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A Sure Bet
Tim Lee continues his rock ‘n’ roll tradition
by Clint Casey
It would seem that local rocker Tim Lee thrives on diversity and activity for inspiration. His new CD, No Discretion, was recorded with 16 musicians at six studios in three states—and efforts on the final product began before his previous album was even released.
“The first batch [of songs] that I recorded in November of 2002 was stuff that I had just written as I went along. Everything was pretty fresh,” Lee says. “Most of it was actually played live, too. It’s kind of an unusual thing for me. Usually I record ’em, then they get played live.”
Lee takes a relaxed approach in the studio, open to suggestion from contributing musicians. “I don’t really think about what a song is going to sound like too much when I’m writing it, but I may have some idea. How it ends up usually depends who plays on it. Everybody involved in this record brought something unique and influenced how it sounded in their own way,” he says. “I have a ballpark idea of what I want, but I don’t have real specific notions. When I write a song, the arrangement is not part of the song. It’s completely separate from the song itself.”
Tim Lee began recording in the early ‘80s when he formed the Windbreakers with Bobby Sutliff. Releasing six records over the span of its 20-year career, Lee found favor with critics by creating forward-thinking songs, accented with affecting vocals and aggressive guitar.
Drawing from his musical reservoir of friends and acquaintances, Lee tackled No Discretion as a group effort. “To me, the fun part of making a record is the collaboration and the people you bring in. A number of them are people I’ve worked with over the years, and some were people I met in the middle of making the record. It really ran the gamut,” he says.
The album captures Lee’s energetic stage presence more effectively than much of his previous work. “If I had a preconceived notion for [No Discretion], it was definitely that I wanted it to be more rockin’, because the last one [Under the House] had a lot more acoustic stuff on it. It came out at the time that this one was being made, and I was playing live a good bit—which tends to make you rock a bit more and do more electric stuff.”
After 20 years as a songwriter, he finds that the best songs come at to him at once, or at least “those are the ones that usually end up getting used. The others kind of come in pieces, but usually if I have to work on something that hard, it’s not that good,” Lee says. “I’ve been writing songs for so long that the work part of it’s easy. The inspiration part is what makes it good or not good.”
And, it’s because of his experience that Lee takes a storytelling approach, writing largely from a third-person perspective. “Hearing an entire album of ‘I, I, I’ and ‘Me, me, me’ gets old. And, I’m a big fan of short-story writers. It’s not that I think of myself as a short-story writer, but it’s something that I try to incorporate into my approach—a little bit of detail and some characters,” Lee says. “My personal experience is only going to be so interesting for so long. I tend to try to observe other people and their situations and comment on that.”
In “Across the Tracks,” a vivid account of small-town lovers’ quarrel, one half of the couple argues: “It’s greener on the other side of the street, but the sidewalks there generate more heat. I’ve been there, it felt like hell, so pick a side of the coin, boys, it’s a toss up�as far as I can tell.”
“I’ve been very fortunate in my life because of music. I’ve traveled a lot and done a lot of cool things. I’m intensely aware that a lot of people have never had those opportunities, and I’m fascinated by the people who stay in one place and never really see much, but not in any sort of condescending way,” Lee explains. “Those are the people that interest me. A song like ‘Across the Tracks’ is me trying to figure out what people like that think.”
Despite, or perhaps because of, his numerous previous addresses (a handful of cities in N.C., Ga. and Miss.), Lee is enamored with the music scene in Knoxville, saying that he listens to local artists as much as anything else. “I really think there’s a lot happening here. It’s very easy to meet a lot of people, and make friends. There’s a lot of great bands and a lot of great songwriters and guitar players—just a lot of talented people. That was the first thing I noticed when I moved here.”
September 2, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 36
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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