This weekend, Tim and Susan Bauer Lee will host the last of four weekly happy-hour music showcases at Pilot Light. The series finale celebrates the release of the latest Tim Lee 3 album, Tin, Man, and the band’s 10th anniversary. Just as significantly, it will be the last Tim Lee 3 show for the foreseeable future—Tim and Susan are putting the band on hiatus, effective immediately after Friday’s set.
“We’re not ‘breaking up’ the band,” Tim wrote on the band’s website last week. “We’re not putting the band out to pasture. We’re good Southerners so we’re just putting it up on cinder blocks in the front yard until it’s time to put on some new tires and take it for another spin. … Nobody’s going away or even slowing down much, just shifting focus.”
Tin, Man is the band’s fifth album, but it’s the first they’ve recorded in Knoxville. That gave them the chance to invite friends—including locals Po Hannah, Greg Horne, and Kevin Abernathy, and Florida singer/songwriter Beth McKee—to make guest appearances.
“Bringing in local friends was cool,” Susan says. “Being able to call on friends who just happened to be coming through town was a bonus. Tim has known Beth McKee since eighth grade, so it’s been very cool to have her in our extended family.”
Tin, Man wasn’t planned as an anniversary record, but looking back, the Lees see some poetic symmetry.
“It was just one of those things where you look around one day and realize you’ve been doing this particular thing for a decade,” Tim says. “I think in some ways it harkens back a bit to our first record, good2b3, in that it’s more of a raucous, straight-up rock ’n’ roll affair. We experimented less in the studio than we did on the last couple records.”
When the Lees moved to Knoxville in 2000, Tim had been out of the music business for several years. (He’d been in the Mississippi power-pop contenders the Windbreakers in the 1980s and recorded and toured solo during the early and mid ’90s.) But the music scene he found here inspired him to pick up the guitar again; between 2002 and 2006, he released three solo albums. At the same time, Susan had started playing bass and writing songs. Their collaborations gradually drew in drummer Rodney Cash and then coalesced into the Tim Lee 3. (After a Spinal Tap-like succession of drummers, Chris Bratta joined the band in 2011 and has stayed behind the kit since.)
“At the time, we were just trying to get something going,” Tim says. “I’d come back to playing after being away for a while, and Susan had just been playing a few years. Her starting to sing and write more coincided with the band becoming a three-piece with Rodney. At that point, it started to become something different from what it’d been before. It had a different vibe altogether, so we put a name on it.”
“I sort of look at 2006 as the point when I began to feel more confident in my abilities as a player, singer, and songwriter,” Susan adds. “It was also the point when Tim realized that a three-piece band could still make a mighty sound.”
The hiatus is the result of a chronic (and non-life-threatening) health condition that makes it painful for Susan to play bass live.
“It is has progressed to the point that I am very uncomfortable playing bass in a live situation,” Susan says. “I’ve been really good at hiding the pain, but when Tim realized how miserable I was when we were playing live, it began to have a negative effect on him because he was worrying so much about me. We make a glorious racket for fun and art, and when either of those start to take a hit, it’s time to make a change.”
Tim and Susan will both continue to play together, live and in the studio, in the duo Bark, with Tim on bass and Susan on drums.
“I can’t imagine myself not playing music at all, so I’m glad we have something else to move into,” Susan says. “We’ve never been afraid of a challenge, and we’re confident enough in Bark to go in that direction and see where it takes us.”
Senior Editor Matthew Everett manages the Knoxville Mercury's arts & entertainment section, including the comprehensive calendar section—Knoxville’s go-to guide for everything worth doing in the area. You can reach Matthew at matthew@knoxmercury.com.
Share this Post