The Lee Boys

When we first saw the Florida-based Lee Boys at FitzGerald’s American Music Festival last year, our initial impression was that they were gunning for the jam-band crowd, sounding like a religious North Mississippi Allstars with gratuitous attempts at hip-hop and rock. Hey, it worked for Robert Randolph, so it’s only natural some other non-country bands with steel-guitar players would follow his lead.

It’s also why the group’s 2005 release, Say Yes! (Arhoolie), was such a pleasant surprise: While it was clearly influenced by secular music, it didn’t have that blues-rock overkill we witnessed at FitzGerald’s. The Lees don’t sound entirely convincing jazzing up “If You’re Happy and You Know It” (yes, the old children’s song), but Alvin Cordy Jr.’s bass does a good job propelling Emanuel Roosevelt Collier’s pedal steel into the stratosphere. And while vocals always sound like an afterthought in most sacred-steel bands, serving as a momentary diversion between solos, vocalists Keith and Derrick Lee are up there in the mix holding their own without sounding superficial.

The Lees come from a long-standing tradition in Florida’s black churches, where steel guitar is featured prominently in the house band—and Say Yes! can get you on your feet with a mesmeric bass line, then hit you with a ballad that’ll have you on your knees. We can’t say which version of the Lee Boys you’ll get at Buddy Guy’s—the rootsier band from the album or the jam band from recent shows—but there’ll likely be plenty of heart and soul either way.

- Time Out Chicago (James Porter)

An icy wail pierces the air, high-pitched and quavering, enough to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Slowly, the pedal steel guitar slides down home with a bluesy flourish to a low rumble of bass chords and drumbeats from the band. A preacher breaks the lull with "Praise the Lord!" and "Can I get a witness?," the guitarist answering with his own electric, exalted riffs. The calls to testify come with impassioned fury, blaring through the speakers, as if the kingdom has come at last, while the pedal steel pleads feverishly in response. The tension rises as the rhythm revs like an anxious engine. Just when the people can take no more, the dam bursts, the pearly gates are flung open, and the music shakes the walls and brings the people to their feet, clapping and stomping and praising with the full power of the Holy Spirit.
Hallelujah -- it's another Sunday morning at the House of God, a national, black Pentecostal church with 20-some parishes spread throughout South Florida. This one's in Perrine, in south Miami-Dade County, and the Lee Boys are on the bandstand. The six-member "sacred steel" group (as the music's called) is made up of three Lee brothers -- Alvin on guitar, singers Keith and Derrick -- and their three nephews -- Alvin Cordy on bass, drummer Earl Walker, and Roosevelt Collier on pedal steel. Several of the Lee Boys have played Pompano Beach's popular House of God church, where resident steel whiz Darryl Blue holds court a short drive from the Deerfield Beach church where the great Sonny Treadway can be heard. But today's a special occasion: with several of its members spread throughout Florida, the band rarely performs together at its home church.

Instead, the group has been playing stages from France to Canada, taking its gospel-blues, high-octane celebration to the masses. This summer, as with the past three, it's gone on an extended Canadian tour, plowing through two weeks of gigs in and around Vancouver. Following that, the band returned to the Prince George Folk Festival in British Colombia for the second straight year. It's not a stretch to say the Lee Boys have more fans in western Canada than in South Florida.

"Yeah, we're definitely developing a following," Alvin Lee, also the band's manager, says by phone from Vancouver. "I mean, we had such an impression on the people here, they wanted us back again. And actually, in South Florida, we do have a good fan base. It's just that because of how our schedule is, we don't go back to the area a lot. That's what we're trying to push now -- we want to build a bigger following in Florida."

Formed in 2001 after the untimely passing of Glenn Lee, the fourth Lee brother and a musical prodigy considered one of the top young players in the national House of God hierarchy, the Lee Boys can all credit their virtuosic ability to the church's high musical standards. Music is an integral part of the celebration in these holy roller-style services, and it's all centered around the pedal steel guitar.

Since sacred steel was "discovered" in the mid-'90s by the outside world, players like Robert Randolph, who started out in a House of God church in Orange, New Jersey, have burst onto the national scene. The Lee Boys hope to taste a little bit of that success, enough to allow the band to make music its full-time gig. As it stands now, brothers Derrick and Keith are still pursuing outside careers, taking vacation time to go on tours, while the rest of the band pursues music exclusively.

"We're definitely pushing for everyone to do the band full-time," Alvin says. "But right now, we're just trying to set everything in order, and I'm trying to do it so we have a big record out and have the bookings and the following to support us."

The band has already moved in that direction, signing last year with a new booking agency, Skyline Music, that represents neo-roots acts like Solomon Burke, Victor Wooten, and Oteil and the Peacemakers. The association paid off with the Lee Boys opening for B.B. King and the Blind Boys of Alabama last June.

The band took another step last year when it signed with Arhoolie Records, the home of sacred steel artists like Calvin Cooke and the Campbell Brothers. From there, the group assembled in Gainesville to record its first album for the label, Say Yes!, released at the end of March. It's a well-produced set of exuberant, high-powered jams interspersed with a few slow burners -- a shining display of the Lee Boys' rock-solid, gospel blues sound.

"We wanted to make something that represented what we were actually doing," Alvin says. "The first album was OK, but that was almost three and a half years ago, and we more or less did that on our own. But with Arhoolie, we were able to go into a bigger studio -- it was a lot more professional -- and we did the whole recording in one day, because we already knew what we were going to do. And we had a good engineer that had a nice system, and he le - New Times (John Anderson)

The steel guitar, with its uniquely electric sliding tone, has been closely associated with country and western music for over a half a century. It was the Hawaiian music fad of the 1930s, however, that introduced most Americans to its sound.

Thousands of guitarists around the country heard the steel guitar sound on the radio and on 78-rpm records and said to themselves, “I’ve got to learn how to play that.”

Some of those players were Gospel musicians on the east coast who brought the instrument into their houses of worship to add to the “Hallelujah” chorus. One branch of African American churches, the “House of God” and its related “Church of the Living God” continues to utilize the steel guitar in its Gospel music. The music is called “Sacred Steel” and it is currently enjoying a revival in popularity thanks to several young bands that are taking the music out of the church and into music halls and festivals.

One such band is The Lee Boys from Florida, the hotbed state of sacred steel activity. They learned the music at the House of God Church in Perrine from their fathers and grandfathers and are now playing around the country.

The Lee Boys will be performing locally at The Orange Peel in Asheville on Saturday, February 25th; at Rubber Soul in Winston-Salem on Wednesday, March 1st; and at the Merle Watson Festival in Wilkesboro on Saturday, April 29th.

“We’re off this week,” said Alvin Lee of The Lee Boys in a telephone interview last week. “We’re spending some time in our home in Kissimmee, Florida. Next week we play the Orange Peel and then it’s off on another weeklong tour through Atlanta, Macon and South Carolina.”

Alvin is the co-founder and bandleader of The Lee Boys and is its charismatic lead guitar player. He is joined in the band by his singer brothers Keith and Derrick Lee. The band also includes cousins Roosevelt “Velt” Collier on 12-string pedal steel guitar, Earl Walker on drums, and Alvin Cordy on bass.

“In the early days of sacred steel, the music was gospel music that was influenced by the blues players of the day,” said Alvin Lee. “That remains true, as our music is influenced by electric players like Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton.”

Along with Robert Randolph and the Family Band, The Lee Boys are one of the primary sacred steel bands to take the music to a larger audience in the past few years. This past year they participated in several “jamband” tours including the prestigious Jam Cruise, a musical cruise ship tour where they performed with bassist Victor Wooten of the Flecktones. The concert featured a gospel tour de force encore based on the rhythm and chords of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” with altered lyrics, of course.

Despite the recent success of this new rock hybrid of sacred steel, the band continues to pay homage to its past and many of its songs are distinctly religious in nature.

“It always comes back to the church,” said Alvin Lee. “The steel guitar is the focal instrument in our church. We’ve got four or five groups going in our church at any one time. The older players teach the younger players just like they have since the early days of sacred steel. Willie Eason’s gone on, but he got it started back in the old days with his brother Troman Eason. Troman was really the one responsible for bringing the steel guitar into the church.”

Willie and Troman Eason were steel guitar players who brought the new musical instrument into their House of God Pentecostal Church in Jacksonville back in the 1930s. Troman had taken steel guitar lessons from a Hawaiian-style player in Philadelphia and then taught the instrument to his younger brother, who developed his own unique style on the instrument and brought it down south.

The Arhoolie record label has become a champion of the genre and has released several recordings by the Eason Brothers and others a few years ago including Sacred Steel, an album of vintage field recordings from Florida, and Sacred Steel Live!, an album of new material from 1998 and 1999 church gatherings.

The Lee Boys have two studio albums of their own including It Is No Secret and Steeling Home. Both albums feature The Lee Boys’ distinctive blend of the sacred and the secular—all wrapped around a bluesy electric steel sound that makes one think of Jimi Hendrix smiling down from Heaven.

“The inspiration and the feeling that comes along with our music is the reason that people feel good,” said Alvin Lee. “It is like the new music on the block and it’s just getting ready to explode!”

- The Mountain Times (Jeff Eason)

In Alvin Lee's church, the Holy Ghost determines the order of service.
Lee grew up playing guitar in the House of God in the south Florida town of Perrine. Music makes up a big part of the service. Any member of the congregation can get things going by singing a verse of their favorite hymn. The musicians punctuate the words of the preacher with melodic flourishes. The music helps the worshipers feel the Holy Ghost, who carries them to the blissful state called "shouting."
"It starts at about 11:30," Lee said. "And it can end at 2, or it can end at 5."

The scene is familiar to anyone who has visited a black Pentecostal church. But there's something a little bit different about the House of God, a Pentecostal denomination with congregations clustered in Miami, Philadelphia and New York. Usually an organ is the focus of the sound, but where Lee comes from a pedal steel guitar stands front and center.
Lee and some of his musical kin have a group called the Lee Boys, and they play an unusual genre of gospel music called sacred steel. It's not just the instrumentation that makes sacred steel stand out. It's also the audience it's found. The Lee Boys are a hit at folk festivals, jam-band cruises and even bars. (They play Macon's 550 Blues Saturday night.)

"We want to go to the world with our music," the 39-year-old Lee said in a phone interview from his home in Kissimmee, Fla. "We're not preachers. If we can reach one person, then it's worth while. ... We try to let people know where a local church is. See, that way a minister can take over."

Although sacred steel music is new to the national consciousness, it's been around a long time. In the '30s House of God churches began using Hawaiian-style lap steel guitars in their services. In the '70s a younger generation switched to the Nashville-style pedal steel guitar.
Sacred steel combines the passionate abandon of gospel singing with the acrobatic moaning and twanging of the slide guitar. It's a fresh sound, yet it has a lot in common with classic rock and the blues. In fact, when critics have made comparisons, the Allman Brothers Band is the name that comes up most often.

Sacred steel remained hidden behind church doors until Florida folklorist Robert Stone struck up a conversation with a music-store owner, who told him that black musicians were among his best customers for pedal-steel supplies. Unaware of any African-American pedal steel tradition, Stone investigated. With the help of a federal grant and Arhoolie Records, he released a compilation tape of Miami-area sacred steel artists in 1997.

Critics were lavish with their praises. "Deeply rooted and thrilling, this is music for the ages," wrote the Boston Globe. The secular music world began to take notice. New Jersey sacred steel artist Robert Randolph was invited to open for top-tier blues act the North Mississippi Allstars. That led to recording sessions with jam-band keyboard hero John Medeski and pop singer Rob Thomas, a tour with Eric Clapton and a major-label deal of his own.

Randolph may be at the forefront of the sacred steel explosion, but the Lee Boys aren't far behind. One of the featured pedal steel players on the original Arhoolie compilation was Lee's brother Glenn. It was Glenn's death in 2000 that convinced Alvin Lee to "break out of these four walls."

"I lost a big part of me," Alvin Lee said. "That's what inspired me to take our music outside."
Lee, who plays standard six-string guitar, recruited his nephew Roosevelt Collier to play the 12-string pedal steel. Younger brothers Keith Lee and Derrick Lee sing, nephew "Little Alvin" Cordy plays seven-string bass and nephew Earl Walker plays drums.
The Lee Boys stick to gospel music even when they play in bars.
"We believe the steel guitar is a heavenly voice," Alvin Lee said. "You feel stuff when you hear our music. We feel our music has been ordained for the world.

"There are still older people in the church who have opposed it going out. This music has been around 70, 80 years, but it's always been kept a secret. That's the way a lot of the older people think - it should stay in the church. But it can't be denied anymore."
- Macon Telegraph (Dan Maley)

March 28, 2009

The Lee Boys... Rosi Golan...

No one can accuse the Lee Boys of committing the cardinal sin of sloth. In the last year, the family band performed about 110 dates, 50 of them at roots, folk, jazz, blues, jam band and Christian festivals.

According to manager Barney Kilpatrick, the six-piece group expects to achieve even greater exposure this year; he says its goal is to get in front of 500,000 concertgoers between April and October. The feat may not be too hard to achieve, considering the Lee Boys have jammed at Mountain Stage, Bonnaroo, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Austin City Limits Festival, Cornerstone and dozens of other major summer entertainment destinations in the past.

The band's dexterity with multiple genres is its strongest point; it combines folk, soul, funk, blues, country and gospel into upbeat, steel guitar-led performances that can't help but inspire secular and sacred revelry. The three brothers—Alvin, Derrick and Keith—play with their three nephews—Roosevelt Collier, Alvin Cordy Jr. and Earl Walker—which adds a familial chemistry to their live sets.

"We're the Sunday morning band that wakes everybody up," guitarist Alvin says. "We're still a gospel-based band. That's one element we'll never lose. But we're like messengers, not preachers. We're not trying to teach religion. Spirituality happens because the music, the instruments, is spiritual."

It's that sort of music that landed the act on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" in December and has put it on the road, onstage and on record with acts like the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers Band and the Black Crowes ever since the band played its first show in 2002.

The Lee Boys have self-released a pair of albums and a DVD, plus a one-off album with Arhoolie Records for 2005's "Say Yes," but a permanent record and distribution deal is high on their list. Help may come this summer, as they plan to collaborate on a set with the bluegrass giant the Del McCoury Band for release later this year.

Kilpatrick, a Warner Bros. pop radio promotion vet, also plans to schedule performance arts concerts and educational programs at symphony and performing arts centers, a sphere in which some of his other clients, including the Vonn Trapp Children and the pianist/conductor Peter Nero, thrive.

"When I first saw them play, I felt like whoever discovered Muddy Waters or Howlin' Wolf," Kilpatrick says. "I just said, 'This is so raw and real, they could do anything.' "

Contact: Barney Kilpatrick, manager, barney@rattlesby.net

Rosi Golan may have just completed her debut album, but after performing for eight years, she's far from a newcomer to the music scene. "I'm a bit of a perfectionist," says the Israeli-born singer/songwriter, who decided to never release any of her early demos. "I didn't want to misrepresent what I wanted out there, so I chose to wait."

"The Drifter & the Gypsy," Golan's proper introduction, was released through iTunes Nov. 18 and is a collection of gentle, country-tinged pop songs that reflects the singer's patience. While a single has yet to be chosen, multiple songs off the album have already been featured on various TV shows, from the quiet "Lullaby" ("Private Practice") to the piano-driven "Come Around" ("The Ghost Whisperer").

Golan spent her childhood moving around Europe and learning to speak four languages before settling down in Los Angeles when she was 9. Her abilities as a songwriter eventually led her to New York, where she found a home in an "up-and-coming singer/songwriter scene." Golan has spent the last six years polishing her own tunes while penning numerous songs for other artists, including the 2007 single "Let Me Out" for the U.K. band Ben's Brother.

Recorded in five weeks, "Drifter" and its title are a tribute to Golan's father, a Romanian gypsy who moved around his entire life. "We weren't very close," Golan says, "but I wanted to honor him with what I did here."

Produced by Marshall Altman (Matt Nathanson, Marc Broussard), the album has a physical release slated for April 14. Meanwhile, Golan will support the record on the road this spring, kicking off a U.S. trek March 29 in San Diego. —Jason Lipshutz

Contact: David Margolis, manager, zendali1@aol.com

Catching Up With Underground Alumni

Latch Key Kid's "Good Times" features in the film "I Love You Man" and is the first song on the movie's soundtrack . . . Locksley licensed its song "She Does" to the remake of "Friday the 13th."s

- Billboard