Take a visit to Franklin Park Arts Center, and you might meet Les Thompson, the technical director, working in the soundbooth or setting up the stage. Ask him to tell you a story about his past, and you will hear the tale of a multi-talented artist who has lived through decades of music, art, and history.
Thompson’s journey into the music industry began around 1965, when he met guitarist Jeff Hanna at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, California. The music shop, which allowed anyone to simply pick up an instrument and play it, was a hotspot for local musicians and a place Thompson, who was in high school at the time, visited often. About a month after meeting Hanna, Thompson asked him if he would be interested in starting a band, and Hanna agreed. Thompson explained, “I named the group the Dirt Band. He [Hanna] was still in high school too, and he was in science class. His science teacher said, ‘We gotta get right down to the nitty gritty with this.’…He came back after school to the guitar shop and said, ‘Hey, what do you think of putting nitty gritty in front of Dirt Band?’” Thus, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was born.
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, which started out as six members, began producing songs. Their first single, “Buy For Me the Rain,” reached the Top 45 in the pop charts. As they grew, the band made appearances in movies like “Paint Your Wagon” and “For Singles Only,” and eventually created a triple album, an album released with three vinyl records, called “Will the Circle be Unbroken,” which earned two Grammy nominations.
During his time as a core member in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Thompson also began writing for television programs. In addition to working as a part-time writer for “The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour” show and the “Smothers Brothers Show,” he created an hour-long pilot episode titled “Santiago’s America” for ABC’s Afterschool Specials series. The show was centered around the titular character of Santiago, an 11-year-old Puerto Rican boy who befriends a taxi driver who takes him to various museums and historical sites around New York City. “The premise of the show was an American history lesson for young people…from city to city,” Thompson explained. In an unfortunate turn of events, the show failed to progress after the first episode due to issues with the cast and budget. “I would still be a television writer today, probably, if I continued doing it,” Thompson noted.
After Thompson left the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in 1976 due to creative differences, he shifted his focus to commercials. He formed a band made up of four other members for the sole purpose of writing jingles for companies like Safeway and Taco Bell, ultimately making around 300 commercials in the five years he was in the business. Eventually, he moved to Virginia to marry his wife and stopped playing music. After dabbling in sound engineering, he shifted careers once more and opened Designer Goldsmiths in Leesburg, Virginia, where he pursued his hobby of making jewelry, which he had been doing since high school. In 2008, after he was diagnosed with cancer, he handed off the business to a goldsmith friend, who has kept it running ever since.
After he was well enough to work again, Thompson took the position of technical director at Franklin Park Arts Center in Purcellville. His work as a tech director has allowed him to get back to working with musicians, taking him back to his roots as a creative. Four years ago, John McEuen, another former member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, called him, asking if he was interested in putting an old-style band together. Thompson agreed, excited to go back into music, but warned McEuen that he had not been playing much music over the past few years. “But I’ll tell you, it’s not like riding a bicycle. If you stop playing music and you lose all that finger muscle memory it is a chore to start over. You have to learn all that all over again,” he explained.
Despite that, Thompson has been enjoying his time in his new band called John McEuen and the Circle Band, along with his job as technical director at Franklin Park. Kellie Goossens, the programming specialist and volunteer coordinator at Franklin Park Arts Center, said of Thompson, “He is a master ‘sound’ wizard and knows exactly what to do to produce the most glorious sounds filling the theater.” Thompson is currently touring with John McEuen and the Circle Band until the end of May, and in turn is continuing his lifelong love for music.