Whether she was singing rock ’n’ roll or gospel, Piper Leigh wowed her audiences

Some people knew the rock ’n’ roll side of musician Piper Leigh; some people knew her more religious side, including her gospel music.

But everyone who knew her in any way came away knowing Leigh’s easy smile and welcoming personality, which “was like a magnet,” said Ben Russell, the bass player in Piper Leigh and the Smokin’ Section.

“Everywhere she went, people just gravitated toward her,” he said. “I’ve been told at least 1,000 times the person I was talking to was her best friend.”

Friends and family said that was true up until her death April 30 from melanoma that had metastasized.

“She just looked it straight in the face and didn’t bat an eye,” Russell said. “It was really something to see.”

Leigh, 47, was a paralegal in her hometown of Arkansas City but had lived in Wichita for a time and played music here and around the region for years.

Jim Sanders, another bandmate, remembers one of Leigh’s first big shows in Topeka, at the Celtic Fox near the state Capitol.

It was jammed with a who’s who of people in the audience, and it was so loud and raucous, Sanders said, “I remember thinking, they’re not even going to know she’s started playing.”

He started pushing her fader up, then the guitar volume and was about to boost her vocals when “she fired into whatever song it was.”

“She was powerful,” Sanders said. People were “literally rotating their heads to see what that sound was. The whole place quieted down. I knew right then, this is going to be fun.”

At one with her mic

Sanders said a lot of singers are mic shy and tend to stand back from a microphone.

Leigh, however, was one with her mic.

“I mean, her lips are on that microphone,” Sanders said.

Wichita musician Brian Rader remembers seeing Leigh perform for the first time and being struck by “what a showwoman” she was.

“She did some Janis Joplin covers, and you could almost close your eyes and go, oh, my god, is that Janis Joplin singing?”

Leigh also wasn’t shy about trying new songs with her band on the fly.

Rader said he was lucky enough to get asked to play with Leigh’s band a few times, and he made the mistake of asking her about practicing.

“She goes, “We don’t practice,’ ” he said.

“They were so laid back all the time, but they were tight.”

It didn’t necessarily feel laid back to Sanders, who would have preferred to know the songs ahead of time.

He only recently learned why Leigh wouldn’t give him a heads up.

“Well, I didn’t want you to play what was on the record,” she told him. “I wanted you to play what you’d play.”

“It was kind of sweet she told me that,” Sanders said.

Former Cowley College music appreciation professor Tim Durham taught Leigh guitar when she was in her 20s, and he said she was determined.

“She just wanted to be able to play more difficult things and more interesting things,” he said.

“We talked a lot about what makes a good song and so on. . . . What makes a song last?”

The two became close friends and would perform together.

Durham called Leigh “a one-of-a-kind character” who liked to have fun, and people could sense it.

“It led other people to relax and have fun, too.”

Sanders said Leigh was the boss of the band, though.

“You had to mold to her.”

That was all right, he said.

“Terrible bands are the ones nobody’s in charge.”

‘A roller coaster of a life’

Leigh had two children from her first marriage, Jess Bowling, 20, and Jack Bowling, 17, and she encouraged both to be in sports.

Jess Bowling, however, decided he was better suited to follow his mother into music, and he said she opened that world to him.

“She tried to be at everything, and she was very supportive,” he said. “I appreciated that she welcomed me into her craft in that way. It was very special getting to share those kinds of things with her.”

Leigh asked her son to bring some guitars to Presbyterian Manor in Arkansas City where she was in hospice so they could play in the chapel as a thank you to staff. He said they didn’t get the chance, though.

Bowling said he remembers when his mother told him in 2020 that she had cancer. He said he expected it to be one more thing she’d overcome in a life full of challenges.

“We had a roller coaster of a life,” Bowling said. “I expected it to be a very small thing in her life story.”

Near the end, Leigh talked with her pastor, who asked her if there was one thing she might want to tell everyone before she passed.

“Just tell them that it’s all real. Heaven. Jesus. Everything. It’s all real,” Bowling said she replied.

“She tried for years to preach the gospel with her friends and family,” he said.

Leigh and a gospel group she had in high school had a recording deal in Nashville, but eventually she turned her focus more to rock, folk and bluegrass. She returned to gospel after she became ill.

Bowling said his mother turned to her faith in difficult times in particular, like when she struggled after her father died.

“Jesus brought her back,” Bowling said.

In turn, he said his mother gave others so much, even in her illness.

“She was always still the same fun-loving woman. She was a light to everyone.”

A memorial will be held at 2 p.m. on May 8 at Cowley College’s Brown Center.

This story was originally published May 5, 2026 at 2:39 PM.