it was jazz."
The electric pick-up has given way to an electric Zeta fivestring jazz violin, and Young has pushed his classical career to the side to pursue a career in contemporary blues. First with "The Last Fair Deal" and now with the "Lionel Young Band," Young has won five awards in Westword's annual "Best of Denver" survey in the last eight years.
The rapid local acknowledgment made it possible for Young to devote most of his time to the blues, although the path hasn't been easy.
"In some ways, I look back and I don't know what I was thinking," he said. "It's a harder road to hoe than I thought it would be, but it's definitely worth it."
Young says he's had to become far more involved in the business side of musicianship as an independent artist.
"In orchestras, people do things for you," he said. "In this situation, you have to do booking and a lot of other things that I had never done. I didn't know anything about record companies or club owners, and it's all by trial and error that you find out about it."
Though Young insists he'd rather be playing all the time than dealing with the risks and pitfalls associated with business, it's not unusual for him to learn by trial and error. Young has extensive classical training, having studied at the Eastman School of Music and with the Concertmaster of the Baltimore Symphony, but when it comes to modern music, he is self-taught.
"I love good music, it's always been a passion of mine," Young said. "I'd take my violin, try to pick it out, sing the songs that I liked. I'd start listening to people like Jimi Hendrix, and I'd think 'I wonder if I can do that.
And, though Young's career shift has required him to learn the ropes of the business side of the music industry, even that hasn't been so bad. He is looking to take the Lionel Young Band into the national spotlight and they are working on a new CD, to be out in the next couple of months. There is a record deal in the works, and the quartet is booked solidly through August and has dates scheduled through January 2000.
" We're just getting a lot better and a lot bigger... but you never know," Young said, admitting that anything could happen. "Times are strange. The world's changing pretty quick these days."
However, barring disaster, the Lionel Young Band will groove at Zino Ristaurante in Edwards Wednesday night at 8 p.m. There is a $4 cover. For more information, call 9260444.