When Gino Scarpino, the Bellingham, WA born and now Seattle based singer/songwriter found himself without a band or a best friend, he took what few practical skills he could muster and got a job. He left on his first tour not as an artist but as an assistant audio engineer. As one of 65 members of a Broadway touring company, Gino hid in the shadows of back stage hallways and lost himself in blistering tour schedules as he tried to forget what had almost been. Whiskey soaked chorus girls and dank basement dressing rooms. Health nut “A” listers and firetrap middle of nowhere motels. Crack of dawn bus calls, bleakly florescent hallways lined with indistinguishable doors and abusive night managers. Traveling LIKE a rock star not AS a rock star. It wasn't until he got to New York that he felt different. With more people on his block than in his hometown, the words started to change. The work was harder and more rewarding. Bigger budget and higher risk. It was a mash of commercial midtown feel good and one-man SoHo masterworks. And then the music changed. The art, sweat, sex and blood of six years spent working on other people’s sound redefined his own. It is with this new confidence of experience and humility of candor that More Than Lester was born. From the spaghetti western basso nova of “Where Have You Been” to the noir jazz pet sounds of “The Lower Education” More Than Lester’s debut recording features a depth of style rarely seen in a first effort. Meticulously produced, recorded, mixed and multi-instrumentalized by indie legend and god father of alternative pop Jon Auer (The Posies, Big Star), the constructivist song forms are pulled straight from the architecture of an America blurring by the window of a tour bus. Complete with love, sex, loneliness and a healthy dose of perspective, “The Great Equalizer” is an extended run relational road show, the flat tire you're glad you got because you'd have never seen that desert sunset otherwise and the chill neighborhood bar that none of the tourists know about.