Bruce Bowers

He was born on January 18, 1951 in San Antonio, Texas and worked as a professional musician, composer and engineer for 45 years. Bruce graduated from Seguin High School in 1969 after which he attended San Antonio College and the University of Texas in Austin, where he studied art and music. His first instrument was guitar, followed by lute, flute, and fiddle. He moved to California in 1974 where he lived for 17 years, performing in a multitude of bands spanning many genres. During that time he was signed to Narada Records with two different groups: Ancient Future and David Arkenstone. This is where he met his future wife Hope McLeod, an accomplished singer-songwriter, and also became her producer. In California T Bruce worked briefly as an electronics engineer and helped develop the Sequential Circuits Pro FX signal processing system. He used this system on his violin and over the years developed other systems that could make his instrument sound like a huge string section, a searing rock and roll animal, or a pastoral cloud. Bruce was a founding member of Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua’s Blue Canvas Orchestra. He dazzled audiences with his wild fiddling since the group’s inception in 1986. Prior to that, starting in 1976, he participated in several musical productions leading up to the founding of the tent theater. He performed with BCO every summer and toured the region off-season as well, sometimes as Musical Director and/or Bandleader. Also, from 1994-2011 he worked as Production Manager and Sound Engineer for Tent Show Radio, a national radio show featuring recordings from the summer season. Bruce was in more bands and ensembles than anyone could count, including: Queen Ida, Ancient Future, Air Craft, Succotash, Great Wizard, Piper’s Crow, 6 around One, Barefoot Wonder, Ronny Cox, and his all time favorite, Yazmin & Beat Zero, led by his daughter. T Bruce and his wife, Hope, ran a recording and video production studio called Hungry Hill, where Bruce engineered and produced dozens of CDs and film projects. He had a perfectionist’s ear and was passionate about elevating any musical project he was involved in. He also scored movies and video games, was a volunteer firefighter, a scuba diver, a ski rescue patroller, a bike racer, a father, and a husband.