10247 - PHIL LEE - SOME GOTTA LOSE... (2015)
PHIL LEE
''SOME GOTTA LOSE...''
AUGUST 1 2015
43:36
1 Ain't No Love 04:34
2 Beautiful Bubble 05:30
3 Don't Tell Me Now 05:04
4 If Frogs Had Wings 04:06
5 Kiss of Fire 02:54
6 Lil' Liza Jane 03:26
7 No Taking It Back 03:38
8 I Pray It Never Comes 04:34
9 This One 04:43
10 Wake Up Crying 04:22
11 What Can I Do for You 00:38
**********
ABOUT THE ALBUM
flyinshoe.ning.com
The new CD "Some gotta lose.." finds "The Mighty King Of Love" in a reflective & pensive mood.
This from his nibs as to why.
"This is where I go on about how great we all are and how darn lucky you are you bought this record and why it sounds like this and why these are the songs.
I spent 2013-14 touring and taking the time to visit some of the old haunts, the Hollywood places where I’d hang out or play, the New York dives that aren’t that anymore but high end coffee shops where the price of a cup and a pastry is equal to the rent I was paying in 1973. The graves of dead ex-girlfriends. The White Horse Tavern. The apartment on El Centro. Barney’s. The Troub. Where this was. Where that was. Where we met. Where we said goodbye.
A couple of times I had to stop the car and pull it together. It was too much. Sadness and nostalgia, just more debilitating. Some horribly wonderful yearning for a thing that was gone. Gone and never coming back. The heart of it though, it was there, a wisp of a thing I wanted desperately to hold in my hand but It was like trying to hold smoke.
Turns out the Portuguese have a word for this feeling (of course they would): saudade. Saudade was once described as “the love that remains” after someone is gone. Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought excitement, pleasure,well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. It can be described as an emptiness, like someone or something that should be there in a particular moment is missing, and the individual feels this absence. It brings sad and happy feelings all together, sadness for missing and happiness for having experienced the feeling.
We made this record in a big house in upstate NY, quick and live with few overdubs and no edits. Just like in the old days. If you’re one for noticing this kind of thing, you’ll notice some songs have extra measures when we couldn't decide by telepathic communication who should play a solo or just hang out, a few numbers where we vamp on the end for what seems like forever because either it was getting good to us or I was thinking “am I going to have to buy all these people dinner?” or I was missing my dog, who knows. And yes, There are places you can hear actual bonafide mistakes! There was some chatter about fixing this stuff but in the end we decided to leave it like it was, just like we left it the day we walked out of the studio, to go back on the road... And I don’t mind saying, I love this record. I hope you do too"..
**********
OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY
Rick Allen
Before he settled in to becoming one of the best songwriters in captivity Phil Lee spent a couple of decades playing drums, driving trucks, dumping motorcycles, hauling equipment, stealing hearts, eluding the authorities and raising Cain.
By the time most artists get to their third or fourth album they are down to the material that didn’t make the cut for the first two. It is no mean feat to make four albums that stand on their own each one as good as the last yet also better in some way. It’s a pretty mighty achievement. Somehow, Phil Lee, knife-thrower, raconteur, rapscallion and bon vivant and the pride of Durham, North Carolina, has pulled it off.
The Fall and Further Decline of the Mighty King of Love is all the more impressive when you realize there have also been side projects including touring, recording a DVD Phil Lee Live! At the Purple Onion with L.A. Johnson the head of Neil Young’s Shakey Pictures production company, touring, contributing songs to and making his silver screen debut in The One Who Loves You and an ultra-secret project with a collaborator-to-be-named-later, word has it he’s even working on reinventing the Tijuana Bible.
All this while keeping true to his unique and singular mission; to write songs that try to make sense out of this world, open some eyes, call out some fools and ring out some hard truths. Yet, admirable as such pursuits may be he’s simply being true to who he is. Phil Lee’s music will make you think and laugh and maybe shed a tear or two but it also provides hours of playtime fun because all of those things are part of the package. He couldn’t do it any other way.
Phil is a hipster madman Huck Finn meets Jack Kerouac. If he were a character in “On The Road” he’d be the guy in the back seat telling Sal and Dean which billboards the Highway Patrol is lurking behind, which diners have the prettiest waitresses, where to find the best pie a la mode in any given two mile stretch of Route 66 and where you can stop and get your hat blocked in an emergency 24 hours a day, no appointment necessary. Or, more likely, he’d be the guy they were barreling down the road to meet for hot coffee and enlightenment.
Ask his friend, crony and enabler Richard Bennett. Richard is one of the world’s finest guitar players and producers and he’s worn both hats for all of Phil’s records. He’s been a believer from the start. This is his take on the Mighty King of Love’s mysterious allure: “Phil and I often go for breakfast or lunch together where he’ll make a big show of picking up the check only to arrive at the register to discover he’s left his wallet home. Sometimes you’ll be lured to cash only joint and he’ll just have a credit card. The guy can put away more food than anyone I know and remain skinny as a rail. Believe me, there are plenty more reasons to dislike him. Still, Phil Lee’s the sanest person in my life… which doesn’t say much for either of us.” And nobody paid him to say that either.
Anyone looking for a heaping helping of sanity wrapped couldn’t do much better than good sized portion of Phil Lee music.
**********
BIOGRAPHY/AMG
Philip Van Vleck
Phil Lee grew up in Durham, North Carolina, in the shadow of tobacco warehouses and Duke University. A musician and songwriter from his teens, Lee's first professional gig came in the 1960s, playing drums for Homer Briarhopper and the Daybreak Gang on a morning television show in Raleigh, N.C. (right before the Farm News). Lee wandered off to New York City in 1971, where he eventually found work behind the drums for the band Amazing Grace, an outfit that included Beverly D'Angelo, Rob Stoner and Hank DeVito. Lee moved to Los Angeles around 1974, where he did some movie soundtrack work with Jack Nitzsche and did some truck driving for Neil Young. He was back in North Carolina in the mid-'80s, writing songs and pushing an 18-wheeler here and there to make ends meet. After a brief stint with The Flying Burrito Brothers in 1993, Lee moved to Nashville and landed a publishing deal, which didn't last long. Truck driving jobs were easy to find in Nashville, however, and Lee was also beginning to work with producer Richard Bennett on the honky tonk country music project that would eventually become his first solo album, The Mighty King of Love, released by Shanachie Records in January, 2000. Lee's music is the distillation of about 30 years' worth of playing in juke joints and bars from one end of the country to the other. His songwriting is uncommonly witty and as direct as a kick in the butt. The years he has spent sitting at the back of the bandstand, behind the drums, have given him plenty of time to think about what he'd do if he ever got to the front of the stage. Now that he's there, he's not wasting anyone's time with lame material.
**********
WEBSITE
**********
TO THE TOP
**********
''SOME GOTTA LOSE...''
AUGUST 1 2015
43:36
1 Ain't No Love 04:34
2 Beautiful Bubble 05:30
3 Don't Tell Me Now 05:04
4 If Frogs Had Wings 04:06
5 Kiss of Fire 02:54
6 Lil' Liza Jane 03:26
7 No Taking It Back 03:38
8 I Pray It Never Comes 04:34
9 This One 04:43
10 Wake Up Crying 04:22
11 What Can I Do for You 00:38
**********
ABOUT THE ALBUM
flyinshoe.ning.com
The new CD "Some gotta lose.." finds "The Mighty King Of Love" in a reflective & pensive mood.
This from his nibs as to why.
"This is where I go on about how great we all are and how darn lucky you are you bought this record and why it sounds like this and why these are the songs.
I spent 2013-14 touring and taking the time to visit some of the old haunts, the Hollywood places where I’d hang out or play, the New York dives that aren’t that anymore but high end coffee shops where the price of a cup and a pastry is equal to the rent I was paying in 1973. The graves of dead ex-girlfriends. The White Horse Tavern. The apartment on El Centro. Barney’s. The Troub. Where this was. Where that was. Where we met. Where we said goodbye.
A couple of times I had to stop the car and pull it together. It was too much. Sadness and nostalgia, just more debilitating. Some horribly wonderful yearning for a thing that was gone. Gone and never coming back. The heart of it though, it was there, a wisp of a thing I wanted desperately to hold in my hand but It was like trying to hold smoke.
Turns out the Portuguese have a word for this feeling (of course they would): saudade. Saudade was once described as “the love that remains” after someone is gone. Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought excitement, pleasure,well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. It can be described as an emptiness, like someone or something that should be there in a particular moment is missing, and the individual feels this absence. It brings sad and happy feelings all together, sadness for missing and happiness for having experienced the feeling.
We made this record in a big house in upstate NY, quick and live with few overdubs and no edits. Just like in the old days. If you’re one for noticing this kind of thing, you’ll notice some songs have extra measures when we couldn't decide by telepathic communication who should play a solo or just hang out, a few numbers where we vamp on the end for what seems like forever because either it was getting good to us or I was thinking “am I going to have to buy all these people dinner?” or I was missing my dog, who knows. And yes, There are places you can hear actual bonafide mistakes! There was some chatter about fixing this stuff but in the end we decided to leave it like it was, just like we left it the day we walked out of the studio, to go back on the road... And I don’t mind saying, I love this record. I hope you do too"..
**********
OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY
Rick Allen
Before he settled in to becoming one of the best songwriters in captivity Phil Lee spent a couple of decades playing drums, driving trucks, dumping motorcycles, hauling equipment, stealing hearts, eluding the authorities and raising Cain.
By the time most artists get to their third or fourth album they are down to the material that didn’t make the cut for the first two. It is no mean feat to make four albums that stand on their own each one as good as the last yet also better in some way. It’s a pretty mighty achievement. Somehow, Phil Lee, knife-thrower, raconteur, rapscallion and bon vivant and the pride of Durham, North Carolina, has pulled it off.
The Fall and Further Decline of the Mighty King of Love is all the more impressive when you realize there have also been side projects including touring, recording a DVD Phil Lee Live! At the Purple Onion with L.A. Johnson the head of Neil Young’s Shakey Pictures production company, touring, contributing songs to and making his silver screen debut in The One Who Loves You and an ultra-secret project with a collaborator-to-be-named-later, word has it he’s even working on reinventing the Tijuana Bible.
All this while keeping true to his unique and singular mission; to write songs that try to make sense out of this world, open some eyes, call out some fools and ring out some hard truths. Yet, admirable as such pursuits may be he’s simply being true to who he is. Phil Lee’s music will make you think and laugh and maybe shed a tear or two but it also provides hours of playtime fun because all of those things are part of the package. He couldn’t do it any other way.
Phil is a hipster madman Huck Finn meets Jack Kerouac. If he were a character in “On The Road” he’d be the guy in the back seat telling Sal and Dean which billboards the Highway Patrol is lurking behind, which diners have the prettiest waitresses, where to find the best pie a la mode in any given two mile stretch of Route 66 and where you can stop and get your hat blocked in an emergency 24 hours a day, no appointment necessary. Or, more likely, he’d be the guy they were barreling down the road to meet for hot coffee and enlightenment.
Ask his friend, crony and enabler Richard Bennett. Richard is one of the world’s finest guitar players and producers and he’s worn both hats for all of Phil’s records. He’s been a believer from the start. This is his take on the Mighty King of Love’s mysterious allure: “Phil and I often go for breakfast or lunch together where he’ll make a big show of picking up the check only to arrive at the register to discover he’s left his wallet home. Sometimes you’ll be lured to cash only joint and he’ll just have a credit card. The guy can put away more food than anyone I know and remain skinny as a rail. Believe me, there are plenty more reasons to dislike him. Still, Phil Lee’s the sanest person in my life… which doesn’t say much for either of us.” And nobody paid him to say that either.
Anyone looking for a heaping helping of sanity wrapped couldn’t do much better than good sized portion of Phil Lee music.
**********
BIOGRAPHY/AMG
Philip Van Vleck
Phil Lee grew up in Durham, North Carolina, in the shadow of tobacco warehouses and Duke University. A musician and songwriter from his teens, Lee's first professional gig came in the 1960s, playing drums for Homer Briarhopper and the Daybreak Gang on a morning television show in Raleigh, N.C. (right before the Farm News). Lee wandered off to New York City in 1971, where he eventually found work behind the drums for the band Amazing Grace, an outfit that included Beverly D'Angelo, Rob Stoner and Hank DeVito. Lee moved to Los Angeles around 1974, where he did some movie soundtrack work with Jack Nitzsche and did some truck driving for Neil Young. He was back in North Carolina in the mid-'80s, writing songs and pushing an 18-wheeler here and there to make ends meet. After a brief stint with The Flying Burrito Brothers in 1993, Lee moved to Nashville and landed a publishing deal, which didn't last long. Truck driving jobs were easy to find in Nashville, however, and Lee was also beginning to work with producer Richard Bennett on the honky tonk country music project that would eventually become his first solo album, The Mighty King of Love, released by Shanachie Records in January, 2000. Lee's music is the distillation of about 30 years' worth of playing in juke joints and bars from one end of the country to the other. His songwriting is uncommonly witty and as direct as a kick in the butt. The years he has spent sitting at the back of the bandstand, behind the drums, have given him plenty of time to think about what he'd do if he ever got to the front of the stage. Now that he's there, he's not wasting anyone's time with lame material.
**********
WEBSITE
**********
TO THE TOP
**********
3 comments :
Thanks so much for posting this - I ran across this guy a few months ago and really enjoyed it!
Thanks so much for posting this - I ran across this guy a few months ago and really enjoyed it!
Thanks simonthecat for your feedback.
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