Album Notes

The aficionados know the Tim Lee story. But, for the neophytes, it bears repeating nonetheless.

Back in the 1980s, Lee was one-half of fabled Southern poppers The Windbreakers, one of the great coulda-been stories of the college radio era. Along with songwriting foil/ drinking buddy/quarrelsome sibling Bobby Sutliff, The Windbreakers produced four gorgeous and underappreciated records.

The fans swooned. The critics loved them. Naturally, they didn’t sell. So Lee and Sutliff packed up their tents at the dawn of the 1990s. Though they’ve ceased to exist as a recording entity, Lee and Sutliff do periodic live shows under The Windbreakers’ banner and turned out a best-of collection Time Machine (Paisley Pop, 2003) that featured their first new recordings in more than a decade.


But even as The Windbreakers spent the 1980s barnstorming across the country in support of their own releases, Lee kept busy on his own.

With the Rain Parade guitarist Matt Piucci, he turned out Gone Fishin’, and with ex-Nurses/Half-Japanese Howard Wuelfing, there was Paid Vacation.

There were also brace of solo records, including the tour de force that is 1998’s Crawdad, which saw Lee turn out a country-inflected cover of Ian Hunter’s “I Wish I Was Your Mother.”

But, for most of the 1990s, Lee remained silent

In 2001, he broke his silence with Under the House. It was, Lee said, like learning to walk again.

“When I did Under The House, I was just starting to kinda feel my way around this music stuff again,” he said. “A couple of friends encouraged me to record some songs, and that turned into that record. Since then, I’ve pretty much gotten full-tilt back into it.”

Now in 2007, Tim Lee returns, now as the TimLee3 featuring Lee, his wife & co-writer, bassist Susan Bauer Lee, and drummer Rodney Cash.

The Tim Lee 3’s first release is In the Meantime. The disc, which features three new studio tracks and seven live recordings, is released on Paisley Pop label in Portland, Ore. The new studio recordings come from the TL3’s February sessions at Wave Lab Studios in Tucson, Arizona. The live tracks were culled from performances in Atlanta, Ga., and Maryville, Tenn., and include two new songs along with versions of older Tim Lee songs and a cover of R.L. Burnside’s “Snake Drive.”