PHIL LEE
The Mighty King Of Love (Shanachie)
Reviewed by Shaun Dale

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Since leaving North Carolina for New York City in 1971, Phil Lee has swung from coast to coast, alternating stabs at the music business (including a tenure with the Flying Burrito Bros.) with tenures as a truck driver. Sometimes he's blended the two, driving a truck for Neil Young for a time.

Eventually Lee settled in East Nashville and started hanging with the renegade country scene in the neighborhood. He hooked up with producer Richard Bennett, whose credits include Emmylou, Steve Earl and Marty Stuart. Bennett liked the songs he heard, put Lee in the studio and now, at nearly 50 years old, Phil Lee has his first album out in national distribution.

National distribution as in if you try, you'll find it. Or you can order it. And you should. This is great stuff. It rocks like crazy, sometimes it makes you laugh till you hurt, and sometimes it hurts you with the raw energy and sentiment in Lee's original songs. But as another musical philosopher once put it, it hurts so good.

The titles will give you some hints, so look over the track list. (For the non-Francophones in the audience, "Le Debris, Ils Sont Blancs" translates as "The Trash, It Is White." If you don't want to hear a Cajun song with a title like that, there's not much I can say to you.) Once you've looked over the titles, order the album and listen to the songs. They're even better than their names.

Track List:

Nobody But You * Somebody Oughta' Do Something About That Guy * A Night In The Box * I'm The Why She's Gone * Last Year * Blueprint For Disaster * The Mighty King Of Love * I Don't Like What You Have Turned Into * Les Debris, Ils Sont Blancs * I'm Still Missing You * Why Come You Don't Love Me * She Ran Out Of Give (Before I Ran Out Of Take) * One Day When Nobody's Watching

© 2000 - Shaun Dale