When 32-year-old Juan "Zeek" Leonard was working DoorDash and Uber Eats, he noticed a piano sitting inside a small Chinese restaurant in Newark, Delaware.
While waiting to pick up food, Zeek asked the owner if he could play it. She said yes and told him it was her daughter's piano, which had been sitting there for years. It was forgotten. That simple moment changed everything.
Zeek began recording the music on his phone and posting it on TikTok. Ever since then, he has kept coming back to New Number One Chinese Restaurant.
The videos reached millions of people around the world. In many of them, the owner can be seen working in the background. One day, she asked Zeek to bring in speakers. On Thanksgiving 2025, he invited other musicians to join him, and they held a jam session with about 30 to 40 musicians, according to CBS Philadelphia.
@juanzeek THANKFUL ❤️ I’m thankful for everyone who showed up and showed out this past Monday at our open jam session! Many more to come 🙏🏾 Currently editing to post the full stream on YouTube! If anyone that attend have any pics and/or videos of the event, please send them my way! #community #music #chinese #thanksgiving ♬ original sound - ZEEK
Growing up in a trailer park in Frankford, Delaware, Zeek said the area had "little to no resources involving the arts." When he was 6 years old, his mother, who played piano in church, placed a piano in front of him.
Zeek got into music production at 15 years old through a mutual friend's brother, according to a 2021 interview with VoyageLA. Though he didn't have the expensive music production software or equipment, he did what he could and learned on a simple program called FL Studio.
"I want to be able to show people from my hometown, my home state, that it's possible to do pretty much whatever you want to do," Zeek said.
There were times Zeek spent money on travel for underpaid gigs and produced tracks for artists who didn't pay or even give him credit. But he still persisted.
When he was a teenager, he said other local musicians and producers made fun of him and said he wasn't a "real producer."
Today, Zeek has a band called JookBox," along with Jayson Miller on bass and Ty Relly Carroll on drums. People come from all over to hear the music while enjoying great Chinese food.
He has released songs on Spotify such as "Dim Sum Dash" and "Kung Pao Step." Just the names alone show how much the Chinese restaurant has influenced him.
This story is a powerful example that the inspiration to chase a dream can come from the most unlikely places. A forgotten piano was just the reminder Zeek needed to keep going.
