Michael Lee’s career as a blues musician has opened a lot of doors for him. Though he’s only 36, the Fort Worthian has been a fixture in the North Texas blues scene for a couple of decades. He’s played with legends like Freddie King, John Mayall, Willie Dixon, Andrew “Junior Boy” Jones, Buddy Whittington, and Lucky Peterson, and he was also on Season 15 of The Voice. He scorched the crowd with his audition song, a take on B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone.” While Lee would never truly abandon playing the blues, he wanted to expand his sound with the heavy bounce inherent to funk and soul. Ironically, that path opened up while playing a blues gig.
On Thursday, Lee will release Object of the Game, a four-song EP of covers done in his newly funky style, celebrating the recording with a show at Tulips FTW. You might say this pivot to hard-hitting funk is the first act of his next era, and he couldn’t find a better partner than Skylark Soul Co.
A Dallas-based record label specializing in new bands working in vintage styles, in particular the psyche-hued heavy funk and soul influenced by the greats of the ’60s and ’70s, Skylark Soul Co. was co-founded by North Texas media personalities/musicians Danny Balis (Bastards of Soul, 96.7-FM/The Ticket) and Jeff “Skin” Wade.
Lee met Wade after playing the latter’s local brewery Rollertown a couple of years ago. The two “really hit it off,” Lee recalled. “He reached out to me about doing a record, so we did this EP of covers, and it’s the most fun I’ve had in the studio. … What I loved about working with [Wade] and [Balis] is that we had the same vision of what we wanted to make from the get-go.”
Their shared idea came from the sounds of late-’60s/early-’70s funk and soul — Lee cites Al Green as one of his all-time favorites, and on Lee’s cover of Bobby Patterson’s “I Get My Groove from You,” you can hear the playful grit of Green’s influence in the young man’s vocals. Lee said Wade’s affinity for the solid gold sounds of that era’s Stax and Hi Records artists sold him on working with him and Balis.
Photo by Nathaniel Keomanila
Working under the name the Silver Skylarks, Wade and Balis plus their crew of session players teamed up with Lee at Niles City Sound in Fort Worth to make the record. Wade and Balis engineered the EP, and Balis played bass on it. Robert “Sput” Searight and Jackie Whitmill Jr. played drums. Besides Lee’s guitarwork, Searight’s Snarky Puppy bandmate Mark Letteri contributed funky licks. Backing vocals came from Texas Gentleman staple Taylor Nicks and Austin-based duo Uncle Roy & Spice.
There’s a dusty, grimy blues version of reggae artist Dawn Penn’s “You Don’t Love Me (No No No)” that sounds like a riff Jack White thought up after listening to Cypress Hill. In the hands of Lee and the Silver Skylarks, The Allman Brother’s “Whipping Post” — a fan favorite from Lee’s stint on The Voice — becomes a groovy, keys-heavy cruiser that splits the difference between Deodato’s “September 13” and Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein.” On the aforementioned “I Get My Groove from You,” Lee’s baritone sounds as silky and seasoned as a glass of aged bourbon, and the sultry swing in his take on Bruce Cockburn’s “You Don’t Have to Play the Horses” smolders like a love scene in a 1970s crime flick. From start to finish, Object of the Game is on brand for the sonic aesthetic of Skylark Soul Co.
As for Lee, the project connects his career playing the blues with his love of Memphis soul’s tones and grooves, a stylistic vector he is stoked to lean into. Regarding Object, Lee said it’s kind of a prelude to where he’s headed next, a bridge of sorts between his past in blues traditions and the LP of original material he plans to release in 2025, once again with the Silver Skylarks.
“That album is halfway done,” he said “They’re all original songs, and the plan is to release this EP kind of as a reintroduction to me, just to showcase that we’re going into a different direction sonic-wise. I’ve been wanting to do a soul record for quite a while. I’ve just been waiting for the right moment and the right team.
“I didn’t want to do just a straight blues record,” he continued, “and, anyway, the things I was writing on [my 2019 self-titled debut] … not all of it is traditional blues. I tried to expand [my sound], but [with] the blues market … you move too far out of the blues, and the traditionalists get upset. But I’m just trying to write music that I like and that comes from my heart.”
Michael Lee & The Wartime Limousine
7pm Thu w/The Rosemont Kings at Tulips FTW, 112 St. Louis Av, Fort Worth. $16-20. 817-367-9798.
