{"id":471553,"date":"2016-01-28T09:16:44","date_gmt":"2016-01-28T14:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.fredericknewspost.com\/playlist\/?p=471553"},"modified":"2016-01-28T09:16:44","modified_gmt":"2016-01-28T14:16:44","slug":"stephen-lee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/2016\/01\/28\/stephen-lee\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Lee: ‘West Of Twenty-Three’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sl\"From the very first second of Stephen Lee\u2019s \u201cWest Of Twenty-Three,\u201d you love him. As he stretches out the words \u201cI,\u201d \u201cgot\u201d and \u201ca,\u201d with nothing else behind him, it\u2019s hard not to feel your eyebrows raise in wonderment. Then, when he finally caps the thought with \u201ccan in my hand, I got beers in my belly\u201d \u2026 well, dude wins all of the endearing points. It\u2019s inevitable that this is going to be fun. It\u2019s inevitable this is going to be a trip.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it is. Armed with a punk-rock rasp and Americana ethos, Stephen Lee is the unknown Baltimore version of Chuck Ragan or Tim Barry. All of the songs here are boozy, sloppy, aggressive and acoustic-based in the best ways. This is one of the rare cases of the guy at the party with an acoustic guitar who you actually want to be around. Just sit back and let him fill the air with a very specific \u2014 and very intoxicating \u2014 blend of balladry.<\/span><\/p>\n

You can\u2019t get much more in-your-face than opener \u201cCans and Beers,\u201d which, in addition to the aforementioned introduction, is an uptempo romp that instantly pegs the singer as someone whose authenticity you don\u2019t dare question. Filling it out is Jon Patton\u2019s electric guitar that turns up the country twang to just the right level. It\u2019s the sound of CBGB\u2019s originating in Nashville.<\/span><\/p>\n

The only real knock here is Bill Scheid\u2019s drums. They\u2019re just so loose. A song like \u201cOne More,\u201d which starts out with single kick drum notes, suffers because of Scheid\u2019s inability to keep up with the record\u2019s star. Listen closely to the first verse, and you\u2019ll notice how the drums occasionally fade down in the mix, presumably to hide how lackadaisical they become. When they ultimately fade back up, Scheid is still a quarter-second behind everyone else. Lee would be better served negating percussion altogether.<\/span><\/p>\n

Similar problems plague \u201cBukowski.\u201d Yeah, Aaron Mirenzi\u2019s banjo adds a layer of roots that works well here, and sure, Kerra Holmgren\u2019s backing vocals are lovely in all the right ways, but \u2026 holy moly, the drums feel lost. More deflating is the fact that the first 30 seconds of the song survives without any stick work, laying the base for what could have been a charming little tune. Instead, what we get is an unsure performance from Scheid that only clutters the noise.<\/span><\/p>\n

All is not lost, however, on a song like \u201cNew Wyman Park Restaurant.\u201d Closing out the record in style, the longest track of the nine is pure Stephen Lee, warts and all. Backed by nothing but his own acoustic guitar, it\u2019s a moment that makes you yearn for more of the same, especially as he addresses \u201cthe waitress with the Farrah Fawcett hair.\u201d He can ramble a bit, but it suits him well, especially considering how the guy\u2019s sense of humor pierces through a lot his lyrics with enough ease to make a line like \u201cliving life like this don\u2019t always turn out for the best\u201d cut just a little bit deeper than it would coming from anyone else.<\/span><\/p>\n

That same vivid lyricism turns a song like \u201cAgain And Again\u201d into far more fun than one might think. Profane and self-effacing, it\u2019s the set\u2019s most memorable moment thanks to the singer\u2019s insistence on pulling no punches (Holmgren\u2019s harmonies don\u2019t hurt, either). \u201cI take the backroads from Pittsburgh home\/ I don\u2019t mind the highways or paying any tolls\/ But I always miss my exit\/ recalculate, correct it\/ Turn around and f@#! it up again,\u201d he sings, and all you want to do is get him a GPS that works.<\/span><\/p>\n

He\u2019s that kind of guy, Stephen Lee: infinitely relatable and perpetually easy to root for. This is someone who knows how to connect with his audience. \u201cWest of Twenty-Three,\u201d even at its worst, never strays from the very real fact that you can\u2019t take your ears off him. Or, perhaps more importantly, that you shouldn\u2019t take your ears off him. It\u2019s fearless enough to be labeled punk rock, provocative enough to be labeled interesting and twangy enough to be labeled country. You never quite know what\u2019s coming around the bend.<\/span><\/p>\n

And that \u2014 as is the case with every great artist \u2014 is all anyone should need to give Stephen Lee the respect he deserves.<\/span><\/p>\n

** 2\u00a01\/2 STARS OUT OF 4 **<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the very first second of Stephen Lee\u2019s \u201cWest Of Twenty-Three,\u201d you love him. As he stretches out the words \u201cI,\u201d \u201cgot\u201d and \u201ca,\u201d with nothing else behind him, it\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-471553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}