Lee is in no hurry to say what he has to say. His unwinding delivery hangs and pulls, nearly falling off the back of a wagon that groans with sweet distortion, within smelling distance of the Mississippi. A storm threatens in the hills. The singer leans into a worried guitar. He’s got kerosene on his hands.
He's has been referred to in print as the Lou Reed of the bayou, but when asked to describe his music, he's likely to say something about an improbable meeting between Leonard Cohen and Jimmy Reed in the Brill Building commissary. You can hear some of that old school craft combined with stormy poetic imagery. Slow curing lamentations, ripe with mud and salt.
A seasoned songwriter and painter, he remembers hearing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" as a top ten hit on his big sister's transistor radio. Many artists of all stripes do their best work when they're full grown. It was 2009 when Lee released his debut solo album, Thief and Rescue, following two critically acclaimed records with former band, The Barbers. The album was produced and recorded by Brian Beattie (Bill Callahan, Okkervil River, Daniel Johnston) and featured a duet appearance by Okkervil's Will Sheff. It garnered feature stories in the Austin American-Statesman, the Austin Chronicle, and on KUT radio. His song, "All Night Long" was recently recorded by beloved Austin band, The Resentments.
This summer, Lee and Brian return to the studio to begin work on a new batch of songs.
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