Midwest Augustana

“Whether he’s wailing a Freddy King inspired blues ballad, stomping out low down and dirty blues, or getting down with a super funky New Orleans groove, Bryan Lee is gonna grab your soul and squeeze it till you scream in blues ecstasy." Born on March 16, 1943 in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, Bryan Lee lost his eye sight and was legally blind by the age of eight. Bryan Lee had an avid interest in early Rock and Roll and Blues Music which was fostered through the 1950’s late night listening sessions from the Nashville Music radio stations such as WLAC. This is where Lee was first introduced to the sounds of Elmore James, T-Bone Walker and many other influential bluesmen. The man now known as “Braille Blues Daddy” started out playing for Midwest crowds at the early age of 15.

A stunning collection of some of the greatest sacred music ever written. From the great Lamentations of Byrd, Tallis and Palestrina, the listener is taken on a remarkable spiritual journey through Bach’s great St Matthew Passion, Purcell’s moving and bleak funeral music for Queen Mary, and Handel radiant Messiah. Pergolesi’s masterful setting of the Stabat Mater and Telemann’s Passions-Oratorium are also to be found here, along with Haydn’s Stabat Mater and his dark and intense masterpiece Die sieben letzen Worte, or The Seven Last Words of our Saviour from the Cross. Finally, Allegri’s hauntingly beautiful Miserere opens this collection – a work that was copied from memory after one hearing by the child Mozart. Prior to that moment the work had only been heard in the Vatican.

Songs, like sunsets, are fleeting, and it’s only due to a willingness and desire to catch them that you ever, if even only for a moment, grab a hold of one. When writing Sundowner, Kevin Morby was lucky to have had the Tascam 424 there to help capture both. Sundowner is his attempt to put the Middle American twilight - it’s beauty profound, though not always immediate - into sound. It is a depiction of isolation. Of the past. Of an uncertain future. Of provisions. Of an omen. Of a dead deer. Of an icon. Of a Los Angeles themed hotel in rural Kansas. Of billowing campfires, a mermaid and a highway lined in rabbit fur. It is a depiction of the nervous feeling that comes with the sky’s proud announcement that another day will be soon coming to a close as the pink light recedes and the street lamps and house lights suddenly click on.