Origins and Musical Beginnings
Pepper grew up in a rural subdivision in Fairview Township, outside the small town of New Cumberland, Pennsylvania. His grandfathers (Lebo and Bender) were coal miners and farmers in Tower City, PA and his father, Fred Lebo, was a production mechanic for the American Can Company in Lemoyne, PA. His family attended West Shore Baptist Church in Camp Hill, PA, where his mother, Dottie Lebo, sang in the choir. Pepper began guitar lessons at the age of twelve. By high school, he had developed an interest in painting. He went on to earn a degree in Fine Art from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, also spending a semester abroad at Crewe-Alsager College in Cheshire, England. During and after college he was involved with several garage bands which mostly played covers by artists such as The Clash, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, The Smiths, U2, Tom Petty, The Grateful Dead and Creedence Clearwater Revival. His first original band, Strain (with Pepper as principal songwriter, vocalist and bassist, Duke Jeremiah on drums and John Fritchey on guitar), recorded a six-song demo, Shame, which was not released.
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“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“Then, bringing me the joy we feel when wee see a work by our favorite painter which differs from any other that we know, or if we are led before a painting of which we have until then only seen a pencil sketch, if a musical piece heard only on the piano appears before us clothed in the colors of the orchestra, my grandfather called me the [hawthorn] hedge at Tansonville, saying, “You who are so fond of hawthorns, look at this pink thorn, isn’t it lovely?””
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