Bryan Lee
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Bryan Lee

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Music

The best kept secret in music

Press


"JazzTimes"

New Orleans bluesman Bryan Lee, a longtime fixture on Bourbon Street, where he can be heard five nights a week, indulges in a pyrotechnic guitar summit on Live At The Old Absinthe House Bar... Friday Night. - Bill Milkowski


"Blues Access"

Bryan Lee has done the impossible. His music doesn't have a thing to do with New Orleans, and yet, until recently, he had one of the city's steadiest gigs: four sets a night, five nights a week... - Dave Ranney


"Toronto Star"

Blind Lee should be in anyone's Top 10 belting white bluesman and this second CD from a legendary session at the New Orleans mecca is an electrifying, raucous performance of shuffles and burners. - Geoff Chapman


"Offbeat"

Bryan Lee has been playing the blues in Chicago since the early '60s and in the Quarter since Edwin Edwards was everyone's favourite politician, so he's got a lot of respect coming to him... - Robert Fontenot


"Backyard Blues"

The king of New Orleans' Bourbon Street, Lee wails in tones of woman inspired desperation set to the beat of Lousiana's hottest guitar...His 9 self-written cuts (Crawfish Lady) range the gamut from funk and blues to R&B, including his outrageous "Kiss My Ass For A Change" and the party classic "Noize With The Boyz". It's a touch of Bourbon St experience and you're gonna like it. Give him the beads and he'll show you the goods. - M.G.


"The Journal-Pioneer"

At times, I'm just not sure whether his fingers are doing the playing or if his soul has taken over. At other times, he creates a tremendous party atmospherefor his audience from which it is literally difficult to come down... - Raymond Arsenault


"The Gazette"

Give New Orleans guitarist Bryan Lee 30 minutes and he just might convince you that blues music holds the key to world peace... - Bernard Perusse


"The Gazette"

Putting New Orleans guitarist and singer Bryan Lee together with producer-guitarist Duke Robillard and Robillard's tight, jumping band, was an inspired idea. With backing from one of today's best rhythm and saxophone sections, Lee has done the best album of his career (Six String Therapy). - Mike Regenstreif


"Living Blues"

This could be the best CD Bryan Lee has offered, better than all seven of his previous outings on the Canadian Justin Time label... Bryan Lee never forces anything; it simply sounds like he's having the time of his life on Six String Therapy, and with the gang he has in tow, he's sounding better than ever. - Craig Ruskey


Discography

Bryan Lee's Greatest Hits - 2003
Six String Therapy - 2002
Crawfish Lady - 2000
Live At The Old Absinthe House Bar... Saturday Night - 1998
Live At The Old Absinthe House Bar... Friday Night - 1997
Heat Seeking Missile - 1995
Braille Blues Daddy - 1994
Memphis Bound - 1993
The Blues Is - 1991

Photos

Feeling a bit camera shy

Bio

New Orleans blues veteran Bryan Lee unleashes his own fiery brand of bluespower on Crawfish Lady, his seventh release for the Montreal-based Justin Time label. A typically gritty gumbo of infectious Chicago and Texas shuffles, Crescent City funk, Memphis styled soul and raucous blues rockers, it features the gravelly-voiced guitar slinger in particularly fine form, just lettin’ the good times roll. As writer Brett J. Bonner states in his liner notes: "One listen to Bryan Lee and you’ll be wondering where this man has been hiding himself."
A player and singer of fierce conviction and deep soul, Lee has been New Orleans’ best kept secret for the past two decades. And on Crawfish Lady, his first studio recording since 1995’s acclaimed Heat Seeking Missile, he rips with ferocious abandon. Raw rockers like Leon Russell’s "Palace of the King," which he dedicates to the late, great bluesman Freddie King, are platforms for his searing six-string work. Bryan also flaunts his stinging world-class chops on his slinky, minor key lament "Louisiana Woman," the greasy organ-driven funk of "Noize With The Boyz," the slow blues of "Winehead Woman" and the Meters-esque funk of the title cut. Other highlights include the Professor Longhair flavored mambo "Something’s Wrong," the jazz-blues instrumental "Chitlin’s," Lee’s answer to jazz guitar great Kenny Burrell’s "Chitlins Con Carne," and the humorous jive-talking closer, "Kiss My Ass For A Change." Accompanied by Andre´ Maritato on bass, Sammy Neal on drums, George Rossy on piano, longtime bandmember Marc Adams on organ, Ward Smith and Jody Golick on tenor sax and Barney Floyd on trumpet, Lee reaches some scintillating heights on Crawfish Lady. As he says, "I like this record. I think it’s the best thing I have ever done. If the good Lord called me now I could go because I have proved to everybody what I am made of."
Born on March 16, 1943 in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, Bryan Lee completely lost his eyesight by the age of eight. His avid interest in early rock and blues was fostered through the ‘50s by late night listening sessions via the Nashville-based radio station WLAC AM, where he first encountered the sounds of Elmore James, Albert King and Albert Collins. By his late teens, Bryan was playing rhythm guitar in a regional band called The Glaciers that covered Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Chuck Berry material. Through the ’60s, Bryan’s interest turned to Chicago blues and he soon found himself immersed on that scene, opening for some of his boyhood heroes.
In January of 1982, in the midst of a particularly cold Wisconsin winter, Lee headed south to New Orleans, eventually landing a steady gig at the Old Absinthe House in the heart of the French Quarter. He debuted on the Justin Time label in 1991 with The Blues Is...
After eight top-notch recordings in the last ten years and more than two decades of thrilled audiences in North America and Europe, Bryan was ready to communicate the sum of all experience and impressions he accumulated. Six String Therapy (released September 24 2002), is the result. This superb collection, thoughtfully selected (and written, as is the case for two tracks), hauntingly displays Bryan’s charmingly distinct style.

One key ingredient in the final blues recipe of Six String Therapy is producer Duke Robillard, noted fellow bluesman. Adds Duke, “When Bryan called me about producing this session, he knew I shared his love for these early blues and R&B styles and that I often had a group who played with the authority he needed to make his “dream” album. Of course I jumped at the chance, and the results are in your hands.”