LEE BAiNS + the GLORY FiRES - OLD-TiME FOLKS

ROUTES & BRANCHES

featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music

August 20, 2022

Scott Foley, purveyor of dust

Way back in Scott: The Wonder Years, I favored music that was hard and heavy. Acts like Thin Lizzy, Cheap Trick and Rush served as my musical cornerstones. Even as my attention shifted to alternative stuff, I still favored artists in the punk orbit. For every spin of Cocteau Twins I would flip to the Damned. I'd alternate early Psychedelic Furs with early Siouxsie. The first Ministry record with all the other Ministry records. Even years later, when I'd drifted to the dark side of roots music, I was alt through-and-through. I wanted to be reminded of the cloud behind every silver lining. 

Fast forward several years (when will this phrase stop making sense to people for whom fast forward was never a thing): A young Alabama band, Lee Bains III + the Glory Fires landed among my favorites for 2012 with There Is a Bomb in Gilead, a document that married roots, soul, punk and gospel. Through 2014's Dereconstructed, Bains' artistic vision was honed, coming to a sharp point in 2017 with the ambitious Youth Detention. I wrote at the time: Like the best punk, the double-CD gives us a reason to rage while also issuing a rallying cry and reminding listeners of what matters in the midst of a social shitstorm. Youth Detention is a truly remarkable document, like a shoebox jammed full with a jumble of memories, impressions, frustrations and identities. Better than all that, it fucking rocked. 

That shitstorm hasn't subsided. There is no shortage of fuel for our fire, no lack of justification for despair. And that's worried Lee Bains (he's since dropped the III). Hopelessness wasn't the end of the conversation, even in all the tumult and uproar that defined the years preceding the pandemic. With those sentiments marinated in the dark history of the South, the riots and the uprisings, the victories and the setbacks. Throughout that history, Bains traced the story of old-time folks, the victims of the establishment machines and the champions of this perennial struggle to breathe, to thrive. To survive. In the rallies and cries of these people he found meaning and strength and hope. These are the underpinnings of Old-Time Folks, the fourth studio record of Lee Bains + the Glory Fires. 

You'll get to know Lee Bains in two recently published pieces. You'll want to track down a profile and interview on the Bitter Southerner site. Pair that with a terrific poem cycle shared by the New Yorker. Let these piece serve as tentpoles for our appreciation of the man and his vision - a passion that's as informed by the names and the landmarks of Southern history as it is by the music and the poetry of the people. Youth Detention prepared us for the rapid-fire lyrical patter which introduces the new collection. The invocation delivered by poet and activist Angela Davis, the tension of an organ drone breaking into the Southern rock of the title track. Bains' frenzied recitation is impossible to corral, a tumble of visions and a flash of electricity risin' up like a mighty cloud. Blake Williamson's whip-crack drums encourage his brother Adam's rumbling bass and Bains' own stabbing guitar. The singer reminds us of the deep roots of the present struggle, the reach and penetration: This ain't a brand / This ain't a look / This ain't content. 

To date, the Glory Fires' albums have been generated alongside producer-guru Tim Kerr. For Old-Time Folks, however, Bains sought another, more classic sound that he heard in his favorite music, a separation and purpose that further defined and supported the songs. To accomplish that, the band turned to the genius of producer-instrumentalist David Barbe. "Battle of Atlanta" couples that lyrical urgency with a more measured setting, a name-dropping walk through the city set to a steady buzz of guitar and drum. Through the rock-and-twang, the stories unfold: Jose Luis shows me how to clear a kudzu acre / With a duct-taped machete, a rusty hoe-axe, and a truck stop knife. While the intensity of Youth Detention remains, Barbe encourages more distinct lanes for the band's fiery instrumentation. The approach leaves space for a shot of soul on "(In Remembrance of the) 40-Hour Week", guitar echoing like a siren. The song spotlights the centrality of labor struggles: Working with our hands and on our feet ... holding that holy old line. 

As part of their sonic revisioning, Bains and co. invite Thayer Sarrano on piano and Jay Gonzalez on organ, in addition to periodic horns and the subtly impactful backing vocals of Kym Register of Loamlands. You'll hear the wider palette on "God's A-Working Man", a song that calls out the gospel roots of the Glory Fires racket, a god who labors and suffers and who rises alongside the old-time folks. To a solitary strummed acoustic the outfit swells to a sanctified electric, Saturday night piano and finally an organ reaching for the rafters. Laid out among Bains' recitation of names and places are images suitable of an illustrated Bible: An eagle opened up like a blackbound book in the sky. "Done Playing Dead" juxtaposes a depth-charge bassline against a banjo and one of the songwriter's catchiest grooves. 

Where Youth Detention barely let up for a moment of reflection, the flames of these heavier fires are sparked even higher by the presence of songs that simmer rather than rage. Driven by the events of Ferguson, Missouri, "Outlaws" celebrates the centrality of protesters, rebels and outlaws in the story of the South. Horns battle alongside guitars, with Bains offering the refrain: I wasn't ready / I wasn't even there. Even more to the point, "Gentlemen" presents a piano ballad, with raw drums and fiddle. A tired sigh of a tune, "Old Friends" is impactful in its rawness and vulnerability. 

These are rebel songs, musical celebrations of the power of the people to hold back a river of despair. In maturing and sharpening his artistic vision, Lee Bains delivers another history lesson set to song, a race riot with guitars, a lesson in labor movements with horns. At heart, both punk and folk music share a common root in the struggle of old broken things to fix. Bains' cadence and his lyrical precision (sacred names crawl through the mist) are his calling card, the elements that brand him as much a boots-on-the-ground reporter as he is a boots-on-the-stage troubadour. On Old-Time Folks, he and the Glory Fires don't let us overlook that our kind of music belongs to the people. Roots, soul, punk and gospel is the music of the old-time folks.