Frankie Lee's New Album STILLWATER Streaming Today
By: Tori Hartshorn May. 17, 2019
Frankie Lee is sharing his full record, Stillwater, today a week before the album comes out. Wide Open Country has the exclusive calling the new album an "alluring collection of musings on hope lost and found." The album stream follows the release of the beautifully dark rumination on aging and loss "In The Blue", which sees Lee taking a subdued piano approach to the subject somehow softening the stark reality that time comes for us all. Lee notes that the song "dramatizes the confusion felt by the narrator as he watches the important things in life slip away. Realizing he cannot hold on to even one grain of sand, he is led to his final question whether all things are just a dream". While American Songwriter said that ""In The Blue" finds the sweet spot between modern, soulful folk and old-school Western balladry, with Lee's gentle vocal lending an emotional heft to the track's understated, piano-forward arrangement". Lee previously announced his hometown release show at Minneapolis' Cedar Cultural Center on June 28th after he returns from his European tour with Strand of Oaks, which starts this week.
Following up his critically acclaimed 2016 debut, American Dreamer, which Rolling Stone called "debut record of the year", Lee continues to hold a mirror up to the idea of the American Dream and laments the decimation of the working class and the effects of unfettered capitalism on communities across the country. Speaking about the genesis of the first single, "Downtown Lights", Lee says "it's an ode to Jessica Lange, who lived in Stillwater when I was growing up...when she moved away she said it was because they killed the town with condos and tourist shops. Which I agree with. This song is about a dream I had walking down Main Street with her."
Pre-order Stillwater HERE.
Frankie Lee Tour Dates
05/18 - Wood Festival - Oxfordshire, UK
05/20 - Metropool - Hengelo, NL*
05/21 - Blue Shell - Cologne DE*
05/23 - Loppen - Copenhagen, DK*
05/24 - Privat Club - Berlin, DE*
05/25 - TivVre Pandora - Utrecht, NL*
05/26 - Trix - Antwerp, BE*
05/27 - Omeara - London, UK*
05/29 - Brudenell - Leeds, UK*
05/30 - Night & Day - Manchester, UK*
05/31 - Whelan's - Dublin, IE*
06/28 - Cedar Cultural Center - Minneapolis, MN
*with Strand Of Oaks
Stillwater is a small town between two hills in the middle of America. Frankie Lee was born there and has been running from it and to it ever since. Stillwater is also a record of life in middle America. A "record" meaning simply that, converting sound into permanent form. This is the story of how that record came to be...
For the recording of the follow up to American Dreamer - "debut album of the year" Rolling Stone - Frankie Lee had visited a few studios and they all felt like the same big production factories. He had spent the best part of a year wrangling livestock and had a pile of cash on the table to pay for the biggest and best gadgets which he then found he ultimately had absolutely no interest in. Lee wanted to get away from people who thought music should be made in isolation booths or that bigger was better. All the people who wanted the next big thing. Lee wanted to be the last little thing, he just had to find the right space to do it in.
One day Frankie Lee was walking down main street in his hometown and it hit him that he could bring the studio to them. Luckily, the house he grew up in was available. His mother had lived in the same house in Stillwater for most of Lee's life. It's a small cedar-sided house on an acre lot on the northern end of town, tucked back in the woods on a small hill, it looks like a log cabin.
So they packed their instruments, tuned the old upright piano and rolled out a tape machine next to the wood-burning stove. Music was made from morning 'til night. For three days straight, they ate together, stayed together and played together. Cutting six songs the first day and five the next, most of what they captured was first or second take. The music is minimal and warm. Lee describes his sound as "Western Music", steel guitars and synths blend with acoustic guitars and omnichords. The musical brush is gold and green, dipped in deep blue. He slips in and out of time throughout the record. One line in a song could be its first or last. The song-stories are a blend of his own romantic grit. Ex-lovers, lost land and hope flung out of a car window, fraying in the wind.
On American Dreamer, Lee's characters were set loose in a seemingly inescapable inheritance of self-destruction. On Stillwater, they seek a path towards redemption by returning home and confronting the past. Based on the loss of youth, with a focus on the dissolution of love, as well as the real life of the working class, Stillwater is a scrapbook of short stories, reveries and musical growth by one of America's greatest unknown songwriters.
In the 20 years since its inception, London-based record label Loose has grown to become Europe's premier Americana label, releasing the first albums by Sturgill Simpson, The Felice Brothers, Neko Case, M.Ward, Hurray For The Riff Raff & Dawes. Their current roster includes Damien Jurado, Courtney Marie Andrews, Israel Nash & The Handsome Family. Frankie Lee will be releasing Stillwater in the U.S. on his own River Valley Records imprint.
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