Love, Gratitude and Other Distractions
Bassist Will Lee has played almost everything with everybody as a first-call session musician and on your TV weeknights with David Letterman’s house band. Famous friends appear here; ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and Allen Toussaint add extra Texas and New Orleans to the latter’s “Get Out of My Life Woman.” But this album is Lee’s show of diversity. He lets his bass do the leading with a deft vocal touch in the electric-Miles Davis setting of “Simple Way to Say I Love You.” As a writer-singer, Lee then ties that grip on groove to his inner Beatlemaniac, hitting an intersection of the Average White Band and solo Paul McCartney in “Miss Understanding” and “Fooled Him.”