Obsessed

Charisma counts for a lot in a musician. It may not be what some people want to hear, but it’s the truth. There are untold numbers studio musicians that can play any piece of music set in front of them without a single imperfection. But, there is also all to often a reason those players aren’t in front of screaming throngs of fans in a packed house every night. For a performer to reach out and grab a crowd – to really connect to 20 people or 200,000 – there must be charisma.

In the late ’70s and early ’80s there were fledgling punk bands across the world – and then there was The Ramones. The electric guitar has been around for decades, but Jimi Hendrix setting his guitar on fire was a different animal altogether. When that charisma is paired with real talent, something truly special happens. Maurice Laperriere might not be The Ramones or Jimi Hendrix, but he’s on the right track.

Laperriere was born in Buffalo, Texas, and moved to Tyler in first grade, the son of medical professionals and musicians. His father played piano from a very young age and composes classical music. As such, Maurice and his siblings were started on the piano very young with the pillars like Beethoven, Mozart and other classical pieces. But things turned for Maurice around 12 or 13: “I found out that I absolutely love Billy Joel … I’m talking Billy Joel from back when it was the doo-wop stuff, back when he was in Attila all the way up through ... I mean, I’ve seen him in concert solo and then saw him with Elton John in San Antonio. And he was just ... he was the first pop music that I ever listened to.”

So, Laperriere went from playing Mozart to playing Piano Man over and over and over again. “My parents loved that I’m sure,” he added. For six years, it was Elton John, Billy Joel and pretty much nothing else. It wasn’t until high school that he even picked up a guitar – his current musical weapon of choice.

“I started playing when I was a sophomore in high school,” Laperriere remembered. “I began playing keyboards for Casey Rivers (Rivers, a country artist, was a finalist on USA’s “Nashville Star”). We did maybe four or five shows with him: the State Fair, and then we played down in Lovelady, and he has Casey Rivers Day over in Lindale, so we played that.” Around the same time, Laperriere began playing at his church, Pleasant Retreat, and it’s where he met his musical collaborator, Tony Korkmas, an incredibly gifted guitar player. Meeting Korkmas, and repeated run-ins with John Mayer, Laperriere became obsessed with learning to play the guitar.

“It was essential,” he intoned. “I bought an acoustic/electric, got hooked on acoustic and traded in. I took lessons for about a month-and-a-half, but then everything after that has been self-taught ... It helped having the classical training and the musical theory from playing the piano behind me – a lot. I knew my scales, knew my chords, things like that. So I took a fast track to playing and ended up just jumping right in.” Laperriere will still do a piano set on occasion, but not too often (the guitar is so much easier to load in)!
After enough time on the guitar (and in much the same way he came to realize he loved Billy Joel), Laperriere became entranced by the blues. “I remember hearing B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Robert Cray and thinking they were just ... I was like ... I want to do that … I’ll sit there and listen for hours just listening to the same songs, different versions just because the small things that they change – it’s unbelievable. It kind of became an obsession.”

He also became enamored with a more modern master of the blues, someone whose songs he covers regularly – and someone who most people don’t realize is one of the best guitar players on the planet. “The thing is, and I get so much flack for saying this … John Mayer is … the stuff he does with a guitar, it’s unbelievable,” Laperriere said. He’s having a tough time collecting his thoughts, but the admiration is unmistakable. “It’s stuff that I could play for 30 years and still not do. He’s just ridiculous! Don’t get me wrong, I love Hendrix, but for me (Stevie Ray Vaughn) and John Mayer are kind of the pinnacle, where I want to reach, as far as … just a tube driven amp with a single coil Strat; you can’t beat the tone out of that! It’s … it’s ... I’ll sit there and listen for hours to the same songs, all different versions, just because the small things that they change, it’s unbelievable.” Laperriere credits Mayer as his motivation to really devote himself to the guitar – and seeing his friend, now playing partner Korkmas.

After playing for a time at his church and sitting around jamming with friends, Laperriere got that common musician’s bug of wanting to play in front of a crowd. Experienced with keyboard and piano for Casey Rivers, the crowds weren’t much of a hinderance to him. Casey Rivers Day in Lindale afforded Laperriere the chance to at least acclimate himself to hundreds of facing staring back at him.

“We played in the high school auditorium there and it was the biggest crowd I ever played for,” Laperriere said, shaking his head. “I was as nervous as I could be. I’d sung before in front of people, but I’d never done anything like [that]. I played piano in my room and I’d gone to Mario’s and played with Danny Burgess, but apart from playing with other musicians for other people, it was the first time for that, so it was a little nerve wracking.” Nerves or not, he’d been bitten. After that, Laperriere never really considered not playing music. But it’s the transition from playing in the garage with friends to making it a job that trips up a lot of talented players. Standard stumbles aside, Laperriere pushes forward with that transition every week with a handful of gigs.

“When I first started, it was great to me – having a little cash on the side,” remembered Laperriere. “But it was more [about doing] it because I got to play the gigs than anything.” After moving out of his parents’ house “just to be rebellious,” he said with a grin, Laperriere was looking to supplement his income doing something he loves. Starting out, he and Tony played with a full band – bass, drums and two guitars – some acoustic gigs, some electric.
“We’d do maybe an electric show once a month, or every two months,” Laperriere said. “So it kind of slowed down a whole lot. Then, I just realized whether it was the economy, or whatever it was, playing with a full band [made it pretty hard to book gigs, unless you were well known]. So as for Tony and I, we played K.E. Cellars a couple of times, acoustic shows. We immediately realized that it’s a whole lot easier to get in there, set up, play for three hours, pack up, and then be gone in 20 minutes. So we decided to keep it going.”

After dinner at Wasabi in Tyler one night, Laperriere was talking with owner Jon Florendo, who offered the patio as a venue for Maurice to come play, in April of 2011, which they did. That led to more gigs around Tyler: the Chaveta at Jakes, Julians and many private events. They still play electric, full-band gigs from time to time, though the vast majority of performances are just Maurice and Tony, guitars in hand, exploring new avenues in all your favorite songs.

Laperriere said the support of his burgoening career has been incredible. “My parents have always supported me through everything. Friends of mine, Carlos and Mundo Villapudua from Villa Montez spoken to me about playing their new restaurant on Lake Tyler. There are even friends of my parents and my friends’ parents who are hustling for us, handing out business cards! People have really been amazing.”

The logical next step for Laperriere would be to get into the studio, it seems, and put some demos together. So, he is – spending a bit of time playing guitar and laying down vocals in the studio with his sister, who has a degree in musical theater and who Maurice said, “vocally just puts me to shame.”
Then comes the original music – something Laperriere said he has a tough time with, but what musician doesn’t? “As far as the musical aspect ‒ chord progressions, melodies and stuff like that, I can probably write 20 songs today that I’m satisfied with. But as far as lyrics, I have always struggled...” he said. “I’ll put lyrics down and then go back and change them ... then at the end of the day I have a page of lyrics and three quarters of them are scratched out ... I’m much more accepting of [my melodies] not being absolutely perfect; but my lyrics, I feel like they have to be perfect or I can’t live with it. So, I have a couple of originals that I wrote … but I have probably 70 chords, melodies and songs and things like that that have no lyrics that I will get frustrated with ... then stop for two months … then think ‘I can do this’, spend four hours and be back at square one.”

However, regardless of the time spend rehashing old songs or poring over lyrics or simply practicing the guitar, Lapierre quite evidently has the drive to continue this path. “I’m an extremely competitive person; I hate to lose more than I love to win. It’s just one of those things where if I don’t reach where I want to, as far as a competition or whatever, it stews and it festers in me ... I started, I mean with piano...,” Laperriere began. “I started in choir in eighth grade, and then there were just those moments … There were probably two or three times in choir ... where the choir just reached this perfect timbre and ... hits this note, and you just get these chills ... I want that again. That moment is the most electric feeling I’ve ever had in my life...

“We played a show at K.E. Cellars one time ... we were playing Stevie Ray Vaughn, and it’s not exactly the same feeling, but it was something really, really similar. We were playing and the crowd started getting into it … I think we were playing “Pride and Joy,” and that made a click for me ... I thought ‘this is something that, obviously to get paid is nice and you have to support yourself, that goes without saying ... My dad said something that always stuck with me: ‘what you have is worth what people want to pay for it.’ So if it came to the point where nobody ever wanted to pay me to play again, I think I would still get together with some people and just jam; just because it’s something that – especially when you have something like what Tony and I have – when you have a rapport with a group like that, you can play something, and it’s tight, and you know what you’re doing, and you know what your drummer’s doing and what your bass player’s doing, and where your breaks are ... it clicks.

“Everybody listens to the radio or sings in the shower or whatever, and if I didn’t have music, I very well might go insane. It’s mood-relative: it can change from rap to blues to classical to whatever your mood is. I feel like its the ultimate form of self expression … Some people like painting or drawing or whatever it is, but for me I feel like there’s nothing more personal than playing a melody line you made up or putting your own spin on a song. It’s something that I definitely – even if it doesn’t end up becoming a profession for me – its gonna be something thats gonna consume quite a few hours of my life.”