 Minor Triumphs A recent phone call catches Knoxville musician Tim Lee dodging a rainstorm at a dirt race track. "It's a sticky mess out there," he says. Lee is describing the track, but that could just as well sum up his sentiments about the business of making music, his real passion. He happily takes the time to chat about that "glorious racket." "Probably, if I didn't have music to do, I'd find some dumb thing to fill up my time, like become some crossword champion!" he laughs. However, he remains driven by the "joy of plugging in and hitting a power chord," despite the mounting complications of an environment congested with bands. "During the '80s, there were only 50 or 60 bands," he says, "and clubs and labels were actively looking for them. Now, there are so many out there, even the smallest accomplishment is a triumph." During the '80s, Lee teamed up with Bobby Sutliff to form the jangle-pop band The Windbreakers. Now teamed up with wife Susan Bauer Lee, he continues to write gritty songs that are every bit as ornery and hook-ridden as ever. The Windbreakers released several critical head-turners for Atlanta's DB Records. A handful of notable side projects add to Lee's pop legacy, including a 1985 record with Matt Piucci of Rain Parade, a Paisley Underground progenitor. Concrete Dog, Lee's third release since moving to Knoxville and diving into that city's healthy music scene, was recently released on Chicago's Fundamental Records, and it affirms Lee's reinvigorated guitar. "It wasn't any work to make things happen," says Lee about his life in Oxford, MS, during the '90s, which he likens to letting go of the steering wheel. After his circle of musician friends began to drift away, his attention turned to other things, including an interest in dirt-track racing, the source of his day job. During this decade, it became apparent that he couldn't not make music. Teaming up with wife Susan has infused Lee with a new enthusiasm. "Susan can do anything if she puts her mind to it." She learned bass, and now she also sings and co-writes songs with Lee; this has imposed a new kind of structure to his songwriting process. "She brings me a piece of a song and I finish it… Her ideas are most often really good. It's like having a second set of inspirations." She made her recording debut on 2004's No Discretion and tours with the band. Before the couple left Atlanta for Oxford, MS in 1991, both were involved in what was to become the local Redneck Underground scene. The most prominent talent to emerge from the ashes of that scene, the Drive-By Truckers, rate high with Lee. "Great band, great songwriters, great singers," he says. "It's impressive in this day and age that there's a band like that. They have an aura of greatness that you don't get with other bands… too few bands these days with knuckle-down greatness. They are too busy trying to impress everyone with weirdness and all too adherent to genre." The self-imposed creative limits that are required to fit into some genre also confound him, as he describes a friend who was saying that his next record needed to sound like Americana. "I just can't imagine going into it like that," he says. "It's not my job to keep up with what's going on currently. It's my job to make records. Being on top of all the coolest bands isn't going to help you in any way, not at being an artist. If you are one of those kinds of people who do care about that, you put yourself behind." Lee pauses and laughs, a tad sarcastic. "I'm going to tell you how to live your life!" Hastily, he adds, "No, not really… More bands need a sense of humor. You can't take yourself too seriously. I mean, you can take the music seriously, but not yourself. Simply, there's not enough joy in music anymore." A testament to that, 2004's No Discretion on Paisley Pop was every bit as gritty and hooky as anything churned out by a younger musician, but laced with an insightful literacy unique to a man with a couple of decades of living under his boot heels. His refreshing humility keeps his kind of rock and roll down-to-earth, full of good hooks and long on growls. Concrete Dog promises to be similar to the scrappy punk jangle that has become Lee's signature sound. A rare visit to Athens ought to show what he and his band are made of and, unlike his dirt-track diversions, count on glorious racket, rain or shine. Gretchen Wood |