Julie Lee

Artist Information

Biography

Julie Lee & The Baby-Daddies
Out March 6, 2012

Songwriter Joined by Kenny Vaughan, Alison Krauss, Tim O'Brien, Sarah Siskind on Seventh Album
 
It all starts with a song, but for Julie Lee’s seventh album out March 6, it actually started with babies - not her babies, but the offspring of some of Nashville’s best musicians. As a longtime respected singer/songwriter, and Nashville being Nashville, Lee’s occasional side job of babysitting was for the likes of Kenny Vaughan (award winning guitarist for Marty Stuart, Lucinda Williams and more) and Mike Bub (Del McCoury Band). They continually offered their services if she would get out and play again, and thus The Baby Daddies were born at a live show in 2010, inspiring her to get back into the studio last year.

On Julie Lee & The Baby-Daddies, Lee’s lauded and versatile mezzo-soprano inhabits songs inspired by all forms of Americana music, backed by the original Baby Daddies, as well as with special guests Alison Krauss, Tim O’Brien, Ron Block, and Sarah Siskind among others.

The writer, whose songs have been recorded by Krauss, Pam Tillis, Ron Block, Mark Erelli and more, has been a visual artist longer than she’s been a tunesmith. Those two lives have remained mostly separate until a mysterious scrap of paper she used in one of her pieces inspired the beginnings of a song.

“It’s been a long time coming, the marriage of these different sides of my life,” shares Lee. “I kept asking myself, ‘How do I get from all this babysitting and making art back to music?’ But as fate would have it...the babysitting brought about the incarnation of "The Baby-Daddies,” and the art had already begun to inspire some of the songs.”

That mysterious scrap of paper simply said, “Does the road wind uphill all the way?”  It eventually worked its way into her collage-art, but it also became the first track on the album. “I gather scraps and bits from a variety of sources, I couldn't remember where I got it and for years I believed it was an old hymn. Every time I saw it, I was frustrated, wanting to turn it into a song myself. Years passed and I discovered it was not a song - but the first line of a poem by Christina Rosetti called 'Uphill.' Written in 1885, the poem eerily expressed how I was feeling at the time, while touring for the Stillhouse Road CD and cutting thru mountain roads late at night alone. So I put it on my blackboard in my kitchen and in a matter of weeks I had put it to music."




Though Lee has toured extensively as a solo artist in Europe and in the States (also opening for artists from Over The Rhine to Krauss), had a publishing deal, a record deal, released six albums, and has made a humble living as a songwriter -- it can sometimes feel as if ...the road does wind uphill all the way.

Because of the lessons that come from such a journey, Julie Lee & The Baby-Daddies is quite a ride. With eight originals and two covers, each song is a snapshot of various landscapes within Americana, deftly painted by some of the best in the genre. There’s the vintage country of “Time Enough,” telling the story of a young girl anxious to experience everything in life – then the playful jazz influenced homage to sibling envy with Carly Simon’s “Older Sister.” And the intimate promise of  "Unto The Hills,” where Alison Krauss and Tim O'Brien join Lee on every mountain gospel refrain.

You hear what a truly talented singer and storyteller Lee is on "Moonlight Train,” with Jon Radford’s unchanging rhythm and the unwavering attitude of Mike Bub’s bass. Followed by the delta blue exhortation of  "Lowborn Men,” featuring Mike Witcher on Dobro and Jason Goforth on Harmonica -- then Lee sings a duet with the lesser known Baby-Daddy Tim Netsch on an old Tennessee Ernie Ford and Kay Star cover "I'll Never Be Free.”

 “We can get distracted along the way by trying to juggle so much. For me it’s finding a healthy balance between the music, art, community, and making a living ... but something, rather someone, always brings me back into focus.  There’s a reason that piece of art kept bugging me to turn it into a song, and the guys I babysat for ended up leading me to my next record. When a good idea keeps presenting itself, pay attention, someone is trying to tell you something. I am thankful for the unexpected twists and turns on the road.  'Cause you just never know how God is going to get you from point A to point B or where that steep incline is taking you.”
 
Publicity Contact - Kim Fowler / Two Dog Media
Kimfowler10@gmail.com/615.228.7177

Instrumentation

Julie Lee - Guitar, mandolin, voice, Tenor Banjo, Baritone and Banjo Ukulele

Discography

DISCOGRAPHY:
Stones / Hanbouge Records / 1998
Many Waters / 2000
Made From Scratch, / 2003
Stillhouse Road, Compadre Records, /2004
Take Me Out To Hear The Band, / 2007
Old Black Kettle Live / 2008
Will There Really Be A Morning , /2008
Julie Lee & The Baby Daddies, 3 /2012 (to be released!)

JULIE'S SONGWRITING :

"Jacob's Dream" - by Alison Krauss - A Hundred Miles Or More /The Collection 2007

"Away Down The River"- By Alison Krauss - A Hundred Miles Or More /The Collection 2007

"Beautiful Night"- by Pam Tillis - Just In Time For Christmas / 2006

"Stillhouse Road" - by Mark Newton Band - Hillbilly Hemingway/2006

"Undone"- By Mark Erelli - Hope & Other Casualties/ 2006

"Here in The Mountaintops To Roam" - by Dave Peterson & 1946 - Here In The Mountaintops To Roam / 2005

"Home" - Sarah Masen - The Dream Life Of Angels / 2001

Official Website

http://www.julielee.org

Links

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Last.fm
• MySpace

Audio

• Does The Road Wind Uphill All
  Listen  
• Older Sister
  Listen  
• Moonlight Train
  Listen  
• Hope's The Thing With Feathers Mp3
  Listen  
• Morning Mp3
  Listen  
• Track 1
  Listen  
• Track 3
  Listen  
• stillhouse road mp3
  Listen  
• soapbox mp3
  Listen  
• he's my man mp3
  Listen  
• How He Lied
  Listen  

Lyrics

• Does The Road Wind Uphill All The Way
• Moonlight Train
• Track 1 - Married Girl Blues (Take Me Out To Hear The Band)
• Track 3 - A Good Man Is Hard To Find
• Stillhouse Road
• He's My Man
• How He Lied

Video

julie-promo2.mov

Photo Gallery

Press

• World-class singer [+ Show ]
  

  If an artist can be judged by the company she keeps, Julie Lee gets high marks before the first note...If an artist can be judged by the company she keeps, Julie Lee gets high marks before the first note is heard on her new Compadre release. Guests on the record include Vince Gill, Alison Krauss, Rob Ickes, Dave Pomeroy and Tammy Rodgers. But this fine singer/songwriter needs no one to prop her up. As a songwriter, Lee paints vivid panoramas of Southern life (the title cut, "Soapbox," "Sojourner Truth"). As a vocalist, she's a powerhouse, owning a solid gold tremolo laced with attitude and blessed with range that she wields with style. Religious themes surface frequently and are most powerful on "He's My Man." With honest, artfully conceived songs and superb musicianship, a world-class singer has created a special piece of work.—RW

• Beauty in simplicity and spirituality [+ Show ]
  

  "JULIE LEE Lee likes to draw a connection between her two creative mediums: folk music and sculpture..."JULIE LEE Lee likes to draw a connection between her two creative mediums: folk music and sculptures rendered from scraps of metal and wood. Her striking new album, Stillhouse Road, takes age-old instruments and shapes them into something unique through a bell-toned voice, graceful melodies and lyrics that find beauty in simplicity and spirituality. But where Lee's visual art is earthy yet abstract, her songs are grounded in concrete images that linger long after the music stops reverberating. Her album features a guest list‹Alison Krauss, Vince Gill, Rodney Crowell‹that speaks to the level of support she already has attracted. For good reason, too: Stillhouse Road is the kind of album that people share with friends knowing they're letting them in on a rich secret.
  --Michael McCall

• Shades of bluegrass, folk, gospel and jazz [+ Show ]
  

  What's a little-known Nashville singer-songwriter doing with bigwigs such as Vince Gill and Alison K...What's a little-known Nashville singer-songwriter doing with bigwigs such as Vince Gill and Alison Krauss on her album? Well, she's singing with them, and she's singing in a voice that's absolutely beguiling and mesmerizing and rare.
  
  There are shades of bluegrass, folk, gospel and jazz here, but mostly Lee is a rose growing between the cracks that divide those forms.
  
  Gill's vocals on the title track are as good an illustration of his harmony prowess as anything he's done in years, and Krauss offers gorgeous harmonies on two ethereal ballads. Lee's voice is both emotionally powerful and fragile, and occasionally the acoustic-but-well-layered instrumentation gets in the way of her expression.
  
  At album's end, though, she is accompanied only by her own acoustic guitar as she nails the impossibly poignant Till the Cows Come Home, a song that could be a lover's pining for her departed mate or a mother's cry for a child that has gone away.
  
  Hearing Lee immediately calls to mind Joan Baez's early albums, or Nanci Griffith's crystalline voice circa Poet in My Window, or Iris DeMent's Infamous Angel. Yet for every applicable reference point, there is something altogether distinct about Stillhouse Road: It's a gentle little thing, a handmade Christmas card of an album.
  
  ‹ Peter Cooper, Staff Writer

• Lee shows a rare mastery [+ Show ]
  

  "There are many dualities in Julie Lee's life; her Northern upbringing and Southern transplanting; h..."There are many dualities in Julie Lee's life; her Northern upbringing and Southern transplanting; her formal visual arts background and practical sonic arts education; the folk/jazz roots of her musical influence; and her eventual bluegrass/blues/country branches.  The crossroads of Lee's varied life experiences are found in the words and music of Stillhouse Road, her fourth album overall, but first in a studio for a label.  As an assemblage sculptor, Lee understood the relationship between disparate and complementary elements and she translates that through her songwriting muse, knowing when to bring bluegrass to the fore ('Stillhouse Road'), when to amplify the swingy jazz ('Made From Scratch') or when to slide into blues mode ('Sojourner Truth').  With a voice that suggests Iris DeMent's passion and Alison Krauss' rafter-rattling power (Krauss guests here along with Vince Gill, Colin Linden and others), Lee shows a rare mastery over multiple genres along a single unique path."
  
  — Brian Baker / Harp

• Lee's vocals and lyrics [+ Show ]
  

  The term "singer-songwriter" has become almost an epithet to some in the last decade, synonymous wit...The term "singer-songwriter" has become almost an epithet to some in the last decade, synonymous with interminably introspective "what I'm feeling now" lyrics, backed by a monotonous solo guitar strum.
  Julie Lee, on the other hand, turns out to be another example of an encouraging trend of artists who can not only write intelligently and sing convincingly, but know how to arrange acoustic threads from country, bluegrass, folk and blues into a satisfyingly complete package as well.
  Lee's vocals and lyrics - both of which range from haunting and peaceful to quirky and sharp - will inevitably invite a lot of comparisons, but two that come to mind are Laurie Lewis and Gillian Welch.
  Like Lewis, Lee's musical thoughts can be graceful and swirling, as on "Many Waters" and "Beautiful Night." And, aside from the fact that they've both written songs referencing stillhouses, i.e. Welch's "Tear My Stillhouse Down," Lee hones a dark, Welch-like edge on cuts like "James" and "Till The Cows Come Home."
  Consistent from start to end, this disc will not wear out your "skip" button.
  - John Lupton

Setlist

Moonlight Train
Uphill
How He Lied
Pine & Sigh
Time Enough
Older Sister
Married Girl Blues
He's My Man
Hopes the Thing With Feathers
Jacob's Dream
Away Down The River

Basic Requirements

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