(photo: Barry Brecheisen)
CREATIVE LOAFING CHARLOTTE
(Charlotte weekly) Feature interview w/ band photo
Lee Bains III fries up Southern rock ‘n’ roll this Thu. @ The Milestone
The grit and the Glory Fires
By Dacey Orr
Show up for the openers at a Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires show and you’re just as likely to find frontman Bains running around wildly and belting out lyrics as a random audience member. It’s an energy and a connection to the crowd that only heightens when Bains takes the stage and rips into his roaring set, bounding out into the audience as far as his guitar will take him and giving thoughtful, cheer-inducing banter between every song.
“I just appreciate people letting go of their concern about how people are going to receive it, or whether they hit every note exactly right or whether they look cool,” Bains, who will play The Milestone on July 24, says. “That’s what I appreciate about music and art in general. To be honest, I get sick to death of the pretense and the hipster irony and sort of sense of detachment that’s so prevalent in independent music these days. I just love to see people believing in what they’re doing.”
That attitude is perhaps best revealed on “Dirt Track,” a gritty, guitar-heavy rock ‘n’ roll song about working on cars and racing. The song was born from conversations with older people around Bains’ hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, who had grown up on cars and weekend races. Around the dinner table on one occasion, Bains asked one such racing enthusiast about the latest in NASCAR.
“He said that he actually didn’t follow NASCAR at all, you know,” says Bains with a laugh. “Having been a part of the stock car racing community when it was a grassroots, community-oriented sport … Once it had sort of left that behind and become this big commercial entity as NASCAR, it really kind of lost what was special about it to him. So, he said that he just didn’t pay any attention to NASCAR, and that instead he just kept racing and building cars and going to races at the dirt track and the track strip.”
Bains says he related to that feeling in his own way, having played in several bands and gone to different types of shows over the years.
“A lot of the shows that had the deepest impact on me were shows where there weren’t many people,” says Bains. “They were in a small bar or a DIY space and were played by bands who were just a group of friends, sleeping on floors in their van or wherever, whose motives were really unquestionable. They were playing because they were passionate about music and about the things they were singing about, and nothing else.”
On the Glory Fires’ latest release, Dereconstructed, that passion is evident not just in the delivery, but in the carefully constructed lyrics.
As its name suggests, the album pieces together bits of Southernness, reckoning the region’s burgeoning present with its dark past.
But while many of its themes seem universal, Bains is insistent that his songwriting stems from a deliberately personal, first-person perspective, a decision he made for both aesthetic and political reasons.
“I am, after all, just a dude, who has an opinion, a set of opinions, that’s an outgrowth influenced by my experience and upbringing and context,” Bains says. That upbringing and context may have taken place in the South, but Bains maintains that there’s no concise answer to the question of what it is to “be Southern.”
“That’s a lot of what this album is trying to do. It’s trying to disassemble sort of the prevailing, monolithic ideas of what Southernness is, and sort of, in some way, to assemble a very unauthoritative idea of what my South is,” says Bains. “There are 15 million people living in the South and there are 15 million answers to that question. I think that, for me and my roots, my edition of the South — it’d be deeply in my own experience, deeply in my own place in that part of the South where Birmingham sits.”
http://clclt.com/charlotte/lee-bains-iii-fries-up-southern-rock-n-roll/Content?oid=3455225
11TH HOUR
(Macon, GA weekly)
Venue: The Hummingbird
Performer: Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires
Reasoning: I saw these guys play a few months ago and they are the definition of a refreshing high-octane new-southern rock. Lee Bains wordsmithery is on point and is sure to stick with you for a while.
http://11thhouronline.com/field-note-stenographers/2014/7/21/justin-cutways-bragg-jam-scheule
TWANGVILLE
(online music site) – Positive ALBUMS OF THE MONTH review
Dereconstructed, by Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires
Lee Bains III and the Glory FiresThere’s an old adage — write what you know. Birmingham, Alabama native Lee Bains takes this to heart with a searing album about life in the modern South. His lyrics reflect on the weight of history, religion and everyday economic struggles of small town Southern life; his songs are fueled by incendiary guitars and furious rock beats.
Bains doesn’t shy away from social commentary on tracks like “The Kudzu and the Concrete”:
You can talk, talk, talk about it: Repentance, and forgiveness, and loving your neighbor as yourself.
But what the hell does that mean when all your neighbors look the same and think the same or else live a couple miles down the rural route?
He wrestles with the love-hate relationship of growing up in Birmingham in “The Weeds Downtown.” “I know that Birmingham gets you down, but look what it raised you up to be,” he sings.
“The Company Man” takes a stand against greed and blind obedience. “All it takes is one wicked heart, a pile of money and a chain of folks just doing their jobs,” he cautions.
Bains lets his guitar do plenty of talking, too. Dereconstructed is a no holds barred rock album. Bains and fellow guitarist Eric Wallace trade licks like Keith Richards and Mick Taylor back in the day. The entire band sounds ferocious, rough and ragged. Bains describes it best on “Dirt Track” when he says, “Squeezing glory out of three rusty chords.” The results are glorious, indeed.
http://twangville.com/19702/mayers-playlist-for-july-2014-part-1/
ELMORE MAGAZINE
(national music magazine) – Positive NYC show review with band photo
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires / Mercury Lounge / New York, NY / July 18, 2014
Live Show Reviews | July 23rd, 2014
Lee Bains III & The Glory FiresPhoto by Wes Frazer
Rumor has it the Glory Fires got kicked out of a gig in Texas for playing too loud. Good. More for us.
At Mercury Lounge, Lee Bains and his band the Glory Fires ripped NYC a new one playing that sort of earsplitting rock ‘n’ roll that gets people interested. Their Sub Pop debut Dereconstructed is a glorious slice of ‘70s-era rock ‘n’ roll that doesn’t mimic too much to sound like those who came before. Rather, the Glory Fires tap into their own keg of rock that left fans in a state of inebriated bliss.
Bains, who sang with tongue in cheek, is no demagogue when he mocks American expansionism and false ideologies. Rather, his lyrics symbolize everything Alabama is known for. Down south known as the “Spirit of Courage” state, Alabama takes pride in its own strength and perseverance and the people born there are no different. An earnest soul singer backed by a band who can strut on stage one minute and then hop on the shoulders of some fan the next—without missing a beat—makes you feel bad for all the other bands who fall short of the Glory Fires’ heat.
Providing a background story to his songs, Bains offered the crowd a perspective into the inner workings of his mind, allowing us to all learn a little more about him, as he did on “Dirt Track,” a song about “working those shitty jobs and playing all those shitty venues.” He then dedicated the song to his brother, “The one who taught me about the Velvet Underground and all that cool shit.” Well, Lee Bains, now you’re part of all that cool shit. – Melissa Caruso
http://www.elmoremagazine.com/2014/07/reviews/shows/lee-bains-iii-the-glory-fires-mercury-lounge-new-york-ny-july-18-2014
SNACKING ON MACON
(Macon, GA music blog) – Positive show preview with The Bitter Southerner live video of The Company Man
Bragg Jam 2014 – Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires – Their new album, Dereconstructed, has been getting a lot of praise lately, but as anyone who has fallen in love with live music can tell you, the album has nothing on their live show. Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires made it out to the Bird a few months ago to give us a taste of their set and I have to say that show put them in the front runner for “must see band” during Bragg Jam. Lee Bains III & the Glory Fire have a rollicking brand of rock and roll and the first note will make you want to take to the dance floor. This is the start of a lineup that could quite possibly make the rest of your night. Find out more about Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires here. Hear them before Saturday here, but be prepared for them to blow you away at The Bird on Saturday at 6:30pm.
http://angelcollins.wordpress.com/2014/07/23/bragg-jam-2014-middle-georgia-state-college-stage/#more-572
YES WEEKLY
(Greensboro weekly) Brief show preview
Ex-Dexateens guitarist and grungesoul firebreather Lee Bains III travels the southern roads paved by the Drive- By Truckers on his band the Glory Fires’ second album, Deconstructed, and he’ll play it for you at Krankies tonight!
http://ow.ly/zupgq
DC ROCK LIVE
(DC music blog) Positive DC9 show review.
Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires – Wanted Man — DC9 – Jul 21 2014
This quickly rising quartet takes the opening band’s sound and pushes it even further into the stratosphere with even more punk pace, crazy guitar moves, and wilder vocal work. Yet they have hearty songs, many of which would sound just fine unplugged. But I’m happier that they are electric tonight with loads of energy as they join the crowd on the floor in addition to working off of each other on stage. They have ballads, although some move into blistering rock before you have a chance to catch your breath. They pile on the songs Ramones style before taking a short break to engage in a bit of stage patter. The 42 minute set was dense, action packed, and just right for waking up every body part of mine. They are touring just their second record, so I don’t see this Alabama band’s energy slipping away anytime soon. And that is a good thing, as I need bands like this to keep my energy up. You don’t stay complacent with the Glory Fires, it just isn’t done.
http://dcrocklive.blogspot.com/2014/07/lee-bains-iii-and-glory-fires-wanted.html
ZUMIC
(Boston music blog) Positive show review with band photos
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires Lit Up Mercury Lounge, NYC 7.18.2014 [Zumic Review + Photos]
by Brad Bershad
Every once in a while, a fiery young rock band comes along and gets me really excited. Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires are one of those bands, and their 2014 album Dereconstructed is a must-listen for lovers of gritty, thoughtful rock and roll. This past Friday, the band lit up New York City’s Mercury Lounge with a high energy stage show.
This is a young band that knows how to rock out and please a crowd. Of course, a great concert is built around great songs, and Lee Bains has proven himself to be an excellent songwriter thus far in his career. As a guitar player, Bains knows how to craft a guitar riff with a melody and a hook. As a singer-songwriter, he knows how to tell stories with a lot of weight.
Through the concert, a wide range of styles and inspirations came through. The band combines so many things I love about rock music: The swagger of The Rolling Stones, the street intellectualism of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, the swamp boogie of Creedence Clearwater Revival, the guitar-slinging mentality of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Guns ‘N Roses, and the straight-forward power of proto-punk groups like The Stooges and The Ramones. You could compare Lee Bains & The Glory Fires to modern southern rock bands like The Black Crowes and Drive-By Truckers, and there are certainly similarities, but this is a band that plays faster and louder than any of their contemporaries that I’m familiar with.
On stage, the chemistry between all 4 members of the band was undeniable. Drummer Blake Williamson was expert in pushing the groove, and his kit sounded great all night , especially during a couple moments when everything dropped out but the drums. His brother, bassist Adam Williamson, was pretty much flawless all night. Between the two of them, their tone and timing was truly exceptional; more rock bands should be this blessed to have such a phenomenal rhythmic backbone. The second guitar player, Eric Wallace, fit right in. Wallace’s role in the band reminded me of Mick Taylor from The Rolling Stones or Poncho from Neil Young & Crazy Horse, as he added a great layer to the sound and locked in perfectly with the songs; he was exactly what you’d want from a sideman guitar player in a garage rock type of setting.
Rock and roll is a living, ever-changing thing. For my money, the best bands are the ones that build off tradition but aren’t afraid to do their own thing. That’s exactly what you get with Lee Bains.
Sure, ‘Lee Bains The Third and the Glory Fires’ is a mouthful to say, but this isn’t just rock music. This is art.
Dereconstructed is available on Subpop Records, iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify.
http://zumic.com/2014/07/21/lee-bains-iii-glory-fires-lit-mercury-lounge-nyc-7-18-2014-zumic-review-photos/
ALLSTON PUDDING
(Boston music blog) Positive show preview with band photo
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires Bring their Southern Punk up North (Great Scott 7/16)
By Nick Canton
Last Wednesday at the Great Scott, Lee Bains III showed up from Alabama to put on a fierce energy-driven southern punk show and had Northeast friends Alpenglow and Forts/Gainesville open.
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires played vicious, lightning fast, southern-rock-informed punk rock like their lives depended on it. That’s a good starting place. The crowd lessened after the previous two bands, but there is no way you would know it watching Lee & Co. They were playing for an audience of 10,000 as far I could tell by watching them. The first several songs were pretty indistinguishable. People were moving constantly, you’d only know that it was a different song because of a slight break and then something would start in a different key. Lee was wailing and jumping on and off of the kick drum, and later on right into the audience, shredding while face to face with those that stayed. Now a quick (not really) side-note about jumping off the drums: I feel like I need to be fair here because I recently gave a band a tiny bit of flak for doing it a couple times at the end of an arena-rock-sounding show. I don’t feel like Lee Bains was jumping up on the drums to be a badass,maybe the first or second time, but it almost seemed like a thing he did when he wasn’t sure what to do. Like putting your hand in your pocket or scratching the back of your head, like an impulse. He did it about a dozen times during the show, but, and I don’t know how much you can read into this type of thing, it seemed like he was just doing it to keep his portion of the three ring circus going while the Glory Fires were shredding on their respective instruments, not trying to distract from it even if it did end up happening. When they stopped playing so Lee could explain what the next song was about, something he started doing for most of the songs toward the end, it actually added a layer of depth to what was previously just noisy, dancy fun. The song subjects ranged from wanting his girlfriend to come back to Alabama to addressing the state’s laws that encourage racial profiling. These songs were the ones that brought the true musicians out as they were more melodic, plus you could actually hear the words. The hooks were still gut-punching punk (with a southern bend), but the songs took more time to get to where they needed to go and they were all the better for it. –
http://allstonpudding.com/lee-bains-iii-great-scott/
RVA PLAYLIST
(Richmond music blog) Positive show preview with band photo and “The Company Man’”audio stream
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires are playing at Strange Matter in support of their new album Dereconstructed, which is an incredible follow-up to their insanely amazing debut album There Is a Bomb in Gilead. Dwight Howard Johnson, Horsehead and Hail Blackbird are also on the bill.
http://rvaplaylist.com/2014/07/21/so-mates-of-state-old-97s-and-lee-bains-iii-the-glory-fires-are-all-playing-richmond-in-one-night/
BRIGHTEST YOUNG THINGS
(online DC music blog) Recommended show preview with band photo
Shows To Get Pumped For This Week: Monday, July 21 – Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires, Wanted Man @ DC9 RiYL: records described as a ‘road raging, all night party’
http://brightestyoungthings.com/articles/shows-to-get-pumped-for-this-week-69.htm
ANTIQUIET
(online music site) Positive album review.
LEE BAINS III & THE GLORY FIRES INTRODUCE THEMSELVES WITH THE THUNDEROUS DERECONSTRUCTED
Some albums sneak up on you. You listen once, and shades of appreciation creep in, but the record’s true worth doesn’t come across until much later. Until you’ve listened to it over and over again, and suddenly you come to an understanding of what it’s about and how it works. Dereconstructed by Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires is not that kind of record. Dereconstructed starts with a blistering riff, grabs you by the throat, and proceeds to kick your ass with their potent blend of punk, Southern rock, and soul for roughly 35 minutes. Don’t be alarmed, this is a good thing.
Not that the album doesn’t have depth as well though. Sure, the intrinsic thrill of layers of fuzz and distortion oozing out of the speakers as two guitars grapple for supremacy is undeniable. Yes, the rhythm section is both forceful and nimble, with frenetic beats merging southern blues and punk supporting the low-end rummaging of the bass that’s both relentlessly physical and melodically graceful when it’s called for (check out the precision wrecking ball underpinning ‘What’s Good and Gone’ especially). Then there’s the visceral joy of the sound taken together, a maxed out affair with a ragged production that gives every song a palpable grit. It sounds as if the album wasn’t recorded so much as melted down to a toxic sludge and smeared against your ears. It sounds sloppy, but as it’s done with an expert’s hand. Anyways, that’s all well and good, but what makes the album feel really special is how it sticks around with you.
Lyrically, Lee Bains proves himself an expert at balancing erudite and considered writing that sounds surprisingly natural. Listening to the impassioned and ragged delivery you wouldn’t expect striking imagery such as
But just consider the weeds downtown, and how they grow/How the Queen Anne’s Lace covers hot parking lots like snow’.
It’s even more fun when the waxing poetic turns vitriolic, like in ‘Flags!’,
Senior year, you could go deaf from all the talk of terrorists and Muslim fundamentalists/And I thought it strange in a town where so-called believers blew up women’s clinics we had the gall to act so offended/And when it would come time to say the Pledge in class, I would sit my ass down at that desk/And the only words of it I said were ‘under God,’ I figured we were beyond the help of anybody else.
The album is both seething indictment and impassioned support for the culture of the South and America at large, as it’s perceived, as it is, and as it’s warped and twisted for monetary gain. Not that you need to dig that deep to find something to like here, as I said, it’s thrilling on its own merits as a quality rock & roll album.
To keep it simple, if you ever wished the Drive-By Truckers and their ilk would just skip to the ragers, or wished that garage bands actually had something to say, or if you just need a daily dosage of riffage, this is a good place to start.
http://antiquiet.com/music/2014/07/lee-bains-iii-the-glory-fires-introduce-themselves-with-the-thunderous-dereconstructed/
CLTURE
(online Charlotte music site) Feature interview to preview show +
‘The Company Man’ video
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires: Let the Rebellion Begin
By Brent Hill
Rock ‘n’ Roll used to be about risk and rebellion. It used to be about challenging The Man, now it’s about making him rich. It used to be about having something to say, now it’s about regurgitating cliches. Where is the risk? What happened to rebellion?
It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment rock music lost its mutinous mojo (insert your list of shitty bands here), but Birmingham, Alabama bred Lee Bains III and his band, The Glory Fires, are poised to reclaim it.
It won’t happen by just cranking up the fuzz and buzz on their second album, Dereconstruction,although that certainly doesn’t hurt, but rather by delivering a message that comes to blows with the past and present sins of Bains’ beloved Southern home. Because as Bains learned early on: when you don’t fit in, it’s better to fight back. ‘High school was the most difficult and painful period of my life,’ Bains confesses. ‘I definitely did not feel like I fit in. And I felt that the authority figures around me didn’t speak for me, so my rebellion manifested itself in acting up and getting into trouble. I was an after-school special.’
Enter Dr. Cooper, Bains’ sophomore year World History teacher. ‘Dr. Cooper was the first person to steer my rebelliousness in an intellectual direction,’ Bain says. ‘He taught me that when you have that spirit in you, you need to channel it in significant ways.’ And Bains has done just that on Dereconstruction, where you can hear the echo of Dr. Cooper’s teachings. Lyrically, it’s packed with intellectual (and downright poetic) musings on what it really means to be southern and all the baggage that brings (the South’s history of racism, closed-mindedness, and corruption dominates Bains’ lyrics). The album elicits the question: can you still love a place while questioning its ideologies? Bains says yes, as evidenced in the song ‘The Kudzu and The Concrete’: Repentance and forgiveness/and loving your neighbor as yourself/but what the hell does that mean/when all your neighbors look the same/and think the same.
Bains’ lyrics speak to a bigger, more universal, truth that transcends the South in which he was raised. Context is everything. The places we come from, without a doubt, make us who we are. Whether it’s Birmingham, Alabama or Birmingham, England. Whether it’s Columbia, South Carolina or Colombia, South America. In fact, Bains cites the Nobel Prize winning novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by famed Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez when discussing the importance of person and place on his album. Bains is as well-read as he is friendly, and he gets downright giddy when asked to discuss the first sentence of the novel in terms of his own lyrics.
‘What I love about that sentence, and the novel as a whole, is how it perfectly illustrates the importance of context on a person’s life,’ he explains. ‘ In that first sentence we meet a character at the most dramatic point in his life, his pending death, yet we are drawn past that moment into the context of the cultural and familial influences that informed his personhood. Furthermore, the village in One Hundred Years of Solitude is as much a character as the people, symbolizing the profound and lasting effects a place can have on individuals.’
Those don’t exactly sound like the words of a recovering ‘after-school special’ who had the plug pulled on him at a show in Fort Worth, Texas last year for being too loud. Or perhaps that’s what makes his words all that more powerful. It’s exactly the type of intellectual rebellion that Dr. Cooper instilled in him: be loud, but be smart.
After all, rebellion should be as much head as it is heart. Bains recognizes that in order to question his southern upbringing, he must draw strength from it. This paradox is mirrored in the lyrics ‘I know that Birmingham gets you down/but look what it raised you up to be’ in ‘The Weeds Downtown.’ The paradox of person and place rises again on the song ‘Dereconstructed’: We were whooped with the Good Book/Wound up shamed, sorry and worse/But I yearned to burn the wrath out of every chapter/And water the love in every verse/Water the love in every verse.
What’s interesting about those lyrics is how they question the authoritarian interpretations of the Bible. But Bains sees past the bible-beating fear in those chapters to the hope,digging up the love buried beneath the wrath and threatening to make that love grow like the kudzu in his lyrics. Make no mistake, questioning those who wield the Good Book as a weapon is risky business, especially for a good Christian boy from Alabama. But query is a rebellion’s greatest asset, a lesson Bains, once again, credits to his high school history teacher. ‘Dr. Cooper taught me that there is nothing wrong with being a skeptic,’ Bains says. ‘And that anytime someone says something with great authority, that may be the best time to doubt what they’re saying.’
Doubt may be a driving force behind Bains’ lyrics, but punk-like conviction is at the center of The Glory Fires sound. Dereconstruction is Wilson Pickett meets Lynyrd Skynyrd in a dark alley behind CBGBs. This 36-minute Muscle Shoals gut punch is do in part to legendary garage-rock producer Tim Kerr. ‘Our lives shows are louder and more raucous than one might expect having only listened to our first album (There is a Balm in Gilead),’ insists Bains. ‘To me our concerts feel like a cross between a quiet moment of reflection on a river and a full tackle football game with friends. Amazingly, Tim was able to capture that in the studio.’
So what you hear on Dereconstruction is a barrage of guitars, bass, and drums. An all-out assault of rock, soul, punk, and folk cloaked in sleazy southern scuzz.’When I was a teenager and heard music that was more underground, it sent shockwaves through my body,’ says Bains. I fell in love with the brashness and imperfection of what I heard. We wanted the album to have that quality of rawness to compliment the message. This definitely wasn’t the album for pretty or sentimental songs.’ However, it only takes a few listens before you begin to hear the beauty in the bruises, and sense the ‘love in every verse.’
Lee Bains III knows that his message is risky, but you can’t start a revolution without throwing a few punches. In the end, his rebellion won’t be remembered for the blood on the walls. It will be remembered for the power of his words. Dr. Cooper would be proud.
Follow Lee Bains III and The Glory Fires on twitter and facebook.
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires at The Milestone on Thursday, July 24
Watch ‘The Company Man’ official music video by Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires
http://clture.org/?p=2153
PHILADELPHIA INQUIER
(Philly daily) Positive album review.
Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires – Dereconstructed
(Sub Pop ***)
Alabama-born gospel-reared rocker Lee Bains spends a lot of time thinking about Southern identity on the excellently titled Dereconstructed. You might not immediately notice the soul-searching nature of songs like “The Weeds Downtown” and “The Kudzu & The Concrete,” however. That’s because Bains, a former member of the much-loved Dexateens, rocks with such bracing abandon, as he brings howling garage-punk intensity to the Southern rock lineage that runs from Lynyrd Skynyrd to the Alabama Shakes. The sonic assault can be too undifferentiated from track to track, but Bains’ best intentions, in singing songs as a proud Southerner horrified by the bloodstained past of the land he loves, still comes ringing through, very loud if not always crystal clear.
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/music/20140720_New_CDs__Lee_Bains_III___the_Glory_Fires__NRBQ__and_Common.html#6MY67JhOGZglgPky.99
ROANOKE TIMES
(Roanoke daily) – Dan Deluca’s Philly Inquirer wire review
http://www.roanoke.com/cd-reviews/article_22b2589e-6703-5307-bfcf-3c3734d4cfd3.html
ERIE TIMES-NEWS
(Erie, PA daily) – Dan Deluca’s Philly Inquirer wire review
http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140726/ENTERTAINMENT0301/307269996/Common%27s-%27Nobody%27s-Smiling%27-has-grit-focus&template=printart
CARROLL COUNTY TIMES
(Westminster, MD daily) – Dan Deluca’s Philly Inquirer wire review
http://www.carrollcountytimes.com/topic/entertainment/ridley-scott-PECLB003649.topic
THE SPOKESMAN REVIEW
(Spokane, WA daily) – Dan Deluca’s Philly Inquirer wire review
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/jul/25/album-reviews/
THE HARTFORD COURANT
(Hartford, CT daily) – Dan Deluca’s Philly Inquirer wire review
http://www.courant.com/entertainment/sns-mct-bc-mus-albums-20140721,0,2478945.story
SACRAMENTO BEE
(Sacramento, CA daily) – Dan Deluca’s Philly Inquirer wire review
http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/21/6570933/reviews-of-new-pop-music-releases.html
STATEN ISLAND LIVE
(NYC A&E site) Show preview with band photo.
DIXIE-FRIED FRIDAY
Finally, if you’re searching for a good late show tonight, stop by the
Mercury Lounge for some gritty roots rock, with Lee Bains III and the
Glory Fires.
As an extension of the skills honed with the great garage rockers,
Dexateens, Bains’ new project is a welcome progression and compliment.
As can be heard on his barn-burning second album and Sub Pop debut,
“Dereconstructed,” Bains and crew breath some fresh and fiery breath into
some good time, Dixie-fried Southern rock.
It’s a punk-fuel, twin guitar mix that recalls some of the best of the
Rolling Stones, Replacements, Lynyrd Skynyrd and, surprisingly enough, Bad
Company. If only more new country wannabes followed in the steps of the
Glory Fires, the sorry state of the current genre would greatly improve.
(For a taste, go to
https://soundcloud.com/subpop/lee-bains-iii-the-glory-weeds-downtown).
http://www.silive.com/entertainment/music/index.ssf/2014/07/back-yard_bands.html
BEDFORD & BOWERY
(NYC A&E site) Show preview with Ain’t No Stranger video.
Time again for Good Shows, our weekly roundup of what’s good in live music.
Southern rockers signed to Sub Pop? OK, then. Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires have straight-forward southern appeal, with lots of Skynyrd-esque guitar work and a dash of swamp blues. Will the show be good? They once got kicked out of a club for being too rowdy. In Texas. Mercury Lounge, Lower East Side, Friday, July 18 at 10:30 p.m., tickets $10
http://bedfordandbowery.com/2014/07/crocodiles-phoxes-and-how-not-to-get-beat-up-by-brody-dalle/
CHARLOTTE OBSERVER
(Charlotte, NC daily) ‘This week’s hot concerts’ show preview with ‘The Company Man’ video.
Lee Bains & the Glory Fires
Thursday 9 p.m., The Milestone, 3400 Tuckaseegee Rd., $5-$7, www.themilestoneclub.com
Music fans would be hard pressed to find a live band that rocks harder per dollar and the Alabama quartet’s Sub Pop debut, ‘Dereconstructed,’ plays less on leader Bains’ literate writing and soulful delivery and more on the band’s raw live intensity with its soul singing and Southern rock grooves cutting through buzzing, noise-punk distortion.
http://cltsoundbites.blogspot.com/2014/07/this-weeks-hot-concerts_18.html
RVA MAG
(Richmond weekly) Brief DC show preview with new live video.
RVA Shows You Must See This Week: 7/16-7/22
Tuesday, July 22, 9 PM
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires, Horsehead, Dwight Howard Johnson, Hail Blackbird @ Strange Matter – $8 (order tickets here: http://gloryfires.eventbrite.com/)
This show is going to be a blast! Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires are known for their Southern brand of revved-up rock n’ roll with tons of energy and intensity, and the fact that they promote themselves like an old-fashioned gospel revival meeting fits right in with the sort of raging throwback boogie jams they lay down on their new album, Dereconstructed, which was released by Sub Pop earlier this year. If, like me, you’re not afraid to admit that you have old beat-up LPs by The Faces and Humble Pie floating around in your record collection, this is the kind of show you all-too-rarely get to see and will probably appreciate more than you realize. Lee Bains III used to be in the Dexateens, which gives him the same sort of garage-rock pedigree that a lot of those 70s boogie-rockers had and means he’s two degrees of separation from the Drive-By Truckers, so that should tell you all you need to know.
Horsehead is also on this bill, and while I did have the good fortune to catch these local alt-country rockers at a house party over the July Fourth weekend, you may not have caught them in a while, and let me tell you right now–you need to fix that. I had forgotten how much these guys ruled until I saw them on a temporary stage in a backyard a couple weeks ago. Seeing them on a permanent stage inside Strange Matter will be a totally rad experience, I promise. Charlottesville’s Dwight Howard Johnson are doing more of an indie rock thing with their poppy yet overdriven tunes, but they’ll surely rock you nonetheless. Opening act Hail Blackbird is a new band from members of Lorem Ipsum, and they carry on that band’s rockin’ post-hardcore sound with aplomb. That’s a pretty stacked bill, on the whole. I’m into it.
http://rvamag.com/articles/full/23549/rva-shows-you-must-see-this-week-716-722
DC ROCK LIVE
(DC music blog) Brief DC show preview with new live video.
Lee Bains III brings his trebled ferocious rock sounds to the DC9 on Monday, July 21st.
http://dcrocklive.blogspot.com/2014/07/previews-of-coming-attractions-late.html
THE REPUBLICAN / MASS LIVE
(Northampton, MA daily) Feature interview to preview Florence show with band photo
Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires to play 13th Floor in Northampton
By George Lenker
When you think of musicians from Alabama, you might think of Hank Williams, Wilson Pickett, or even country vocal group that uses the state as its name. But Lee Bains III is here to reveal a different side of the Cotton State’s music.
“Man, the independent scene in Birmingham has always been pretty eclectic, although I think it skews toward guitar-centered, aggressive music,” Bains said. “I know more badass, inventive guitar players in Birmingham than really makes sense.”
Bains and his band The Glory Fires are one example of that kind of band and they’ll be bringing it to the 13th Floor Music Lounge stage in the Florence section of Northampton on July 17.
Bains talked about his band, writing style, and latest record in a recent interview.
You play play a blend of punk, soul, and country. Where did that all come from?
My initial musical education came from church music; my grandparents were church musicians, and I grew up under their wings, singing in choirs. I also grew up occasionally attending a holiness Pentecostal church with the lady who took care of me while my parents were working, so gospel music was always around. Having grown up with a music-loving dad and older brothers, I’d had some of the hard work behind finding good music done for me. There was a lot of ’70s rock’n’roll, classic soul, and older country, as well as ’80s college rock, ’90s indie rock, conscious rap, weird jazz. All kinds of stuff. My first exposure to DIY punk rock, fittingly enough, came from my cousin Will (Killingsworth), who has been making amazing music in Western Mass. for a long time now, and whose band Longings is playing this show. His bands Orchid and Ampere really challenged my ideas of what music could do, both aesthetically and ideologically.
Your newest album, “Dereconstructed,” has a definite theme centered on the South. Talk a little about that and why you named the album that.
The name is a portmanteau, drawing from the philosophical process of Deconstruction, and from Reconstruction, the period following the Civil War during which the South was being repatriated into the United States. By my reckoning, the prevailing Southern narrative and identity has become increasingly monolithic, entrenched and exclusive in recent years, and, as a Southerner who takes personal issue with the political and ideological trappings of that narrative, and takes more outward-looking issue with its implications in terms of race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and the like, I really felt called to undertake the dismantling of Southernness in my own way.
You are pretty much an unabashed Christian, but a progressive one. Talk a little about your spiritual background and how it informs your music.
As a kid, I was educated in different church-music traditions, and appreciated that, in all of them, the ultimate and only goal was to make a joyful noise — a transparent, heartfelt expression of truth. As I got older and started to question those teachings and institutions more intensely, I was still deeply moved by the music. Years later, encountering those forms and texts again in a more informed way, I began to appreciate the radically progressive implications of the Bible, and the art that can spring,and often has sprung,from it.
You mention the great novelist Walker Percy in your song ‘Everything You Took.” He’s also a very quintessential southern writer. Was he a big influence on you and how?
Walker Percy’s “The Last Gentleman” resonated with me profoundly when I was in college, a Southern boy in the Northeast, having my mind blown by theory and my heart squeezed by homesickness. His Southernness and Christianity were ones not held out of ignorance to alternatives or out of myopia, but ones that were held in light of, and, it seemed, in part because of a largely relativist, open worldview that allowed people to exist within and define themselves in relation to tier own communities how they saw fit.
Your songs are pretty literary and you studied literature in college. What’s your writing process like?
Work. I love music and the written word, but if I only sat down and wrote whenever I was on fire to write, I would have much fewer and lamer songs. When I’m home, I sit down and force myself to write every day. I revise, and reexamine, and revise again. I’m fortunate to be friends with fiction writers and poets, because I relate much more to their common processes than the burst-of-inspiration-don’t-touch-it-again method used by so many songwriters.
http://www.masslive.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2014/07/lee_bains_iii_and_the_glory_fi.html
VISIT BLOOMINGTON
(Bloomington, IN A&E site) Stock show from bio
Lee Bains III and The Glory Fires live at the Bishop Bar tonight!
http://www.visitbloomington.com/includes/events/index.cfm?action=displayDetail&menuID=129&eventid=24786
PITTSBURGH IN TUNE
(Pittsburgh music blog) Brief positive show preview with band photo
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires invade Pittsburgh’s The Smiling Moose on Tuesday, July 15
Up-and-coming rockers Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires, who released blistering new full-length ‘Dereconstructed’ in May, invade Pittsburgh’s The Smiling Moose on Tuesday, July 15, at 7 p.m. Tickets for the all-ages show are $10. The Smiling Moose is located at 1306 E. Carson St. on the city’s South Side. Call 412-431-4666 or visit http://www.smiling-moose.com for additional information.
http://pghintune.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/lee-bains-iii-the-glory-fires-invade-pittsburghs-the-smiling-moose-on-tuesday-july-15
11TH HOUR
(Macon, GA weekly) – Feature interview / show preview
(print ony)
http://issuu.com/meg11hour/docs/macon7-4-14/21?e=1251618/8517712
THE HORN – Positive album review
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires ‘Dereconstructed’
Sub Pop
Classic Southern rock ‘n’ roll will probably never die as long as there are still passionate bands out there continuing to persevere in evolving the distinctive sound. Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires’ second album Dereconstructed is a fiery blast of loud electric guitar licks and bluesy belted vocals. There’s a 1970s vibe to many of these songs, but you can hear the band’s metal influences, too, keeping them free from being boxed into one particular genre. The Alabama-based foursome go hard on the title track, ‘Flags!’ and ‘The Company Man,’ while bringing it back down on the smooth ‘Mississippi Bottomland’ and ‘Dirt Track.’ Their songwriting is atmospheric and so distinctly of a place (the South), particularly on ‘Burnpiles Swimming Holes’ and ‘What’s Good and Gone.’
http://www.readthehorn.com/lifestyle/music/96490/album_reviews_anna_tivel_lee_bains_iii_the_glory_fires_earthlessheavy_blanket_
BLOOMINGTON HERALD TIMES
Hot Spots: Bloomington Symphony Orchestra, Terry Cole and Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires
Posted: Thursday, July 10, 2014 2:00 am
Compiled by Marci Creps | 0 comments
Hear some Alabama rock
Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires are touring to promote their latest album, ‘Deconstructed.’ The critically acclaimed album has received rave reviews from the likes of Rolling Stone, NPR and the New York Times. So if you’re interested in hearing some rock ‘n’ roll from Alabama, check out the band live at the Bishop. The show starts at 8 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $7.
http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/entertainment/hot-spots-bloomington-symphony-orchestra-terry-cole-and-lee-bains/article_900ffde7-fa8b-5aec-aa39-954a5bcd645f.html
NASHVILLE SCENE
Positive Critic’s Pick show preview
Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires w/Thelma and the Sleaze & Birdwings at The Basement
In Alabama’s current indie roots and rock renaissance, regional markers , when they’re there at all , take varied forms, from grooves and vocal deliveries bearing traces of hard country-soul accents to identification with Muscle Shoals mythos (and in Jason Isbell’s case, small-town settings that lend a desperate, dead-end dignity to storytelling). Birmingham, Ala.’s Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires are every bit as invested in their stomping grounds as any of their peers, and have their own way of representing it. Led by Bains , a Dexateens guitarist-turned-songwriting frontman , the quartet graduated from Alive Naturalsound to Sub Pop with sophomore album Dereconstruction, which is every bit the reckoning with racial and classist wrongs, past and present, that it sounds like. ‘The Company Man’ implicates supposedly respectable civic and business leaders , civil rights-combating Bull Connor among them , in the abuse of power, while ‘We Defend Our Rights’ turns the state motto in on itself with retellings of church bombings and immigrant witch hunts. And the sound of the set is appropriately brutal, a guitar attack powered by noisy Southern riffage. There’s a party-hearty side to the band, too , displayed in the feral boogie ‘Burnpiles, Swimming Holes,’ for instance , and that’s where their genuine, and genuinely fraught, hometown affection comes through. JEWLY HIGHT
Thu. July at The Basement
http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/lee-bains-iii-and-the-glory-fires-w-thelma-and-the-sleaze-and-birdwings/Event?oid=4230460
RICHMOND PUNK MUSIC EXAMINER
Positive 5/5 star album review.
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires have winner with Dereconstructed
By Keith Ashley
Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires new album is a sure fire winner. Their new album ‘Deconstructed’ has a sound that brings listeners back to the days of early Lynyrd Skynyrd and the heyday of Southern rock was giving fans hit after hit. The quartet from Alabama brings rocking guitars, a driving drum beat and great vocals on ten hard hitting songs that make you wish there were ten more songs on the album. From the opening licks of ‘Company Man’ you know you’re in for a good time and a decent change from what is being played on radio in 2014. ‘Burnpiles and Swimming Holes’ is a prime example of Southern rock with a modern twist and is a great example of the band’s music style. The raw, gritty, down home feel of the lyrics and music combine to make a record that hard rock, southern rock and even metal fans will enjoy. If you blended Skynyrd, some gravely Kid Rock vocals, a dash of Thin Lizzy and toss in some Clash you get the recipe for what this album sounds like and it will go down as one of the best rock albums of the year. The band really has a hit on their hands with this album and is well deserved of the praise it has gotten from fans and critics alike.
The band which consists of members Lee Bains lll on guitar and vocals, Eric Wallace on guitar, Adam Williamson on bass, and Blake Williamson on drums is touring to support the album and will be in Richmond, Virginia to play a show at the Strange Matter on July 22, 2014 so if you get the chance RVA go see them. For any and all information on Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires check out the bands website, Facebook page and Twitter page.
http://www.examiner.com/review/lee-bains-iii-the-glory-fires-have-winner-with-dereconstructed
CITY BEAT
(Cincy weekly) Positive show preview with band photo
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires
Monday , MOTR Pub
BY BRIAN BAKER
SOUND ADVICE
It’s easy enough to describe Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires in strictly musical terms. Hailing from Birmingham, Ala., former Dexateens guitarist Bains and his rip-roaring band of Dixie brothers scream through their sophomore album, Dereconstructed, with the ferocity of a Punk-fueled Drive-By Truckers, informed by early Rolling Stones, snotty ‘60s Garage dervishes like The Standells and The Shadows of Knight and ‘70s swaggermeisters like The Dictators, with a healthy dash of Southern Gospel passion.
If Bains’ songs were just cock-waving paeans, all raw emotion and raucous energy and fist-pumping theatrics, that would probably be enough to sell the Glory Fires’ concept.
But Bains has bigger catfish to batter fry on Dereconstructed (and on the Glory Fires’ 2012 debut, There is a Bomb in Gilead, for that matter), as he uses his lyrical pulpit to recount the dichotomy of living in a South where freedom was , and in many ways, remains , conditional and far from universally applied even when it was legally mandated.
It may be no small irony that the soundtrack accompanying Bains’ observations hits with the force of the truncheons and fire hoses that were used by the police to quell non-violent protests in the supposedly enlightened ‘60s.
On the other hand, it may just be that a spoonful of visceral Garage Rock sugar helps the medicine of re-examining the sins and scars of Southern suppression go down.
If there was ever a case to be made for songs that make you think while you dance, or dance while you think, surely it is Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires’ social diatribes disguised as heart-pounding, needle-in-the-red, stomp-and-shout Rock & Roll anthems.
LEE BAINS III & THE GLORY FIRES plays MOTR Pub on Monday, July 14.
http://citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-30627-lee_bains_iii_the_gl.html
THE COURIER-JOURNAL
(Louisville daily) Positive show preview with band photo
Plan your week | Our Top 5 picks
2. Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires make rock ‘n’ roll so urgent it feels like a bottle rocket going off in your back pocket, an approach that Bains perfected as frontman for The Dexateens. The Glory Fires’ new album, ‘Dereconstructed,’ is its first for the legendary Sub Pop Records, and Bains is a passionate performer.
WHEN: 9 p.m. Friday
WHERE: Zanzabar, 2100 S. Preston St.
COST: $8
http://www.courier-journal.com/story/entertainment/music/2014/07/09/plan-week-top-picks/12414539/
LEO WEEKLY (Louisville weekly)
Feature interview & Loisville show preview
A thinking person’s party band
Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires rises
BY ALAN SCULLEY
Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires’ label, Sub Pop Records, touts them as a party band. But this is one party band that can appeal to the head as well as the feet. ‘I have always been drawn to music that can be intellectual and visceral at the same time. That’s what I strive for,’ says singer/guitarist Bains. ‘I think rock ‘n’ roll that, as a form, has power and a fast beat and a loud guitar, and thoughtful lyrics, are not at odds. They can support one another and sharpen each other.’
Bains started forming that notion after discovering the literate punk of Hot Water Music, Against Me! and Avail growing up. As lyricist and chief songwriter, Bains shows he is an articulate, thoughtful writer who also just happens to like to rock really hard. On the band’s newly released second album, Dereconstructed, several songs (including ‘The Kudzu and the Concrete’ and ‘Mississippi Bottomland’) deal with Bains’ roots in the South (he grew up in Birmingham), examining its culture, the characteristics that make the South unique and how this plays into the values and ideals Bains is developing as he grows further into adulthood and seeks to gain a greater understanding of himself.
‘This album is definitely toying, or at least trying to, with the notion of Southerness and identity,’ Bains says. ‘I have found my perspective and my experience, no matter how much I’ve wished it wasn’t at different times in my life, is a Southern one. I am a product of my place in some regard, as I think we all are , I think, if anything, this is just my attempt to confront and reconcile myself to my cultural inheritance.’
There’s also a topical element, as Bains looks at corporate greed and corruption (‘Company Man’), the homogenization of communities in pursuit of profit (‘What’s Good and Gone’) and blind allegiance (‘Flags’).
Some of the songs were written during the time of the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement in the United States and were inspired by these actions. ‘I was really , experiencing a sense of anger, but also excitement and hope, to some degree,’ he says.
Dereconstructed is considerably harder rocking than There is a Bomb in Gilead, their 2012 debut. Bains feels the outspoken content of some of his lyrics played a part in this musical shift. ‘I think there were a few (factors),’ he says. ‘I think playing so much, the songs had started to become faster and more intense, the songs from the last album. And those were the songs we all most enjoyed playing and I thought felt most natural. So that was part of it. But on the other side, there were, I guess, issues I was considering when writing this album that just inspired more of that type of sentiment in me. I felt like there was more aggression behind the songs than there was on the first album.’
Dereconstructed was also influenced by the evolution of the Glory Fires lineup. Bains formed the group after a stint in the Alabama-based band the Dexateens. But about a year ago, the Glory Fires went through a significant lineup change, with new guitarist Eric Wallace and new bassist Adam Williamson joining Bains and drummer Blake Williamson (Adam’s brother).
‘I think as a result of touring so much, Blake and I have definitely established more of a musical rapport, I guess, and I think also gradually ratcheted up the intensity of our shows,’ Bains says. ‘Then, bringing Adam and Eric into the band pushed that up a lot more, just because they’re really great players as well as energetic presences.’
Liking the harder-hitting sound of the new lineup, the group wanted to capture that raw, full-throttle sound on Dereconstructed. There’s a little Southern twang, plenty of garage punk-ish aggression and a good deal of melody in the songs, which makes Dereconstructed an enervating, in-your-face and, most of all, fun experience. The power and personality of the band’s music means that even though there’s intelligence to the band’s songs, a Glory Fires concert is hardly an intellectual exercise.
‘We play rock ‘n’ roll music and our shows are , well, we definitely have fun at our shows,’ Bains says. ‘There’s definitely a wildness to it. It’s not a cerebral experience, going to one of our shows.’
http://leoweekly.com/music/thinking-person%E2%80%99s-party-band
PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER
(Pittsburgh weekly) Feature interview
Lee Bains III adds a punk twist to good ol’ Southern rock
“I think in the South, we have a tendency to try to be very polite.”
By Andy Mulkerin
I think in the South, we have a tendency to try to be very polite,” says Lee Bains III. “Sometimes at the expense of saying what we really feel.”
It’s into that climate that the Alabama-born Bains emerged with his band, The Glory Fires , but their new full-length, Dereconstructed (released on Sub Pop), is anything but polite, and puts an unexpected spin on Southern rock. Bains is unapologetically progressive in terms of politics, and the band’s music bridges the gap between Skynyrd and punk rock. It makes for an unexpected listen: riffs straight out of the Southern-rock playbook, with lyrics questioning aspects of Southern culture, from the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow to widespread religious intolerance. It’s straightforward and honest, and as a Southerner, it made Bains a bit uneasy.
“I have a friend who I share my writing with all the time,” Bains says. “And when I wrote this record, I was nervous about even sharing it with him.” But, while it might have been easier to lay the politics aside and make a party-rock record, he says the route he took was simply honest.
On Dereconstructed , a telling and loaded title alluding both to the politics of the post-war South and to literary theory , Bains attempts a difficult task: determining which Southern values to carry with him, and which to discard.
There’s a spirit of rebellion on the record that recalls outlaw country; on the title track, Bains sings, “They wanted meth labs and mobile homes / They wanted moonlight and magnolias / We gave them songs about taking your own damn stand / In spite of those who’d define and control you.” But earlier in the same song, he recalls: “We were whooped with the Good Book / Wound up shamed, sorry and worse.”
Christianity is a topic of special concern to Bains; he was brought up in the church like so many in the South, went through a period of questioning, and settled into a revised version of religion. “I’d still call myself a Christian,” Bains says. “But what that means to me now is very different from what it meant growing up.”
Seven of the 10 tracks on Dereconstructed mention Christianity or Christian themes and images explicitly. Pilate makes an appearance on track one; the song “What’s Good and Gone” starts, “In the beginning was the Word and the small naked Earth heard it.” Biblical imagery is part of Bains’ milieu, and throughout the record he brings us into his world time and again. But he’s not Pat Robertson or Joel Osteen, flaunting his piety for us to admire; he’s Flannery O’Connor, quietly allowing his religion to inform his work.
For a Bible-belt dweller, Bains also shows courage in privileging God over country, rather than equating the two. “And, when it would come time to say the Pledge in class, I would sit my ass down at that desk,” he sings on one song, “And the only words I’d say were ‘under God.’ I figured we were beyond the help of anyone else.”
That song “Flags,” begins with a reference to the tendency of Southerners to still raise the Confederate flag, but quickly turns to questioning the way flags of all types , American and otherwise , affect ideology. Now we’re a long way from Skynyrd.
It’s not all politics, though; Bains, while questioning certain aspects of Southern life and thought, takes time to write sweet anthems to his home. “The Weeds Downtown” is a perfect, ambivalent ode to Birmingham: “I know that Birmingham gets you down / And I guess that makes sense,” Bains begins, “When so many old friends retired, / If not expired, by the time we were 23.” He goes on to point out that, while things aren’t perfect, there’s also beauty that’s unique to the region: “Paris and New York don’t have honeysuckle vines like grow on 32nd Street.”
Weeds and wildflowers are some of Bains’ chief signifiers of the South, and play into his vision of a balance of urban and rural , several times throughout Dereconstructed, he notes how flowers and weeds grow amid urban development. At first glance it feels like Bains is showing off a degree in the natural sciences or something; it’s a safe bet to say there won’t be another rock record this year with as many references to specific types of flowers. “I don’t have a background in botany, no,” he says with a laugh. “My grandmother was into that kind of stuff, so maybe I got that from her.”
But more than just a laundry list of wild plants, Bains is presenting a theory on mixing the best of different worlds: Sweet-smelling flowers growing free in the city also allude to traditional Southern values like independence and individual rights running through a broader social context that’s more friendly to minorities, and less politically oppressive.
It’s a complicated task that Bains has taken on, but he’s met it with care, poetic vision and straight-up rock ‘n’ roll on Dereconstructed, one of the most thoughtful rock entries so far this year. Not everyone will agree with everything Lee Bains III has to say, but, especially in the context of Southern rock, that’s what makes it all the more worth saying.
LEE BAINS III AND THE GLORY FIRES
6:30 p.m. Tue., July 15.
Smiling Moose,
1306 E. Carson St.,
South Side. $10.
All ages.
412-431-4668
http://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/lee-bains-iii-adds-a-punk-twist-to-good-ol-southern-rock/Content?oid=1763857
NASHVILLE’S DEAD
(Nashville online) Simple show mention
The Rundown: Lee Bains & the Glory Fires are at the Basement on Thursday,
http://nashvillesdead.com/2014/07/07/the-rundown-7-7-2014-7-13-2014/
THE TENNESSEAN
(Nashville daily) Simple show mention
Don’t miss Lee Bains & The Glory Fires with Thelma & The Sleaze and Birdwings live at The Basement
http://events.tennessean.com/event/detail/441859983
NOW PLAYING IN NASHVILLE
(Nashville A&E site) Simple show mention with Lee photo
Don’t miss Lee Bains & The Glory Fires with Thelma & The Sleaze and Birdwings live at The Basement
http://www.nowplayingnashville.com/event/detail/441859982
SOUTHERN LIVING
(national monthly magazine)
10 Southern Rock Bands to Listen to Now
By Jennifer V. Cole
We’re a little music obsessed here at Southern Living (it’s not all layer cakes and window treatments all the time). In tribute to the 60th anniversary of the birth of rock & roll, here are 10 new rock bands,the up & comers, the scrappy next generation,we’re loving these days.
1. Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires
Birmingham, AL and Atlanta, GA
The brazen guitar power of Lynyrd Skynyrd combined with the heartfelt realism of blue collar Southern life ‡ la Bruce Springsteen
SL Playlist: ‘The Weeds Downtown’
http://thedailysouth.southernliving.com/2014/07/05/10-southern-rock-bands-to-listen-to-now/
BEST NEW BANDS
(Portland, OR site) Posiitive Portland show review
Lee Bains III And The Glory Fires At Mississippi Studios
Written by Jared Christenson
Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires are getting acclaim for their liberal take on good ol’ Southern rock. Their second album Dereconstructed, released this past May on Sub Pop, is an expression of Lee Bain’s experiences as a born and raised Southerner who both loves the place he’s from and hates the ugly aspects of it. It’s the anti-oppression ethos of Neil Young’s ‘Southern Man’ sung in the down home parlance of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’ but with a punk edge, and it’s as in-your-face as the title would suggest.
But politics aside, if you’re going to play Southern rock the question arises: Can you choogle? Can you boogie? Can you get a grown woman to dance like a baby at your show? Portland’s Mississippi Studios held the firm answers to these hard questions.
By the time Lee Bains and Co. took the stage at eleven the room was unfortunately pretty empty. But the beauty of this particular style is that the emptier the bar is the more it feels like a backwoods honky tonk, and the better those big dirty riffs sound. Perhaps sensing this dynamic the Glory Fires launched into album opener, ‘The Company Man,’ with an extra dose of vigor.
No sooner had they hit the bridge than by some miracle of Southern rock she appeared: the middle aged dancing lady. Half Elaine Benes, half happy toddler, 100% party, she appears wherever good classic rock times are to be had. Lee Bain’s husky soft-edged singing drawl must have summoned her when it elevated into a hound dog bay on the chorus of ‘The Company Man.’
The boys kept it loud and rowdy for their dancing matron and the twenty or so other crowd members in attendance as they played through Dereconstructed’s track list song for song. Lee Bains would jump off the stage to solo in the crowd then clamber back on stage for a chorus, usually losing his strap in the process. Somewhere in between ‘We Dare Defend Our Rights’ and ‘Mississippi Bottomland’ long-haired drummer Blake Williamson looked up mid-beat and pragmatically hocked a loogie right over his ride cymbal, which was pretty awesome.
Lee Bains likes to pause between songs and elucidate the meaning of the lyrics. These are usually earnestly political in nature (he introduced ‘What’s Good and Gone’ as ‘an attempt to summarize the history of Western imperialism in under five minutes.’), but the last song of the night was more personal. Bains described ‘Dirt Track’ as an ode to early days of stock car racing, before NASCAR, when it was just neighbors racing each other for fun. He compared that sense of communal enthusiasm to being in a band and playing shows with your buddies before you make it big, because you care about the music and not much else.
A poignant thought as the Glory Fires burned low to the refrain of ‘keep on working,keep it on the dirt track’ and the venue emptied for the night.
Dig into Bain’s lyrics for yourself and check out the band’s tour dates here.
http://www.bestnewbands.com/live-reviews/item/3910-lee-bains-iii-and-the-glory-fires-at-mississippi-studios
THE LOS ANGELES BEAT
(LA music blog) Positive album review
Album Review: Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires’ ‘Dereconstructed’
Posted on July 3, 2014 by Simone Snaith
Dereconstructed is the new album by the fabulously-named Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires (get it? glorifiers? because I was on late on that). The album, from start to finish, is one awesome blast of blisterin’ southern rock with clever, mostly political lyrics.
I discovered the band through The Bitter Southerner, which is a fascinating site for southern transplants like myself. Their piece on Dereconstructed, which is the band’s second album and their Sub Pop debut, started off by calling it ‘the most important rock record about the south ever’, so I certainly had to listen to it after that!
The group was founded in Birmingham, AL by singer/guitarist Lee Bains, formerly of the Dexateens, whose energy and optimism beams from the huge grin under the baseball cap he sports in many pictures. On Dereconstructed, the guitars are turned up loud and raw in the forefront which is appropriate and thrilling, but Bains’s voice has such a soulful yet light grittiness, that it’d be nice to hear it a bit better. He drops in ‘y’all’ and ‘ain’t it, baby’ and ‘shoot’ (I think) throughout the songs, and it somehow sounds totally natural and unaffected. Most of the album has an updated classic rock feel, revved up with a punk rock edge.
The opening song ‘The Company Man’ sets the tone for the album, launching into ominous, grinding chords and Bain calling out ‘Tell me why’ a few times before letting loose a scream. The song has an epic and ever-relevant chorus lyric, ‘Don’t ever trust the company man’ (which weirdly makes me think of Paul Reiser in Aliens). But it starts off referencing Bull Connor, the man who set fire hoses and dogs on civil rights marchers in 1963. Bains sings that his grandma remembers seeing Connor in church, looking ‘Mean and proud even praying in the pew’.
‘We Dare Defend Our Rights’ kicks off with scathing lyrics that make it even clearer that these guys aren’t Good Ole Boys: ‘‘Blessed are the meek’ / Unless it’s four little girls in Sunday school / Learning how to turn the other cheek / Or the younguns lashed with brimstone tongues / (‘Boys like girls, and girls like boys.’) / Or the hijos watching Papa patted down / In the blue lights and siren’s noise.’
One of my favorite tracks, ‘Burnpiles, Swimming Holes’, has an urgent, chugging riff in the verses and a yell-along chorus that’ll pump you up if you’re down. ‘The Kudzu and the Concrete’, which references an invasive climbing vine that covers much of the southeast, is decidedly catchy, and ‘The Weeds Downtown’ is another standout, taking a break from the manic energy for slower verses and an uplifting chorus. The lyrics on the latter are stubbornly optimistic about Bains’s hometown: ‘Paris and New York don’t have honeysuckle vines like the ones on 32nd Street / I know that Birmingham gets you down, but look what it raised you up to be.’
‘Mississippi Bottomland’ is another track that slows things down a bit, with a bluesier feel, while ‘Flags’ is basically punk rock with its shouted, one-word chorus. Like every single song on the record, it is probably amazing live, so it’s a shame that I already missed the L.A. stop on their tour. They played the Bootleg Theater on June 21, but hopefully they’ll be back again soon!
http://thelosangelesbeat.com/2014/07/album-review-lee-bains-iii-the-glory-fires-dereconstructed/
DC ROCK LIVE
(DC music blog) Positive album review and DC show preview
LEE BAINS III and the GLORY FIRES “DERECONSTRUCTED”
f you like your deep down heartland bluesy singer songwriters adding crazed punk rock and post punk guitar moves to their songs, then check out Lee Bains III and his band. This reminds me a bit of Shooter Jennings fleshing out his songs with a fierce rock band a few years. back. It is also for fans of Jon Spencer, Grinderman, and anyone who likes that distant spot on the horizon where a punk band can meet up with an Americana band and have a great time together. The songs are all pretty good here and Bains has a solid gutsy delivery on each of them. The hard drumming, throaty bass, and crazily fuzzed out shrieking electric guitars all come together to lift this well off the ground. There are some style shifts later in the album which keeps things interesting and just as lively. These guys will be a kick live, I don’t see how it could not be an exciting evening with them on stage. So it is no surprise that SubPop picked them up as this record is worth several spins, as well.
Come see Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires at the DC9 on Monday, July 21st.
Songs to try first:
The Company Man – The opening cut screams out crazy guitar moves with a smoother but very tough vocal line.
Burnpiles Swimming Holes – Love the modified Bo Diddley beat with all the other expected components at work.
Flags – Great punk pace and power chords create another layer of fun in this album.
http://dcrocklive.blogspot.com/
AMERICANA MUSIC SHOW
(internet radio/podcast show) Positive post on ‘The Company Man’ with the Bitter Southerner’s ‘The Company Man’ video
Lee Bains , ‘The Company Man’
The Company Man” is the lead off track from the album Dereconstructed by Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires. It’s both a historical song and a personal family history song. It tells the story of people who tried to preserve the oldguard segregationist government restrictions against the civil rights movement of the 60_s. It tells the story of how they could sit in the church pews on Sunday and then “Monday morning, beating prophets black and blue.” Lee’s grandmother lived in Burmingham during the worst of the conflicts and passed down stories about that time in a way that inspired Lee to turn it into a Glory Fires song. I like the fact that, at least in the deep south, we still live in a world where Important Lessons can be passed down across three generations through personal stories of people seeing stuff with their own eyes and doing things with their own hands. Plus, you know, it’s a damn good rock & roll song.
This video was produced by Zach Wolfe for a story in The Bitter Southerner. I’d never heard of this site until I stumbled across this Lee Bains video, but it’s quickly earned a place in my bookmark bar.
Preview Dereconstructed by Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires on Amazon.___
http://www.americanamusicshow.com/lee-bains-company-man/
RVA NEWS
(Richmond A&E site) Positive show preview
July’s RVA music shows
LEE BAINS III AND THE GLORY FIRES
Strange Matter , July 22nd
My god, why aren’t more people listening to these guys? Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires are playing at Strange Matter in support of their new album Dereconstructed. And if you have a minute, go ahead and listen to their insanely amazing debut album There Is a Bomb in Gilead. I swear you’ll love it. If nothing else, Lee Bains is a super nice guy you can’t help but like.
http://rvanews.com/entertainment/julys-rva-music-shows/114463
ATLANTA MUSIC EXAMINER
Positive album review
Chris’ Pick Six , Best albums of June 2014 – Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires , Dereconstructed
(Sub Pop)
Dereconstructed is everything you could ever hope for in a rock and roll record. Lee Bains and crew set the bar high with their debut album, and on the follow up they cleared it by a mile. The opening track , ‘Company Man’ , sets the tone and it just gets better from there. Churning guitars, screaming vocals and ear bursting rhythms are jam packed into each and every tune as they belt out songs about racism, the man, and their beloved south. Dereconstructed lies somewhere between Skynyrd and Black Flag as they sing about their beloved South with a bit of bitterness and anger mixed in to the love and adoration. ‘The Weeds Downtown’ preaches their love of Birmingham while at the same time laying out their frustrations at all that wrong with it. The ear rattling ‘We Dare Defend Our Rights’ has punk rock written all over it as they sing about disillusionment, dissatisfaction and indignation. ‘The Kudzu and the Concrete’ may be the best track on the album as they sing about people being the same. I can’t say enough about this record, it is one of those rare pieces of music that demands to be listened to start to finish.
http://www.examiner.com/article/atlanta-examiner-presents-chris-pick-six-june-2014
OVRLD
(Austin music site) Positive show preview.
‘The Company Man’ video
Recommended shows: Friday: In late May, Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires released Deconstructed, the band’s debut on Sub Pop Records. For those of you who haven not taken a listen yet, the album is sleazy good time full of anthemic party jams, good southern vibes, and of course, a sea of heavy guitar riffage all anchored by the robust vocals of Lee Bains III himself. Lee and his Glory Fires are bringing their party on tour this summer and they will be in Austin tonight at Red 7. Joining them will be two of Austin’s finest garage rock groups. White collar bad asses, Austin veterans, and champions of free beer, The Midgetmen, will be kicking the night off and the always incredible Diarrhea Planet will be closing the night out (with no less than 5 guitar players I am sure). If you like straight up, guitar-shredding rock and roll and are looking for a guaranteed good time this weekend, look no further than this show. Doors are at 9pm so get there by 10pm to catch all 3 of these great bands. – Cody Kimbell
http://ovrld.com/shows/recommends-diarrhea-vision/
ANTI-GRAVITY
(New Orleans weekly) Positive album review
LEE BAINS III & THE GLORY FIRES
DERECONSTRUCTED
(SUB POP)
I thought of a lot of ways I could start this review. But all of them boiled down to three words: God damn, y’all! This record is essential for anyone who loves any of the following things: punk rock, southern rock, fuzz, feedback, rabble- rousing, proselytizing, prophesying, rebelling, challenging the status quo, the English language and pure and simple joy. Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires have, on their Sub Pop debut, blown the doors off this thing. My ears and guts are in shambles every time Dereconstructed finishes spinning, and yet I can’t stop myself from starting again at the beginning. Do yourself a favor and grab the lyrics sheet on your first listen, because there is so much heavy, worthwhile stuff being said here, but your ears might not find the words under the avalanche of screaming guitars; this one goes to 12, kids. Once you settle in and find Lee’s vocal groove, you’re in for an emotional trip. Opener ‘The Company Man’ strikes the first blow at human greed, racism and disingenuous bullshit. It won’t be the last time. The title track is a slapdash punk anthem, short, sweet and brimming with sneer in lines like ‘We were raised on ancient truths and ugly old lies / But I learned how to say a firm ‘No sir’ looking in them old yellow eyes / Looking in them old hateful eyes’ The classic throwback rock ‘n’ roll chug of ‘Burnpiles, Swimming Holes’ is impossible to resist with its rolling percussive open and stabbing distorted guitars. ‘The Weeds Downtown’ could easily be in the repertoire of Mike Cooley or Jason Isbell,,an ode to the kind of screwed up love you can only have for the place that made you. The three-track stretch of ‘What’s Good and Gone,’ ‘We Dare Defend Our Rights!’ and ‘Flags’ is a merciless gut check. Dark subject matter collides with powerful, poison-tipped words in the first; the second turns the cries of bigots on their head and spits in the faces of those who would stand in the doorway of progress; the last is a searing gospel-tinged send up of so-called modern patriotism bathed in self-righteous hate. In no time at all, you’ll arrive on the red clay edge of the album’s closer, ‘Dirt Track.’ It is positively effortless in its cool, ‘squeezing glory out of three rusty chords.’ The bottom-heavy, deeply rooted guitar lick drives the track to a breakdown and drags it back up again, all the while daring you to stand still. ,Erin Hall
http://www.antigravitymagazine.com/2014/06/reviews-june-2014/
AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN
(Austin daily)
Friday Music Picks: Everyone’s favorite-named punk band Diarrhea Planet plays the main room with Sub Pop act Lee Bains & the Glory Fires and the Midgetmen @ Red 7
http://www.austin360.com/weblogs/austin-music-source/2014/jun/26/friday-music-picks-brownout-presents-black-sabbath/
MY SPILT MILK
(New Orleans music blog curated by former Offbeat Magazine editor Alex Rawls) Feature interview to preview New Orleans show w/ band photo, ‘The Company Man’ video’ and ‘We Dare Defend Our Rights’ live video
Lee Bains Has His Own Songs of the South
The Atlanta-based rocker considers his cultural inheritance on “Dereconstructed.”
Lynyrd Skynyrd sang ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’ but other Alabaman bands have more ambiguous relationships with their home state. The Drive-By Truckers made that inheritance,Skynyrd included,the heart of their two-CD Southern Rock Opera, and Lee Bains III and The Glory Fires’ new Dereconstructed addresses his own mixed emotions. Some critics have referred to his music as southern rock, but he’s not so sure.
‘Southern rock has been ensconced in the language of genre,’ Bains says, parsing out his words carefully as he works his way deliberately through the thought. ‘It’s seen as a style, and I don’t relate to that notion. At the same time, the idea of southern-ness is central to this record and my writing in general. And we play rock ‘n’ roll music, but I don’t identify with southern rock as a style.’
Bains will play One Eyed Jacks Sunday with Diarrhea Planet, and Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers were part of his musical upbringing in Birmingham when he was 12 or 13 and his brother played them, along with Sly and the Family Stone and many of the late ‘60s/early ‘70s classics. But by the time Bains was 16, his favorite albums were No Division by Florida punk band Hot Water Music, Definitely Maybe by Oasis, and the first two albums by The Old 97s, which his brother had on one cassette. ‘I was 17 when Against Me’s first album came out,’ Bains says. ‘I listened to that all the time.’
Today, Bains lives in Atlanta, and he has spent the last few years working through his relationship to the music he grew up with. ‘I went through that period in my teenage years where I was trying on different styles,’ he says. ‘Oh, this is cool. This is relevant. I listened to only hardcore for nine months.’ Recently, he has sorted through those phases to see what resonates and should be held on to, and what to let go. ‘That thought process has been important in shaping my aesthetic vision, particularly with the songs I was writing for this album. I was very concerned with the notion of identity and culture and the way in which I as a western, post-industrial, privileged person went through that period of considering my identity in terms of commodity. The clothes that I buy. The scene that I associate with. As I got older, I saw an emptiness in that process of self-identification.’
You can hear the host of influences on Dereconstructed, where Bains and The Glory Fires’ songs frequently have durable, Faces/Rolling Stones/blues rock hooks embedded in their code, but the guitars rage and snarl with serrating menace. The songs are propulsive with a punk’s before-the-beat charge, but Biblical language and a working class sensibility shows up in a number of songs including the album opener, ‘The Company Man,’ when he sings:
Hear the poets and professors
Postulate how we all got so robbed.<
All it takes is one wicked heart, a pile of money,
And a chain of folks just doing their jobs.
‘Don’t ever bite the fingers that feed you,’
Said Pilate, as he washed the invisible hand.
So, be good, take care, and Godspeed you,
And, lest you forget it,
Don’t ever trust the Company Man.
His South is a contemporary, physical place as well; ‘The Weeds Downtown’ examines urban decay in Birmingham, but not in an elegiac or defeated way.
Consider the weeds downtown, and how they grow:
How the Queen Anne’s Lace covers hot parking lots like snow.
Paris and New York don’t have honeysuckle vines like the ones on 32nd Street.
I know that Birmingham gets you down, but look what it raised you up to be.
Punk is the more accurate reference point for Bains, but in a specific sense. ‘Punk for me in an ideal,’ he says. ‘I don’t relate to the style of punk rock, but the ethos behind it has changed my life and the way I understand the world.’ The time Bains spent playing in a hardcore band and seeing punk shows politicized him at the personal level. He began reading political theory and embraced the need to understand personal contexts and how they shape a person. In his case, that meant thinking about growing up southern and white. ‘If I were to make music that was vital and challenging and subversive in some way, then I needed to confront my own personal history and context,’ he says. ‘That turned me back around to considering the music that resonated with me growing up, and turned me around to reconciling myself with the place and culture that created me. That I took on or reacted to.’
Dereconstruction isn’t an apology, nor is it a form of self-flagellation, and there’s none of that in the rampaging sound of the band. The title track outlines the myths sold to southerners,’meth labs and mobile homes’ or ‘moonlight and magnolias’,as a way of examining the choices Bains grew up with. To write these songs, Bains had to not only think honestly about his place in his world but how to address it. He has made a deliberate effort to speak only from his own perspective, which means he doesn’t dramatize others’ stories the way many songwriters will. ‘Trying to speak for other people or assume is another perspective is a dangerous venture, one that will probably result in my misrepresenting a community of which I’m not a part,’ Bains says.
While the album is personal first, it has a larger, social goal as well as Bains hopes to broaden notions of southern-ness. ‘A lot of southern art is made denying the urban experience, denying global contexts, denying the Internet and recent immigrant populations,’ he says. ‘We all have access to the Internet. You can live in a rural community and have access to every bit of ephemera that I have in Atlanta.’ He points to communities that were once isolated, rural communities that urban sprawl have made into Atlantan suburbs. ‘The child of Somalian refugees living in that town is no less southern than the eighth generation north Georgian guy who grew up there.’
byAlex Rawls
http://myspiltmilk.com/lee-bains-has-his-own-songs-south
TRUE BLUE MAGAZINE
(Portland A&E site) – Positive Portland, OR show review with live photos and Spotify Dereconstructed playlist
Lee Bains & The Glory Fires Light Up Mississippi Studios In Portland
A place called Mississippi Studios would seem to be the perfect setting for Birmingham, Alabama native Lee Bains III to preach his particular brand of Southern Gospel, one filled with wailing electric guitars and ruminations on what ‘The South’ is, once was and what it can be. Nevermind that this Mississippi is in Portland, Oregon, when Bains and the Glory Fires start to preach, folks start to listen.
What The South actually is vs. what much of the rest of the country (and the world) imagines it to be is at the very heart of Bains’ excellent new release on Sub Pop, Dereconstructed. The record finds Bains contextualizing what being a Southerner truly means in this day and age: from the frustrations that come along with the weight of a past he had nothing to do with (and is obviously vehemently against), to the false preconceptions the world has of the modern South, to ruminations on whether it’s wiser to seek out greener, ‘more creative’ pastures or to stay home and help ‘improve’ where you’re from. It’s literate, heavy stuff, and something that forward-thinking, progressive Southerners (such as myself) have had floating around their heads most of their lives while we watched our native region portrayed as being filled with cartoon-ish rubes whose principle concerns are the consumption of high fructose corn syrup and the spread of ignorance.
Derecontructed also intrigues because these issues aren’t tackled via contemplative folk numbers where Bains’ meditations can be heard and studied front and center, but instead are served over a bed of positively furious rock n’ roll. Bains got his start in the exceptionally raucous Tuscaloosa, AL band The Dexateens, and The Glory Fires retain much of that band’s rowdy, shit-kickin’ ethos. Bains and fellow guitarist Eric Wallace grew up together and certainly play like it. The screeching fury they play with never really lets up, which is something considering the intertwined intensity they bring to each song. At one point Wallace even got up on Bain’s back and they shuffled around the floor for awhile, guitars raging the entire time.
Adam and Blake Williamson make up the Glory Fires’ rhythm section keep the low end going with an intensity that’s akin to a midnight train flying towards Georgia on a nearly silent summer night. For such a wild and loose sound, the band is deceptively tight, something that comes from playing such an intensely scheduled tour (see below).
There are obviously comparisons to the Drive-By Truckers (whose current bassist played in The Dexateens), another Georgia-via-Alabama band that has had tremendous success pondering the same issues Bains does on Dereconstructed, and one can certainly see Bains having a career arc similar to a Jason Isbell, Patterson Hood and/or a Mike Cooley. Time will tell if the Glory Fires can reach such great heights, but if Dereconstructed and their positively blistering live show are any indication, I wouldn’t count these boys out y’all.
http://www.truebluemagazine.com/lee-bains-the-glory-fires-light-up-mississippi-studios-in-portland/
DALLAS OBSERVER
(Dallas weekly) – Show review with live photos
Diarrhea Planet Didn’t Give a Shit About Getting Old at Three Links
By Jeff Gage
Diarrhea Planet
With Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires and Party Static
Three Links
Wednesday, June 25, 2015
What’s it mean to party? The guys in Diarrhea Planet know a thing or two about it. In fact, they almost have it down to a science. It involves lots of guitars, plenty of long hair and a touch too much testosterone. As the heavy-riffing punks from Nashville returned to Dallas on Wednesday night, there weren’t too many surprises thrown in there. (No one sang “Born to Run” with them, for instance.) But then straying from the formula isn’t really the point of this party.
If anything felt particularly enlightening about Diarrhea Planet’s set last night, it was what came before they’d even started properly playing. Some technical issues with the guitar pedals slowed them down from getting started, so in the interim they killed time by noodling on classic rock riffs. There was some Heart, some AC/DC, even some Prince with a hilariously high-pitched falsetto thrown in. If you wondered what these guys did in their free time, this was probably as good of an indicator as any.
Once things got going, there was finger-tapping, shredding and whipped hair galore. Most songs didn’t need lyrics so much as one line that would be good enough to repeat between the solos. Needless to say, it was catchy and fast-paced, the sort of stuff to sing along or raise a beer to. Or, of course, to mosh to.
Ah yes, moshing. What does it mean to get old? The guys in the crowd — and there were a lot of dudes there, with the ratio sliding further in their direction as the set stretched on — probably know a thing or two about that. Not that it was an old crowd. But Diarrhea Planet play young man’s music that is only slightly grown up — a little grittier, a little more raucous and a little more world-wearied, too. It’s pop punk for people in their late 20 or 30s. You might still feel embarrassed to admit you still like the stuff at that age, but you don’t have to be embarrassed about Diarrhea Planet.
Appropriately, though, it was a slow, serious song called “Kids” that was really the heart of the show — an appropriate paradox if there ever were one. With heavy lyrics about the weight of the world and a gradual build-up, “Kids” had an emotional depth that made the other songs feel one-dimensional. Growing up can be a drag, but the grown-ups will probably try tell you the good times are more fun once you appreciate it.
And what does it mean to, well, give a shit? Lee Bains III knows a thing or two about that. The Alabama singer and his band, the Glory Fires, brought a similarly rowdy mix of punk and classic rock with a distinctly Southern flair as Diarrhea Planet’s openers. Bains just about sang his head off; in fact, the veins in his neck looked about ready to burst at any moment from the effort. He continually jumped up on his drummer’s kit and ran out into the audience, even carrying his guitarist on his shoulders at one point. By the end he was drenched in sweat.
But this wasn’t just Bains the party animal. He played not only as if his life depended on it, but as though the world did too. He regularly addressed the songs to issues that Mattered: one was dedicated to Rick Perry and affordable health care, another to a town that fought to keep WalMart out and another decried the commercialization of (wait for it) NASCAR. If anyone had played “Born to Run,” it should’ve been Bains. Or maybe “Fortunate Son” would’ve been more apt.
Either way, it was both sides of the same coin last night. (And can we hear if for the Party Static? Yes?!) Each party inevitably has its kick back and being young inevitably means getting old. But on the right night in the right bar, those truths can all be put on hold. Or, at the least, they can all work together.
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/dc9/2014/06/diarrhea_planet_three_links_review.php
NOLA DEFENDER
(New Orleans weekly) Brief positive show mention
Diarrhea Planet, Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires, Primitive Boys
One Eyed Jacks, 10p.m.
Kickass punk and fried Southern rock ($10)
http://www.noladefender.com/content/dimanche-203
SAN ANTONIO CURRENT – (SA weekly) – Show preview
DIARRHEA PLANET, LEE BAINS III & THE GLORY FIRES
Nashville’s Diarrhea Planet pose an important update to the Shakespearean ‘rose by any other name’ query: Does having a shitty band name turn potential listeners off to your stuff? Undoubtedly, yes; I’ve seen several friends shake their heads after getting a whiff of Diarrhea Planet’s name without hearing their music. But the Tennessee sextet are worth holding your nose and diving in. Their two-minute jams are garage rock anthems of bar-hoppin’, firework-launchin, hell-raisin’, three simultaneous guitar solo good times. Also slated for the evening is Southern rocker Lee Bains, whose Sub Pop debut Dereconstructed finds the songwriter moving into the indie rock and garage flavors of the iconic Seattle label. With SA garage trio the Rich Hands opening up, this St. Mary’s venue is earning its ‘Slimelight’ nickname on Thursday.
http://calendar.sacurrent.com/Events/e47595/Diarrhea_Planet_Lee_Baines_III_and_The_Glory_Fires
D MAGAZINE
(Dallas weekly) – Show preview
Diarrhea Planet | Lee Bains III | The Glory Fires | Party Static (Three Links): Here’s a goofy and aspiringly raucous show to work out those mid-week blues. This is a loud and gross event, the latter of which applies because you might hear a Third Eye Blind song played sarcastically. A highlight here includes an opportunity to see Party Static open up the show. Party Static is one of the few straight-ahead pop rock outfits in Dallas and they are slowly finding presence on the stage. I’ve enjoyed watching their progression the few times I’ve seen them play.
http://frontrow.dmagazine.com/2014/06/concert-picks-for-wednesday-june-25-jessica-lee-mayfield-party-static-trillwave/
FREE PRESS HOUSTON
(Houston weekly) – Best of the week show preview
THE BEST OF THE WEEK: Now, even though I just said why you should go see SWANS, that doesn’t mean there aren’t just as many reasons to go see Nashville’s Diarrhea Planet; ironically downstairs at Fitzgerald’s also on Saturday. When I first heard these guys, I was blown away by their garage rock meets pop punk sound. When I found out that they had four guitarists, I was even more impressed and I didn’t make fun of them like I did about Lynyrd Skynyrd having three. Last year these guys released an amazing album titled, ‘I’m Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams.’ It has a magical mix that sounds like what would happen if PAWS and The Ramones formed a metal band, but they didn’t really sound like metal. They’re bringing some real southern blues rock with Alabama’s Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires. You know how there’s a whole generation who thinks The Black Keys are real southern blues? Well, that’s a lie because these guys are what Dan Auerbach wished his band sounded like. This should be a pretty energetic and chaotic live show, and it’s a steal with tickets ranging from $10.00 to $14.00. The doors are at 8:00.
http://www.freepresshouston.com/torches-together-the-best-of-the-week/
SAN ANTONIO CURRENT
(SA weekly) – Show feature/interview with band photo
LEE BAINS III & THE GLORY FIRES RECLAIM SKYNYRD’S SOUND
By Chris Parker
Lee Bains’ southern-fried garage-country is like a legendary burger shack way off in the sticks. Part of what makes it amazing is how the grill’s been seasoned by generations of grease and grit.
Bains grew up in Birmingham, Ala., and takes cues from local legends Verbena’s extraordinary 1997 debut, Souls for Sale,the Stonesy swagger of which colors the edges of Bains’ sound. He also draws from the raw-boned rustic rumble of Drive-By Truckers and their Alabama spiritual kin, the Dexateens, for whom he later played.
‘In college [the Dexateens’] Hardwire Healing and Red Dust Rising were two of my favorite albums,’ Bains told the Current. When he got out of school and started playing in a band around Birmingham, he got Dexateens’ singer/guitarist Elliott McPherson to produce his band’s album. Around this time personnel changes were afoot for the Dexateens and Bains got an invitation. ‘I just said, ‘Hell yeah.’ You didn’t have to ask me twice.’
He learned a lot during his two years with them, from booking to songwriting, and contributed to a couple albums. Bains brought their twang-punk spirit over to his own act, cut with a bloody rawness reminiscent of Scott Biram or Bob Log. After debuting with 2012’s There Is a Bomb in Gilead for iconic LA garage label Alive Records, Bains moved up the coast and the ranks, signing with Seattle’s Sub Pop for the new Dereconstructed.
Enlisting producer Tim Kerr (Makers, Throw Rag) for a second time contributed to the record’s chaotic live sound. Bains & the Glory Fires had done demos for what became their first album with Kerr, and appreciated the vibrancy and crackle of those recordings.
Dereconstructed’s title track is a reference to Bains’ heritage, and sort of an anthem ‘about taking your own damn stand in spite of those who’d define and control you,’ as he sings in the final verse. Bains takes his own advice on this album, trying to parse the uncomfortable realities of his heritage.
‘It’s difficult for a progressive, white, Christian, Southern, relatively privileged male to constantly live down cultural responsibility for so many wrongs,’ Bains said. ‘A lot of people I know have just sort of gotten the fuck out.’
But Bains returned after college. That idea of resilient self-determination resonates through the album and relates to his love of Lynyrd Skynyrd. ‘The sort of context I had for it was: These were guys who rejected the racist good old boy, honest haircut, kick-the-shit-out-of-the-weirdos mentality so prevalent in the South at one time. They were forging a new, or at least a different, Southern identity,’ Bains said. ‘But then I get into high school and I’m around kids with short haircuts, waving rebel flags, dropping the n-bomb, calling people ‘faggot’ and talking about how they love Lynyrd Skynyrd.’
Bains continued: ‘But you get older and lay claim to your own experience and your own identity rather than allowing those objects to be defined for you.’ The very definition of an anthem.
Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires, with Diarrhea Planet, The Rich Hands
$10-$12
8pm (doors) Thur, June 26
Limelight
2718 N St. Mary’s
(210) 735-7775
thelimelightsa.com
http://sacurrent.com/music/lee-bains-iii-the-glory-fires-reclaim-skynyrd-s-sound-1.1708308
LOUDER THAN WAR
(online music site) – Positive album review with band photo
Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires: Dereconstructed (Sub Pop)
CD / DL
Out Now
Alabama band deliver blistering Southern Rock with Punk attitude. Louder Than War’s Dave Jennings reviews.
This is an album that is everything you could hope for but may not be entirely what you expect. The former Dexateens frontman and his excellent band have released their second album and it proudly flaunts a southern heritage while seething with some razor sharp social comment.
The album opens with a withering attack on the all-encompassing ‘Company Man’ accompanied by a warning against ‘all it takes is one wicked heart, a pile of money and a chain of folks just doing their jobs’ to enable social injustice to thrive. All this is accompanied by a classic rock sound that is heavy, but is not heavy rock. Title track ‘Dereconstructed’’s furious opening salvo leaves no doubt as to the direction we’re heading and when you hear the in your face defiance embodied in lines such as
‘They wanted meth labs and mobile homes/They wanted moonlight and magnolias/We gave them songs about taking your own damn stand/In spite of those who’d define and control you’
It becomes clear that the band are smashing preconceptions with relish. The power the internet holds over us all is made all too clear in ‘Burnpiles and Swimming Holes’ in an almost Stones like mode. Baines’s vocals are soulful and this is never put to better effect than when considering the current state of Birmingham, Alabama in ‘The Weeds Downtown’. It’s not often you will get such detailed consideration as ‘I know the architecture’s largely depressing and the politics are pretty regressive’ but a major strength of ‘Dereconstructed’ is the ability to present a personal perspective in a pure rock format.
‘What’s Good and Gone’ manages to simultaneously discuss the history of the South and place it in a modern context where you can drink tea ‘picked betwixt firing squads in Sudan’ and use ‘sugar chopped by bleeding Brazilian hands’. These themes continue in the almost blues riffs of ‘We Dare Defend Our Rights’ and into one of the album highlights, the blistering ‘Flags’ where Bains questions hypocrisies such as spreading fears of Islamic attacks while ‘so called believers blew up women’s clinics’ in his hometown.
‘Mississippi Bottomland’ offers a slight respite from the careering pace of the rest of the album as Bains celebrates the homeland that permeates all the tracks. ‘Dirt Track’ is a homage to the Alabama Gang, legendary NASCAR racing drivers of the 1950’s and maybe a reminder of the ideals that are the spine of this collection of songs.
Dereconstructed’ is in many ways an authentic punk album delivered in a genuine Southern Rock style with full on, no compromise principles and an attitude that defies opposition. Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires have certainly made a statement with this alternative snapshot of the South and offer a refreshingly positive approach to some pretty dark issues.
You can check out Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires over at their website, or alternatively you could ‘like’ them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter.
http://louderthanwar.com/lee-bains-iii-and-the-glory-fires-dereconstructed-album-review
GAMBIT WEEKLY
(New Orleans weekly) – Show preview with band photo
Preview: Lee Baines II and the Glory Fires
Alex Woodward on the Southern rock shitkicker coming to One Eyed Jacks June 29
When we last left Lee Bains, he left us. After a Voodoo fest debut in 2012, Bains , a Birmingham, Alabama native, reformed punk rocker and current axe-grinding Southern rock shitkicker , had to cancel a February tour stop previewing the release of his band’s second album and debut for Sub Pop Records, Dereconstructed. Maybe it was for the best. The album heats up the more Bains stews and simmers. Bains , backed by his band’s cranked-up garage rock, a soulful, sloppy rave-up of the Muscle Shoals sound , examines Southern life and legacy, pissed and proud of tradition past and present. “I know that Birmingham gets you down,” he sings on “The Weeds Downtown,” “but look what it raised you up to be.” Bains comes to terms with Southern life, the push-and-pull of racial tension, poverty, family values, drugs and death. Guitars clash with rough-edged Rolling Stones duels and reach screeching solos on “We Dare Defend Our Rights,” recalling the 1963 murder of four African-American girls at a church fire set by Ku Klux Klan members. Bains’ debut, the play-on-words There Is a Bomb on Gilead, hinted at his place among Southern rock torchbearers. When he talked to Gambit in 2012, he said of the album title, “I had all these images running through my mind of what that could mean.” On Dereconstructed, the bomb dropped.
June 29 Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires with Diarrhea Planet One Eyed Jacks, 615 Toulouse St.
http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/preview-lee-baines-ii-and-the-glory-fires/Content?oid=2459629
DALLAS OBSERVER
(Dallas weekly) _ Show preview for DP with Lee mention
The Best Concerts in Dallas This Week, 6/23 – 6/29
Diarrhea Planet With Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires, 7:30pm, Wednesday, June 25 at Three Links
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/dc9/2014/06/the_best_concerts_in_dallas_this_week_623_-_629.php
JUNKYARD OPERA
(online music blog) Positive album review w/ The Company Man & The Weds Downtown
Southern Rock revised
Posted in Bent Notes Column with tags Dereconstructed, Lee Bains III and The Glory Fires, Southern Rock on June 23, 2014 by Todd
‘God and guns
Keep us strong
That’s what this country
Was founded on
Well we might as well give up and run
If we let them take our God and guns’
(God and Guns)
Could any lyric possibly sum up the prevailing cliches of the Southern mindset more thoroughly than the one quoted above, taken from a 2009 release by the bloated senior citizens who still call themselves Lynyrd Skynyrd? In its description of an embattled people under attack for their religion, their fondness for firearms, and their belief in the ‘true’ principals this country was founded on, it perfectly encapsulates the sentiments that have become associated with much of the region’s popular rock music over the years. In fact, at this late date, the term Southern Rock is virtually synonymous with redneck, regressive posturing.
While that perception is unlikely to change anytime soon, a new generation of southern-based bands has taken on the self-appointed challenge of dragging the regions most shameful memories and lingering foolishness out into the hard light of the 21st century, kicking the sleeping dog of Dixieland’s past squarely in the hindquarters with squalls of feedback and raw emotion.
A recent release by a young band hailing from that deepest of Deep South states, Alabama, make clear just how far free thinking musicians can stray from the music’s conservative past while still maintaining a fierce devotion to the sound that drew them to pick up instruments in the first place.
‘Dereconstructed,’ the new album by Birmingham band Lee Bains III and The Glory Fires is a feral blast of metallic swamp boogie that sounds like it was recorded in a basement meth lab. Built on equal parts punk fury and hard blues gallop, the album immediately sets itself apart from the more refined, professional-minded music that often passes for hard southern rock these days.
But what truly distinguishes ‘Dereconstructed’ is Bains’ refusal to turn a blind eye to what he sees as the rampant hypocrisy, injustice, and religion-approved bigotry that remain all-too-familiar blights on the Southern landscape.
In the album’s opening song, ‘The Company Man,’ Bains recounts a conversation with his grandmother concerning Theophilus Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor, the Commissioner of Public Safety for the city of Birmingham, during the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s. Connor, who attended the same church as Bains’ grandmother, is infamous for directing the use of fire hoses and police attack dogs against peaceful demonstrators, including children.
‘Mimi, tell me about old Bull,
Mean and proud even praying in the pew,
Putting profits in the black with businessmen on Sunday,
Monday morning, beating prophets black and blue.’
On another album highlight, ‘We Dare Defend Our Rights’ Bains looks back to the death of two young African-American girls during the bombing of a Birmingham church in 1963 by white supremacists. He then moves forward to the present day, and the caustic attacks often leveled against homosexuals by Southern pastors.
‘Blessed are the meek,
Unless it’s four little girls in Sunday school,
Learning how to turn the other cheek,
Or the younguns lashed with brimstone tongues
(‘Boys like girls, and girls like boys.’).
Issues so sensitive to the Southern psyche haven’t been raised in song since, well, the original Lynyrd Skynyrd, who spoke out in favor of gun control (‘So why don’t we dump ‘em people, to the bottom of the sea’) and even dared to criticize Alabama’s race baiting governor, George Wallace (‘In Birmingham, they love the governor (boo boo boo’)
But while Alabama serves as his point of reference, the questions Bains raises in these songs could just as well apply to anywhere in the U.S, from Texas to Massachusetts. During a recent concert at Slim’s Place in Raleigh, Bains dedicated ‘We Dare Defend Our Rights’ to the state’s Moral Monday protesters.
And as he makes clear in ‘The Weeds Downtown’ Bains is a man who, while acknowledging sins past and present, still maintains an abiding love for his hometown.
‘Paris and New York don’t have honeysuckle vines like the ones on 32nd Street.
I know that Birmingham gets you down, but look what it raised you up to be.’
Of course, all that battling with questions of Southern identity wouldn’t mean a thing without the mighty ruckus Bains and his band kick up over the course of ‘Deconstructed.’
Released on Sub Pop, the record label responsible for the early releases of Nirvana, Soundgarden and other ‘90s Seattle bands, the record proudly carries forward that eras stripped down, no frills production. Moving from hard, bluesy rock and swaggering funk through the rhythms of the fife and drum bands that can still be heard in the hill country of North Alabama, styles, instruments and voices bleed into one another, forming the kind of thick, spice-infused bouillabaisse that has been a specialty of Southern bands since the days of Louis Armstrong and his Hot Fives and Sevens. It’s a record best heard loud, in a small space with the AC off and a cooler full of adult beverages nearby.
In voicing hard questions in music as uncompromising as it is tuneful, Bains has opened up a new avenue for a genre too often seen as a soundtrack for the ‘Old times there are not forgotten’ set.
As he noted in a recent interview in the online magazine The Bitter Southerner, ‘To me, what I identify with the Southern identity is this notion of courtesy and Judeo-Christian charity and hospitality and keeping to yourself and respecting people’s eccentricities or whatever, Instead, we’re left with the notion of a Southerner as AR-15-waving, angry, judgmental, hateful figure. Those aren’t the Southerners that I grew up around.’
http://junkyardopera.wordpress.com/tag/dereconstructed/
BUZZBANDS LA
(online LA music site) Show preview with stock bio, band photo and ‘There Is A Bomb In Gilead’ video
Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires, Geronimo Getty, Swamp Dogg, Dorothy
http://calendar.buzzbands.la/event/2014/06/21/lee-bains-iii-the-glory-fires
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Show preview with Lee photo and stock copy.
Diarrhea Planet / Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires Wed. June 23rd
http://go.dallasnews.com/events/2014/jun/25/236620/
AXS
(online music site) Feature interview to preview L.A. show
Nothing else would satisfy me: an interview with Lee Bains III
By: Gary Schwind
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires is a band from Atlanta and Birmingham that has brought southern rock into our time and place. By phone, Bains discussed the new album Dereconstructed, touring Europe and how this band differs from his previous band Dexateens.
How do you describe the new album for someone who hasn’t heard it?
I usually just say rock and roll. I would prefer to just play it for someone than to try and describe it.
How does the new album compare to previous albums?
We tried to obtain a more raw spontaneous aesthetic than on our last one. It’s more representative of our live set.
Is that a difficult thing to do?
It’s an elusive thing. We got a guy named Tim Kerr to produce our record because he’s very good at that. His records feel raw to me, and they make me feel like I’m at a show. It’s a gift to be able to bring that out of a band or a recording session. It’s one that I don’t have, but he does.
I always prefer raw to overproduced.
I agree with you there. I always like to hear the humanity in things. That often comes from idiosyncracy or botched notes, or the beat flattening out a little bit.
How are the dynamics of this band different than Dexateens?
It’s very different. Dexateens was a band in which I was an auxiliary member. I played guitar and sang harmonies. I didn’t write any of the songs. It was a band had been around for 10 years started playing with them. The process was very different. I was an interpreter of a song that was brought to the band. In this band, I write the songs. I expend the energy writing the songs and then bringing it to the guys and getting their input.
What are you most looking forward to about your upcoming tour in Europe?
We’re spending most of our time in Sweden and Norway. We were there I guess about a year ago now. We had a really good time and met a lot of cool folks. We’re probably just looking forward to seeing those friends we haven’t seen in a year or so. Driving to the Norwegian fjords is pretty amazing.
What’s the biggest difference between touring Europe and touring the U.S.?
We really haven’t done a lot of touring…we’ve only done one tour in Europe. It’s hard to qualify with any authority. The difference between touring there and the U.S. is that here we just roll by ourselves. We’re in my van, sleeping on floors, eating bologna sandwiches. In Scandinavia, there’s a different protocol for hosting touring bands. Pretty much everywhere you play is going to find you supper and a place to sleep. Here, you show up and play. Maybe they give you some beers, then it’s done. There it’s probably decided as soon as you book the show where you’re staying that night. Being in another country can be a little overwhelming, so it’s extremely gracious for people to do that.
What would you be doing if you weren’t making music?
I can’t imagine doing anything else and being satisfied. I can see myself being in school for something. I can’t really imagine what else I’d be stoked on doing right now.
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires play Bootleg Hi-Fi on Saturday 21 June. Tickets for this show are $8 in advance and $10 the day of the show. Bootleg Hi-Fi is located at 2220 Beverly Blvd in Los Angeles.
http://www.axs.com/nothing-else-would-satisfy-me-an-interview-with-lee-bains-iii-12639
POPA TUNES
(online music blog) Positive post on album and The Company Man added to June Mixtape
Title: The Company Song
Artist: Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires
Album (2014): Dereconstructed
Submitted By: Rockstar Aimz
Comments: This may be my album of the year. It’s hands down the rock album of the year. If you can imagine a Southern rock arrow starting from Skynyrd and pointing to the Drive-By Truckers, this arrow now points from the DBT to Lee Bains III, but with a dash of punk on the side. Listen closely to the lyrics. Brilliant.
http://popatunes.blogspot.com/2014/06/another-month-another-fine-fbfy-mix.html
FORT WAYNE.COM
(Fort Wayne A&E site) Brief show mention with press quotes and old band photo
Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires w/ Thunderhawk
Saturday, Jul 12 10:00p
Brass Rail Fort Wayne, IN
“Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires, a four-man band from Alabama, proudly join the Southern-rock tradition of wild-eyed music hitched to serious deliberation. Dereconstructed, the band’s second album, ponders Southern identity in a welter of cranked-up guitars, bristling drums and rasping, hollering vocals. It’s pandemonium with a conscience.” – Jon Pareles / New York TIMES”Sounds like Flannery O’Connor gave up fiction for a Coors and a Gibson SG.” – Rolling Stone
http://events.fortwayne.com/fort_wayne_in/events/show/370798793-lee-bains-iii-the-glory-fires-w-thunderhawk
THE BAY BRIDGED
(San Fran A&E blog) Show preview with stock bio, band photo and unplugged video
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires, M. Lockwood Porter, Big Tits Fri. 06/20 @ Thee Parkside
SAN DIEGO CITY BEAT
(weekly) Brief show mention
Shows we’re stoked about this week: Sunday, June 22 BACKUP PLAN: Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires, Oh Spirit @ Soda Bar.
http://www.sdcitybeat.com/sandiego/article-13122-jessica-lea-mayfield.html
SAN DIEGO READER
(San Diego weekly) Show preview with band photo
The best in San Diego clubs this week
By Barnaby Monk
Sunday 22
Raucous Southern rocker Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires light up Soda Bar Sunday night!
After the match, head over to Normal Heights where Birmingham, Alabama’s raucous Southern rocker Lee Bains III and his Glory Fires light up Soda Bar with their new deal, Dereconstructed, a mixed bag of big dumb (if totally enjoyable) barroom rock songs and intelligent (and equally enjoyable) plaints about what it means to be a modern Southerner. You can check out the title track on this week’s podcast.
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2014/jun/18/club-crawler-portlandian-punk/
MY SPILT MILK
(New Orleans music blog curated by former Offbeat Magazine editor Alex Rawls) This Week’s Soundtrack
“The Company Man” – Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires: Bains plays One Eyed Jacks June 29.
http://myspiltmilk.com/zeppelin-returns-mccartneys-back-other-old-shit
NORTHWEST MUSIC SCENE
(Pacific Northwest music site) , Show preview and band photo
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires play Portland and Seattle, June 17 and 18
BY SHAWN SKAGER
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires will be performing local shows, including a Seattle date at The Tractor on June 17th and a Portland appearance at Mississippi Studios on June 18th.
Alabama- and Georgia-based quartet are touring in support of their new album Dereconstructed, which was released this month on Sub Pop. The new record has already been receiving raves reviews from the likes of The New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, Paste, The Guardian, as well as from Sub Pop co-founder Jonathan Poneman.
http://www.northwestmusicscene.com/2014/06/lee-baines-iii-glory-fires-play-portland-seattle-june-17-18/
CINCY GROOVE
(Cincy music site) – Show preview and band photo (from bio)
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires Coming To MOTR Pub July 14 In Support Of ‘Dereconstructed’
http://www.cincygroove.com/?p=39698
PHOENIX NEW TIMES
(Phoenix weekly) – Full feature interview / show preview
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires Recontextualize Southern Rock
By Jason P. Woodbury
Dereconstructed, the sophomore album by Birmingham, Alabama’s Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires, open’s with a greasy guitar riff and a gospel-inflicted howl from Bains: “Yessir, tell me why, tell me why.” The drums and bass kick in and it’s pure boogie, undeniably “Southern rock.”
But it’s crucial to note that the album’s 10 songs, recorded live in a friend’s basement studio by punk legend Tim Kerr and pressed to wax by indie stalwart Sub Pop, defy typical Southern rock tropes. Instead of relaxing in Dixie cliche or historical revisionism, Bains tears apart and examines the South’s past, reflecting on the oppression that took root in the place, and the resistance movement that disrupted it.
“We were raised on ancient truths, and ugly old lies,” Bains sings on the title track, twang thick in his voice.
Bains sings about a South where profits were “put in the pockets of businessmen on Sunday,” while “prophets” were beaten “black-and-blue” in the street. He sings about a South divided, turning rallying cries like “We Dare Defend Our Rights” on their head.
“[Any time] a culture establishes a sort of singular identity or narrative, or takes on one, it can be really destructive and very misleading,” Bains says.
Often, Southern rock bands focus only on the BBQ, beer, and Southern Comfort — great subjects for rock ‘n’ roll songs, for sure — but Bains spends the length of his album examining privilege, history, and class.
“That process of reconciliation has a deliberate energy that has to go into that. It’s more pleasant and comfortable at times I think to just put it out of mind, but the act of reconciliation is rewarding,” Bains says.
Bains’ lyrics probe the idea of Southern identity, but sonically the band is pure boogie, employing thick riffs and grit. “Burnpiles, Swimming Holes” opens with a country blues strut; the band echoes the Stones’ Southern exclusions on the R&B informed “Mississippi Bottomland.” On “What’s Good and Gone” the Glory Fires recall the Drive-By Truckers, and on “We Dare Defend Our Rights” they look to Southern rock torchbearers Lynyrd Skynrd. On the Stooges-meets-Gories “Dereconstructed,” Bains howls like a preacher, tellingly singing, “We were whooped with the good nook / Wound up shamed, sorry and worse. But I yearned to burn the wrath out of every chapter / And water the love in every verse / Water the love in every verse.”
In addition to taking on the monolithic idea that is “the South,” Bains spends the album exploring his relationship to Christianity, too, evoking both the Jesus who overturned the moneylender’s tables in the temple and the one who preached love as the highest law. Bains grew up in the church, and struggled with the “dissonance” between what he read in the gospels and what he heard from the pulpit.
“Initially I just said, ‘screw the whole thing,'” Bains explains. “But as I got older I found myself wanting what I had seen [growing up]; the more positive examples of believers having [a] sense of peace and graciousness and lovingness. The Jesus of the scriptures I read is loving and open, and he’s not a literalist, not a legalist, he’s not a fundamentalist.”
With Deconstructed Bains explores one man’s take on the complicated South, one man’s grappling with culture, faith, and justice, and race in America. It’s a conflicted album, born from a place where segregation festered as Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, musically eradicated it; it’s an album about one man reconciling a home he loves with unpleasant truths. At a time when indie rock seems intent on saying nothing specific, Bains and his band are speaking direct.
Lee Bains III and The Glory Fires are scheduled to perform Monday, June 23 at Last Exit Live.
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/uponsun/2014/06/lee_bains_iii_the_glory_fires_last_exit_live_phoenix_concert.php
PHOENIX NEW TIMES
Feature interview / show preview
Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires @ Last Exit Live
By Jason P. Woodbury
Lee Bains III is a white, Christian Southerner and, yes, knows exactly how that reads. Over the course of the 10 tracks on Dereconstructed, his sophomore album with his band the Glory Fires, he chews on and wrestles with the idea of Southern identity, reflecting on a place where segregation festered while Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals musically broke down the barriers between black and white. “We were raised on ancient truths and ugly old lies,” Bains sings on the title track, twang thick in his voice. Cut live in a friend’s basement by punk iconoclast Tim Kerr and pressed to wax by venerable indie label Sub Pop, it’s a greasy and amplified record, Southern rock by geographical definitions and sound. Tangled in kudzu and conflicted, Bains attempts to explore a complicated South, trying to make sense of culture, religion, justice, and race in America. Bains doesn’t pretend to speak for anyone other than himself, but he forcefully challenges the idea that the American South is any one thing. “[Any time] a culture establishes a sort of singular identity or narrative, or takes on one, it can be really destructive and very misleading,” Bains says. With Deconstructed, Bains attempts to reconcile faith, history, and tradition the best way he knows how: He cranks up the guitars and howls.
Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires are scheduled to perform Monday, June 23, at Last Exit Live.
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2014-06-19/music/lee-bains-iii-the-glory-fires/
AMERICANA MUSIC SHOW
(internet radio/podcast show) – Positive post on album with band photo. Dereconstructed,’ ‘The Kudzu and the Concrete,’ ‘The Weeds Downtown,’ and ‘Mississippi Bottomland’ added to rotation. Interview with Lee & Calvin June 23rd at 7pm MDT.
Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires , Dereconstructed
June 6, 2014 By Calvin Powers
Just when you get that down and out feeling that everyone has forgotten what rock & roll sounds like, along comes Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires to blow out the crud from your psyche with Dereconstructed. Underneath all that sonic distortion, you can hear strains of southern rock. You can hear a soul vibe in the Bains’ earnest lyrics. You can hear the back woods bonfire parties in the screaming guitars. But the 90 miles an hour delivery and the sonic walls of screaming guitars turn this album into rock & roll that anyone can get into.
I’m adding ‘Dereconstructed,’ ‘The Kudzu and the Concrete,’ ‘The Weeds Downtown,’ and ‘Mississippi Bottomland’ to rotation.
Preview Dereconstructed by Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires on Amazon.
http://www.americanamusicshow.com/lee-bains-iii-glory-fires-dereconstructed/
ATLANTA LIVE MUSIC EXAMINER
(Atlanta online A&E site) – Positive show preview
Lee Bains III, the Bohannons and Zoners left the EARL in a shambles
Chris Martin
Atlanta Live Music Examiner
Thursday night the true definition of a rock and roll show took place at the EARL in east Atlanta. One of Alabama’s finest – Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires , teamed up with a group of rockers out of Tennessee , The Bohannons , and a local band , Zoners , for an evening of sonic debauchery.
Bains and crew took to the stage and proceeded to assault the jam packed house with a collection of vicious guitars and thunderous rhythms. Grabbing the mic Bains skipped any introductions as he tore into Gov. Deal and his policies before opening the show with ‘Company Man’. It was a fitting beginning to a night that would leave most folks in attendance with ringing ears. The evening was about the new record and the new songs sounded great live. The music poured from the speakers at ear piercing decibels as Bains prowled around the stage like a caged animal growling into the microphone, attacking his guitar and jumping in and out of the crowd. When the buzz from the amps came to a close the place was drenched in sweat. The Glory Fires dished out a batch of Southern infused rock with a smash you in the mouth punk attitude. The crowd was as tired and sweaty as the band because each and every person there was singing, dancing and air guitaring along with every song. I have seen a lot of shows and this by far was one of the best.
Chattanooga’s Bohannons opened the night’s festivities with a set of tunes loaded with churning guitars and bone rattling rhythms that tore into listener’s souls. Their aural onslaught was short and powerful as they mixed in tunes from up and down their catalog. As the set sped by a psychedelic feel blanketed their Southern rock sound which reminded me of classic 70’s Deep Purple. When the smoke cleared I think Corey from TIAM (This Is American Music) said it best, ‘Every time I see the Bohannons, it’s my favorite time seeing the Bohannons’. These dudes give it all they got and Thursday was no different.
Sandwiched in between the two was local band Zoners. They kept with the theme of playing loud. Fast guitar riffs and rapid fire drums mixed with old school synthesizers equaled a sound that was one part 80’s one part punk rock. These dudes played fast and furious and when their set was through they had won over a few new fans.
Those that were at the EARL, and there were a lot, got what they paid for. Lee Bains II & the Glory Fires showed why they are a force to be reckoned with, the Bohannons once again impressed leaving me wondering why more people aren’t flocking to their music and the Zoners demonstrated the strength of local music in Atlanta. If you ever find yourself facing an opportunity to catch any of these bands live, take my advice and do it.
http://www.examiner.com/article/lee-bains-iii-the-bohannons-and-zoners-left-the-earl-a-shambles?cid=rss
ATLANTA LIVE MUSIC EXAMINER
(Atlanta online A&E site) – Positive show preview
Lee Bains III and the Bohannons at the EARL
Chris Martin
This Thursday night the decibel level at the EARL may set all new world records. To say the back room will be loud would be a gross understatement as two bands roll into town with two goals. One, to offer up some bad ass Southern flavored rock music and two to test the tolerance of the human ear. Seriously folks these dudes are loud, but in a good way.
Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires (LB3) are the hot name in music right now. After a brilliant debut they have joined the ranks of Sub Pop and unleashed their follow up record Dereconstructed (review coming soon). With a new record to hock LB3 has hit the road hard playing their tunes in any city, town and hamlet that will have them. Lucky us here in Atlanta that they make a stop at the EARL. Their live shows take the music to another level with vicious guitars, thunderous drums and Mr. Bains’ destructive growling vocals. The music tramples into your ear with the subtlety of a charging rhino, stomps around a bit before leaving much in the same manor and you will do nothing but ask for more. Look for a set list highlighting the latest record but I am sure they will toss in songs from their debut and maybe a few other treats. LB3 is what experiencing live music should be because when they are done playing you will be left drained.
Also assaulting your auditory senses will be the Bohannons. Much in the same way as LB3, they rock and they rock hard. While their albums do a great job conveying their powerful music nothing beats seeing it up close and personal. The Chattanooga band will be blistering the crowd with songs from their critically acclaimed record Unaka Rising and teasing them with a taste of some new material and what is to come. I can’t think of any other band to team up with LB3.
These bands are two of the most incredibly bad ass live acts I have ever seen. They play wide ass open and refuse to slow down until the set is over or they are too exhausted to go on. They give everything they have in each performance and when the music is done it will stick with you for weeks to come. Not just because of the ringing in your ears but due to their well written songs and unforgettable guitar riffs. If you have never seen these bands live I suggest you make it a point to be there. Get there early so you don’t miss any of the music because in addition to these two bands local act the Zoners will be sharing the stage. Oh yeah, bring earplugs.
WHO: Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires, The Bohannons & the Zoners
WHEN: Thursday, June 5th, 9pm
WHERE: The EARL
http://www.examiner.com/article/lee-bains-iii-and-the-bohannons-at-the-earl
GRIP OF DELISION
(metal site) – Positive review
15. Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires , Dereconstructed
Speaking of sleezy, Lee Bains III has unleashed a southern rock monster. Somewhat of a concept album, not unlike most the Drive-By Truckers album, Bains brings emotion, anger, love and a damn good storyline about the dirty south. I can see this one growing even higher up on my list with more listens. Listen to the words and you’ll understand why.
HYPERLINK “http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2014/05/25/album-review-lee-bains-iii-the-glory-fires-dereconstructed/u9nYvVkgyfi1JUV52KBqlO/story.html”
http://gripofdelusion.tumblr.com/
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC
(Phoenix daily) – Positive Scottsdale show preview
6/23: Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires
This Southern rocker is touring an album called “Dereconstructed,” bringing a Stones-worthy swagger to the roots-rock table in moments as inspired as the gospel-flavored raunch and roll of “Ain’t No Stranger” and “Centreville,” a scrappy anthem for the overeducated and underemployed. Bains’ gritty approach should speak to Drive-By Truckers fans in a proud Southern accent.
Details: 8 p.m. Monday, June 23. The Western, 6830 E. Fifth Ave., Scottsdale. $14; $12 in advance. 480-947-3585, statesidepresents.com.
http://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/music/2014/05/28/june-concerts-guide-phoenix-tempe/9665629/
NINE BULLETS
(online music magazine) – Positive album review
LEE BAINS III & THE GLORY FIRES , DERECONSTRUCTED
The following is my review of the new Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires record. I don’t talk about the sound or the music a lot, so let me get that out of the way now: it’s loud, forceful Alabama punk rock’n’soul that makes you want to sing and shake and stomp and sweat. Lee Bains, Eric Wallace, and Adam and Blake Williamson are a potent machine, creating a wall of sound that is a pure joy to listen to in its interplay. This record doesn’t sound like their last record, it sounds more like their live show. Plenty of people have written about it, from the New York Times to NPR, people who have written about music a lot more than I have. I’m not very good at writing about sounds so I’ll leave that to them. I’m interested in something much bigger than the sound of this record.
You may have seen the stellar in-depth write-up on Bitter Southerner by Chuck Reece, and if you haven’t I suggest all of you go ahead and read it right now. You’ll get a lot of history of Lee, and a lot of the context for this record that is vitally important. One of the most striking things that Lee says is in response to a question that Mr. Reece posed to him, ‘Why did you make this record?’ The following is a piece of Lee’s answer, a line, a scrap, but one that I feel is of the utmost importance: ‘The South is not the object here. The South is merely my context, that abiding point in space and spirit from whence I encounter creation.’
This is absolutely a record by a boy from Birmingham, Alabama. The geographical origin of this record, though, is neither its be-all or end-all. Lee has a lot to say on this album that may get overlooked in the face of its power and gall; reviewers and listeners not used to parsing every line may miss the forest for the trees, and with a record like De-Reconstructed that would be a shame. I don’t want to dwell too long on the points that will no doubt earn Lee and his band well-deserved adulation, but there are a few points regarding this album that I believe are worth making: the issues broached are more than just Southern issues, it breaks with many conventions of whatever-the-hell genre this is, and it is an active protest record in every sense of the word.
If you haven’t taken the time to read the lyrics along with the record, you absolutely should: they’re available at the band’s website. Once you dig a little deeper than the soulful and frequently shouted verses, you’ll find a breadth of references to everything from biblical history to current events to Lee’s own family members. ‘We Dare Defend Our Rights!’, a song referencing the state motto of Alabama, opens with the crushing inequalities such a motto can represent: the 16th Street Baptist church bombing in 1963, the modern fight for gay rights, and the plight of immigrants in the country legally or otherwise. Although the framing of these issues is the South, the issues themselves are anything but; in Bains’ eyes (as in mine), you cannot frame gay rights or immigrant rights as anything other than a Civil Rights issue. As the generation who holds views like ‘homosexuality as sin’ grows older (but not yet old enough to no longer hold political office), and a more tolerant generation begins to make their voice heard, there will be friction. It is hard to imagine the ‘hollering in the streets’ that Lee references as anything other than Occupy-like protests. He even references that movement directly, in ‘The Company Man’: ‘Remember Woodruff Park, where America’s step-kids sang ‘We Shall Overcome’’. Occupy Atlanta was in Woodruff Park for 20 days before they were arrested, and indeed ‘Hauled off down Andrew Young!’
The Occupy movement is anything but absolutely Southern, though it is no surprise that it took hold in the South. Discontent and protest may not always have the same symptoms but you can bet damn sure the disease that sent countless hundreds to Wall Street in 2011 sent many more to a park in Atlanta. The Reconstruction, a series of failed post-Civil War policies that attempted to give some order to the re-admitted Southern states, is and was absolutely the South’s cross to bear. The rest of the country, though, also has its own weight and baggage to carry. For every Southerner drinking tea ‘whose leaves were picked betwixt firing squads in Sudan’ there is sure to be one Northerner or Easterner doing the same. To paint this record as an analysis of the Modern Southern Trials and Tribulations is absolutely fair, but ignores the larger picture: the rest of the country is facing the same demons, but maybe from a different perspective.
When listening to Dereconstructed, at first listen you may think that it has an interesting sound but otherwise falls into the wheelhouse of similar Southern Rock or Alt-Country or Post-Punk-Folk-Grunge or whateverthehell kinds of records there are. There are two important points that, on the graph of genre records, make this one an outlier: there is not a single love song, or a single reference to drinking or drugs. Yes, ‘Mississippi Bottomland’ and ‘The Weeds Downtown’ both very clearly reference female love interests, but the relationship with the woman is not the point of either song. Those songs, along with the stellar ‘The Kudzu And The Concrete’, are love songs dedicated to a place. Bains is more than capable of writing gorgeous ballads to lost love: look at ‘Roebuck Parkway’ or ‘Everything You Took’ off of his last album. On a ten-track record, six of the songs are dedicated to social or economic inequality (both past and present), three of the songs are about the South itself, and one song is about passion and music and race cars. None of the songs are about being drunk or getting high or heartbreak or waiting around to die (no offense meant, Townes). Each of these songs are active, are aggressive, in a way that Two Cow Garage’s latest record was: these songs are not songs by or for people who wait around for things to happen.
This brings me to my last point: this is a protest record. Lee Bains III did not make a kickass rock and roll record so that we all could listen to the vinyl and buy his t-shirts, although I’m sure he does appreciate the sentiment. This is a record for being mad as hell and not taking it any more. This is a record of convictions, of lines in the sand, of compassion and hard work and the pursuit of happiness. This is a record intended to stick with you after you’re done listening to it. As Lee says in ‘We Dare Defend Our Rights’:
‘If you won’t let us lay the plans on the supper table,
We’ll build the thing in your front damn yard’
‘Dereconstructed’ hearkens back to an older time, a darker time that doesn’t look too different from the present when you start paying attention. How many thousands, millions of us, have seen protests on our TV screens or computer monitors and inwardly expressed solidarity with those marching out or sitting in, but did nothing to participate? How many politicians that sicken us have been re-elected on our watch without our vocal participation in the democratic process of debate? This is a record by a Southerner, from a Southern point of view, but I grew up in a Western desert and went to school right in the middle of the country, and I can safely say that the system isn’t perfect across the Alabama state line.
Take the time to read the lyrics, to listen to the songs. Take the time to think about your hometown and what you’ve said about it since you’ve moved away, or since you wish you had. Think about the times you’ve held your tongue instead of speaking your mind, at work, at home. There are plenty of uninformed opinions flying around all over the place, but there are plenty of informed ones that never get spoken, too. Think about the people you meet in your life, and how you treat them. I can safely say that this band, this album, this songwriter have affected the way I think about my life. I can honestly say I hope they affect yours, too.
I’ll close with maybe my favorite lines from the record, off of ‘The Kudzu And The Concrete’:
‘We were like to drown
In the odour of honeysuckle
And old Lincolns running rich
On Oporto-Madrid:
The pecans that would dot
The little yard our great-granddaddy cleared;
The old ragged men that would stop
Slinging slurred words over the fence.
With a smiling nod, Granddaddy’d pick us up and tote us inside.
He’d say, ‘Big buddy, any good man can fall on mighty hard times.’’
Listen to the record with an open mind and heart. Pick it up, support the band. Talk to us here at 9b about it, talk to each other about it, talk to your friends about it. Go out and see a show. But then take it a step further. If you love this record and this band as much as I do, if you love where you’re from and this planet and each other, it’s time to start getting each other through the bad times.Bring earplugs if you need them: with Lee Bains III leading the way, it’s bound to get loud.
http://ninebullets.net/archives/constructive-destruction-lee-bains-iii
THE PERLICH POST
(online music site) – The Company Man featured
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires’ ass-whuppin’ new Deconstructed album is out now on Sub Pop. Watch Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires’ Company Man video
http://theperlichpost.blogspot.com/2014/05/watch-lee-bains-iii-glory-fires-company.html
BRIGHTEST YOUNG THINGS
(DC based music blog) – Post on video and early DC show preview with band photo.
I’m still finding new music because Nirvana used to be on the label and the band is touring with a band that has diarreah in it’s name. Sub Pop’s Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires are touring with Diarrhea Planet this summer. Since Diarrhea Planet rules, I decided to watch their new music video.
It’s not a horrible video (extremely similar to the new Paws video we played here a few weeks back) and the song is quite good. It’s the kind of song that’s perfect for drinking on the roof of DC9 on a hot summer night. Good news, the band will be at DC9 on July 21. Sadly, Diarrhea Planet will not. Oh well. Still a good show.
http://brightestyoungthings.com/articles/video-of-the-day-lee-bains-iii-the-glory-fires-the-company-man.htm
BOSTON GLOBE
(Boston daily) – Positive album review & early Boston show mention.
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires, ‘Dereconstructed’
By Stuart Munro
Lee Bains’s sophomore record makes evident that he is a man with a lot on his mind. In particular, the past and present state of the South and Southernness (including his own) is a preoccupation throughout, from the oppositional stance articulated by title song ‘Dereconstructed’ (‘We gave them songs about taking your own damn stand/In spite of those who’d define and control you’) to a scathing riff on the Alabama state motto, ‘We Dare Defend Our Rights,’ to a warts-and-all valentine to his hometown of Birmingham, ‘The Weeds Downtown.’ It also makes evident that Bains likes to rock. He and the Glory Fires wrap his commentaries, ruminations, and invective in what he calls ‘real Alabama rock ‘n’ roll,’ a raging burnpile of garage and Southern rock, dirty, supercharged blues and soul, Stonesy groove, Crazy Horse howl, and punk slam. With these songs, Bains surely wants to make you think; he surely will make you shake. (Out Tuesday) STUART MUNRO
ESSENTIAL ‘Dereconstructed’
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2014/05/25/album-review-lee-bains-iii-the-glory-fires-dereconstructed/u9nYvVkgyfi1JUV52KBqlO/story.html
FARCE THE MUSIC
(online music site) – Postive album review Lee Bains III & Album Review: Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires , Dereconstructed
Lee Bains III and The Glory Fires is another act who has progressed beyond the need for blogs and websites of Farce the Music’s calibre to review and promote. I didn’t discover the band or anything, but it’s still pretty cool to have been in their corner when most of the world had yet to be exposed to their brand of highly intelligent and extremely loud southern rock. (Humble-brag? Who me?) Now the boys are signed to Sub Pop and have big promotion and an adoring media to their advantage. They’re supposed to change their approach and sound so as many people as possible can appreciate them, right?
If you base your opinion only on their previous album, LBIIITGF did change their sound. However, if anything, they made it less accessible. Anyone who’s seen the band in concert knows that Dereconstructed is more of a true look at who they really are – too loud for listening rooms, too garage-rock for country, too country for rock radio, too smart for southern rock, and too rural to be hipsters. These contrasts play into what makes the new release so great.
Dereconstructed loudly takes on the “duality of the Southern thing” that Drive-by Truckers explored years ago on Southern Rock Opera. LBIII does it their own way: angry, political at times, and amped-up at nearly all times. The lyrics, which you may or may not be able to make out without reading the album booklet, are smart, poetic and often biting.
The songs touch on race, religion, corporate greed, cultural identity, urban decay, urban sprawl, and other serious topics without ever sounding overbearing or being devoid of fun. The fact that your face is being rocked off the entire time makes this record just as enjoyable for people who aren’t that deep anyway.
It’s difficult to pick a standout track, but I suppose “Burnpiles, Swimming Holes” would take that title for me. It’s an order to “get off the f***ing internet” and have a good time in the real world. It’s a praise anthem for the simple pleasures of rural leisure time. “The Weeds Downtown” and “Dirt Track” are two other favorites, but there’s nothing here worth skipping.
I will readily admit that I’d rather this album be a continuation of There is a Bomb in Gilead, which was less confrontational in tone and subject matter, but this is the album Lee and the guys needed to make. While it’s less personally satisfying, there is no question that Dereconstructed is a better album in nearly every aspect. The interplay of the musicians is stronger, the already solid songwriting is sharper, and the message carries more weight.
Whether you’re a fan of the unabated rocking, the compassionate and highly literate writing, or both, Dereconstructed is a stunning success by any measure. Highly recommended.
———-
Dereconstructed is available at Amazon, iTunes, and Sub Pop.
http://www.farcethemusic.com/2014/05/album-review-lee-bains-iii-glory-fires.html
WHEN YOU MOTOR AWAY
(online music blog) – Positive album review Lee Bains III & REVIEW
Lee Bains III and The Glory Fires – Dereconstructed
We here at WYMA are all in for Lee Bains III and The Glory Fires. John Hyland penned one of the first articles ever written about the boys from Birmingham Alabama here in March 2012, and their debut album There Is A Bomb In Gilead made a couple of our Best of 2012 lists (mine and John’s).
So we’ve waited with great expectations for their 2nd LP, this one done for the top shelf indie label, Sub Pop Records based in Seattle.
Dereconstructed, quite simply, is the noisiest, most relentlessly rocking 10 song burst of pure adrenalin imaginable. It’s a bold statement and a big step forward for the band, which is saying a lot given the strength of There Is A Bomb In Gilead.
Second records are tricky as the term “sophomore slump” didn’t appear from out of nowhere. Bands often fall prey to either rehashing their first record with inferior songs, or stretch too hard to have “a hit”, or get pushed into the studio too quickly when they have maybe 3 songs ready to go and the rest being done on the fly, compared to the lifetime they had to write the songs for their debut. No such pitfalls on Dereconstructed which sounds like a band just coming into its own, destined for greatness.
This record so goes against the computer-enhanced grain of the day, turning it up literally to the point of distortion and putting the pedal to the floor and not letting up, capturing a very intentionally raw sound.
Here’s the kicking ass and taking names opening track “The Company Man”:
And here’s my very favorite, and maybe the “slowest” one on Dereconstructed, “The Weeds Downtown”:
As both songs linked above demonstrate, Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires have absorbed their rock and roll history well, drawing from the Faces, Ramones, fellow Alabamians The Drive-By Truckers, and an earlier Sub Pop band called Nirvana. But more than anything, the sound here reminds me of the first Clash record and early Sonic Youth with its distortion and sheer ‘go for it’ abandon.
What I especially admire is how working within very defined idioms – punk rock and Southern rock – Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires avoid every rule and formula. Reminds me of discovering The Replacements’ 1981 debut Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash, punk rock that sounded nothing like anyone else’s punk rock, no mean feat in 1981 and even more noteworthy today. What sets this band apart and keeps this sort of standard guitar/bass/drums rock’n’roll sounding so fresh is Lee Bains’ vocals. The guy is a tremendous rock and roll singer who has more than a little bit of Southern soul shouter in him, as if Wilson Pickett’s work up the road from Birmingham at Muscle Shoals somehow seeped into him at birth. Most rock singers, even the great ones like Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart and Bruce Springsteen, have to work hard to effect this, but Bains naturally oozes soul.
And Bains’ songwriting, especially lyrically, steps up here too. Every song here has a strong structure, irresistible guitar riffs, and there are killer chorus’ abound. And the sonic noise is matched by Bains’ populist fury – raging against the decline of the middle class, the stubborn backwards politics of the contemporary South, and Christian hypocrisy, but with panache, intelligence and void of cliche, again much like the first Clash album. Dereconstructed is a terrific title for this 2014 Southern-fried, angry punk mayhem.
Yet, like any good Southern boy, Bains loves the Southland and his family and that comes through strongly, particularly in another gem here “The Kudzu and the Concrete”:
There’s a thing about
All these freight trains’ trumpeting sounds
That makes hearts like ours Hum like struck steel.
There’s a thing about
Being wild and green in this careful, rusted town
That makes the dark heavy air
Sit sickly still.
Most times, hopping on here takes you to Elmwood Cemetery.
And I forget which time of day, it’ll take you straight to Memphis,Tennessee.
In the kudzu and the concrete, I was born at the feet of the city.
In the kudzu and the concrete, We learned to love at the feet of the city.
The band’s and producer Tim Kerr’s approach here was to capture their live sound and they succeeded. The sound here leaps from the speakers with spontaneous energy. The band is finely tuned after spending most of the past two years on the road. Listen to “Kudzu and The Concrete” recorded live in New York City earlier this year here:
The Glory Fires themselves are a crack unit, the perfect Southern punk rock band, The Scorchers to Bains’ Jason if you will. The rhythm section of brothers, drummer Blake Williamson and bass player Adam Williamson, is super tight, and guitarist Eric Wallace joins Bains for a blistering twin-pronged nasty guitar assault. Best of all, the quartet are a true band playing as a unit.
Dereconstructed is rebel’s music, as God, the South and Joe Strummer intended.
Stream the entire CD here from NPR’s web page. Buy this record and be sure to see them when they come to your town.
Band web page.
Facebook – Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires
Twitter: @TheGloryFires
http://whenyoumotoraway.blogspot.com/2014/05/review-lee-bains-iii-and-glory-fires.html
PITTSBURGH IN TUNE
(online music news site) Positive album review with band photo
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires shine bright on ‘Dereconstructed’
‘Dereconstructed’
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires (Sub Pop)
4 stars out of 5
Free-wheeling Alabama rockers Lee Bains & The Glory Fires made a minor splash with their 2012 debut slab ‘There Is a Bomb in Gliead,’ but seem poised for bigger and better things with the release of phenomenal sophomore effort ‘Dereconstructed.’
There’s a nice mix of classic Southern rock with a touch of punk strut on a 10-track gem of an album highlighted by high-octane opener ‘The Company Man,’ ‘Burnpiles Swimming Holes,’ ‘The Kudzu and the Concrete,’ ‘We Dare Defend Our Rights,’ ‘Mississippi Bottomland’ and ‘Dirt Track.’ This is a perfect summer record, y’all. (Jeffrey Sisk)
http://pghintune.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/lee-baines-iii-the-glory-fires-shine-bright-on-dereconstructed/
HELLHOUND MUSIC
(online music news site) News post on tour and album with band photo (from press announcement)
http://www.hellhoundmusic.com/tag/lee-bains-iii-and-the-glory-fires/
MUSIC INDUSTRY NEWS NETWORK
(online music news site) News post on tour and album with band photo (from press announcement)
http://mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=174387