{"id":16756,"date":"2019-07-09T05:30:33","date_gmt":"2019-07-09T09:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=16756"},"modified":"2019-05-01T12:18:35","modified_gmt":"2019-05-01T16:18:35","slug":"the-lee-boys-keeping-the-love-light-aflame-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/07\/09\/the-lee-boys-keeping-the-love-light-aflame-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lee Boys: Keeping the Love Light Aflame (Part Two)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cWe are really blessed and fortunate to have a vast array of styles within our music,\u201d Lee says. He suggests that if one listens to the group\u2019s music today, \u201cyou got some Led Zeppelin in there, some funk, some modern stuff, and then you got that real gospel drive. That all makes us unique, but we still keep it to the roots.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet even though Alvin Lee and his brothers listened to music outside the church tradition, they weren\u2019t connected to the wider music scene. Lee laughs heartily as he recalls receiving a royalty check not long after some of his songs started appearing on the group’s albums. He was shocked at the high dollar amount noted on the check, so he called his manager. \u201cYou mean to tell me this is the way I\u2019m gonna get paid?\u201d he asked. <\/p>\n

The manager told Lee to look at the check again, and note the name of the song for which it was paying royalties. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t look familiar,\u201d Lee replied, \u201cbut it does<\/i> say \u2018Alvin Lee.\u2019\u201d On his manager’s advice, he called the issuing company and found that the royalty check was for \u201cI\u2019d Love to Change the World,\u201d the 1971 hit by Ten Years After, written by that band\u2019s leader and guitarist, Alvin Lee.<\/p>\n

Another anecdote from an early Lee Boys concert further illustrates their initial lack of worldliness. \u201cWe were playing MerleFest,\u201d Lee recalls. \u201cIt was a big festival, and we were all still young guys, [just venturing] outside of the church. [Up to then] we had always played our music in the four walls.\u201d<\/p>\n

The band was playing its set to a receptive Wilkesboro, N.C. festival audience. \u201cWe were jamming with the Travelin\u2019 McCourys,\u201d Lee says. \u201cAnd the crowd was getting into it.\u201d Between songs, the band\u2019s manager approached Alvin Lee and told him, \u201cLet this guy get on stage with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Oh, man, I don\u2019t know this guy!\u2019 I don\u2019t let just anybody<\/i> come up,\u201d he recalls with a laugh. \u201cWe play gospel, and this was an older guy with a beard. I said, \u2018I do not know who this guy is\u2019!\u201d But Lee\u2019s nephews urged him to let the main join them. \u201cSo all of a sudden, this guy was sitting on stage with us. And the crowd \u2013 thousands of people \u2013 went wild!\u201d The man\u2019s name was Bob Weir.<\/p>\n

Connecting that story to present day, Live on the East Coast<\/i> features a mix of original Lee Boys compositions, traditional tunes arranged for the band, and classics from the secular world of rock, soul, blues and pop. One of those is a reading of Bobby \u201cBlue\u201d Bland\u2019s 1961 hit, \u201cTurn On Your Love Light.\u201d But the Lee boys\u2019 version of the oft-recorded classic bears a strong resemblance to the version found on the 1969 double LP Live\/Dead<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Lee confesses that he was unfamiliar with the Dead\u2019s version of the song. But it likely influenced him, albeit indirectly. Around 2002 or \u201803, The Lee Boys toured with Col. Bruce Hampton. \u201cThey did \u2018Love Light,\u2019 and Jimmy Herring had this little guitar lick in it,\u201d he says. Lee filtered that influence through his gospel approach, and unknowingly ended up with something that has a Grateful Dead feel to it.<\/p>\n

The Lee Boys found an audience with the jam band scene. \u201cWarren Haynes took us on the circuit when we were young,\u201d Lee says. \u201cHe always let us jam with him. And he took Roosevelt out with him, too,\u201d he says, referring to nephew and steel guitar sensation Roosevelt Collier.<\/p>\n

The band has changed over the years. Brother Glenn \u2013 founder and original leader of The Lee Boys \u2013 passed away in 2000, the same year that the family\u2019s patriarch died. \u201cFor sure we\u2019ve evolved,\u201d Alvin Lee says. \u201cThe original band consisted of three brothers and three nephews. And now we\u2019ve added another family member, Chris [Johnson, pedal steel], because Roosevelt is focusing on his solo career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee says that he and brother Keith (on lead vocals) are \u201clike the fathers to our three younger nephews. And we\u2019ve added the influences of theirs, so now we\u2019re able to surface some of the stuff we\u2019ve always been dreaming about, [combining] all of these genres with the sacred steel.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Lee is proud of Roosevelt Collier\u2019s crossover success \u2013 \u201cI think he\u2019s in playing in Africa somewhere now,\u201d he says \u2013 he prefers to stay with The Lee Boys\u2019 gospel-meets-secular spin on sacred steel music. I\u201dll tell you why I solely play with The Lee Boys,\u201d he says. \u201cI like to keep it just the way it is so people can enjoy this true essence. I get that feeling that I know I\u2019ll never get anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

The inspirational underpinning of the group\u2019s gospel roots remains; witness \u201cWalk With Me Lord\u201d and \u201cCome On Help Me Lift Him Up\u201d on the new album. But Lee insists that it\u2019s not necessary to subscribe to the Pentecostal church\u2019s beliefs to appreciate The Lee Boys\u2019 music.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s one of the reasons why we are able to play with so many different people,\u201d he says. \u201cBecause it\u2019s all about the music. Although it came from a spiritual element with us, we want to be able to play anywhere: bars, clubs, festivals, churches. Because we think the music is a universal language. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo many people could be healed and touched by music,\u201d he continues. \u201cNot necessarily the words, but by the music, what they\u2019re hearing. And that\u2019s<\/i> our message. If somebody can be touched through our music, then our job is done.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… \u201cWe are really blessed and fortunate to have a vast array of styles within our music,\u201d Lee says. He suggests that if one listens to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16760,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,35,41,49,60],"tags":[3852,3851],"class_list":["post-16756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-funk","category-gospel","category-interview","category-new-release","category-rb","tag-sacred-steel","tag-the-lee-boys","cat-31-id","cat-35-id","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-60-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16756"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16762,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16756\/revisions\/16762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}