Press / Coverage
“Albany’s Own In The Row”
(EXCERPT)
(Aaron Lee) was about eight when his parents took him to the Albany Civic Center to see Diamond Rio in concert, recalls his mom, Tracy Lee. “Tim McGraw opened for them that night and Aaron soaked it all in. The next day I glanced out the window and there was Aaron in the front yard, wearing his cowboy hat and boots, using my broom as his microphone and the sidewalk as his stage. I think that’s when his real dream for this first started.”
Lee taught himself to play the guitar. Soon he was ready to write. “Songwriting often starts as a nervous tic. I’ll be walking away from some situation that caused me anxiety and find myself blowing off some steam by singing my thoughts out loud.”
He made a “top 20” list of songs stored on an old laptop and spent time reworking and rewriting until he was proud of them. Researching recording techniques, Lee built a shoestring home studio, and the debut album was recorded across two continents.
“I did the drums with an old college buddy in Atlanta and the lead guitar came from a young Franco-Swiss guitarist named Erik Mendola.”
“I’ve got the next four or five song collections already mapped out, for the most part,'“ says Lee of the project he dubbed Mannequin Shop because there are so many stylistic directions he wants to explore. “Maybe I feel like I’m as tuned in and creative as I’m ever likely to be, and I don’t want to stop until I’ve got it all out.”
-Excerpt from Southwest Georgia Living Magazine, “Albany’s Own In The Row” by Bonnie Smith, May/June 2023 edition