Guitar legend Albert Lee heads up a bumper line-up of star names appearing at a Courier Country venue this month.
As part of his latest UK tour, the London-raised Grammy winner is playing four nights back-to-back at the Green Hotel in Kinross.
He’s proved a huge draw at the venue’s Backstage music room since it opened in 2010, and made his post-lockdown return to the Mundell Music-operated venture exactly 12 months ago with an identical run of shows.
Even as his 80th birthday approaches in December, Lee continues to play over 200 gigs a year around the world. “It’s easy to become a legend if you’re still around in your 70s and you manage to do a gig or two,” he laughs.
“I’ve been very fortunate that the gigs are still there for me.”
‘Anyone my age was inspired by Lonnie Donegan’
Albert first dabbled in music as a boy – albeit with little initial success. “I did piano lessons for a couple of years, starting when I was 10, but I was lazy and I didn’t practise.
“I’m glad that I did it, though, as it gave me a basic grasp of music. Then I discovered skiffle and a couple of friends and I decided we wanted to start a group.”
As was the case with so many teenagers in the mid-50s, his musical lodestone was the guitarwork of Scots-born songsmith Lonnie Donegan, who scored a huge hit with his speeded-up version of blues maestro Lead Belly’s folk standard Rock Island Line.
“Anybody of my age was inspired by Lonnie, and it was simple – three chords,” he explains.
“And then I started to listen to rock’n’roll and Buddy Holly – his solos were relatively easy to copy and figure out.”
Working with country rock idols
The self-effacing Lee started playing in a variety of R&B, country and rock’n’roll bands in 1959, with his big break coming within a few short years when he was snapped up by Chris Farlow and The Thunderbirds.
After leaving the soul-popsters in 1968 he went on to form his own country rock outfit Heads Hand And Feet, where he honed his breakneck guitar style over four years and three albums.
Albert headed for Los Angeles in 1974 – he still lives there to this day – and earned his spurs touring with Holly’s old band The Crickets and working as a sideman for his idols The Everly Brothers, then other big names including Joe Cocker, Emmylou Harris and Eric Clapton.
His 1979 album Hiding included his mesmeric lesson in hybrid picking, Country Boy, which has long been Lee’s signature tune. The fingerpicker’s infectious contribution to the Shakin’ Stevens chart-topper This Ole House followed not long after.
Throughout his epic career he’s remained proud to be recognised as a champion of the natural character of a guitar and an amp, and has little time for the debates among guitarists on both sides of the Atlantic concerning the merits of any particular way of playing over another.
‘I love that sound – a single coil’
“I might be trapped in the past, but the sound that really got me was the sound of a Fender guitar with a Fender amp,” Albert says.
“I just love that sound – you know, a single coil. I’ve never really strayed from that at all. I find that disguising the sound of a guitar with distortion and lots of effects gets away from what really attracted me to the guitar.”
Lee’s gigs pay homage to his favourite songwriters, with his set regularly including classics by the likes of the Everlys, Gram Parsons, Little Feat, Jimmy Webb, John Stewart and The Travelling Wilburys.
He was last on tour in the UK as recently as June, when he also made an appearance at a star-studded tribute at the London Palladium to Louisiana-born guitar legend James Burton, alongside the likes of Brian May, Ronnie Wood, John Oates and Van Morrison.
His Kinross stint starts on Thursday following a set from Couldn’t Get It Right hit-makers Climax Blues Band at the Green tomorrow, with further big names in the shape of Steve Miller Band’s Greg Douglass, Terry Reid, Danny Bryant and Rhino Edwards hitting the venue later this month.
Albert Lee plays the Green Hotel, Kinross, October 12-15. Bookings can be made online via Ticketweb.
