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ACL review: Lee Boys
Boy howdy, do the Lee Boys know their core fanbase.
Until Galactic plays, their set at the WaMu/FDIC/ JP Morgan Chase tent was the place to be if you were a jam band fan. Plenty of peasant dresses, Camel back packs, and a middle-aged, mustache-sporting white guy in a Haile Selassie T-shirt. Perfect.
The Lee Boys are a mutant sacred steel band in the vein of Robert Randolph, gospel guys raised in the church who turned their faith’s passion for epic sets into something with a little more funk.
Jam band fans adore their fondness for stretching out, which they’re so used to from long church services it seems more like a habit than a sop to fans, even if their music does sound more secular than sacred.
Pedal steel player Rosevelt Collier is the clearly the band’s centerpiece, his scorching leads and detailed, frantic runs making Hendrix comparisons pretty much inevitable. Alvin Lee’s rhythm guitar is a fluid parter, while Alvin Cordy, Jr.’s seven-string bass (speaking of jam bands!) and Earl Walker’s drums push and pull the music.
It was tough to isolate songs; the band seems most comfortable with grooves that spiral and double back on themselves, the singing acting more as place holding than message. (Maybe that was just due to the unforgivingly stuffy WaMu tent, which feels like an oven even when the heat is well below 100.)
Even if the words remained obscure, it was time to praise the Lord and pass the hacky sack.
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