Review: Gabe Lee’s Character Sketches Entrance on the Intimate ‘Drink the River’

Gabe Lee
Drink the River
(Torrez Music Group)
3 1/2 out of 5 stars

“Write what you know” is the common cliché used for aspiring songwriters. But in Gabe Lee’s case, it might be changed to “write what you hear about.”

That’s the thread connecting the songs on Lee’s fourth album in as many years. Sure, he’s a songwriter, but like his influences, John Prine and Jason Isbell (who he opened for), Lee is more of a storyteller. These nine tunes sketch out characters in such descriptive detail, it’s a wonder he doesn’t personally know most of them. Instead, Lee has accumulated stories, many recounted to him by others on his numerous travels as an Americana troubadour.

Musically, he retreats from the full band accompaniment featured on his previous sets, settling into spare, acoustic, stripped-down backing where these aural portraits feel warmer and more private. But as he admits in “All I Can Do Is Write About It,” … Lord I can’t make any changes / All I can do is write ’em in a song, which is what he accomplishes here.

Most hover around the darker side of life, like the craftily titled “Even Jesus Got the Blues.” It details a woman’s overdose on Oxy with the lyrics She come draggin’ round the bend, hooked on OP40, barely alive along with a deceptively jaunty melody. In the tragic “Merigold,” Lee sings in the voice of a husband about his wife whose sudden cancer took her too soon, backed by just mournful fiddle, guitar, and supple bass. The lyrics of Lord if you can hear me I swear to leave you alone/Please pick up the phone I want you to know you can take me when she goes are touching and heartbreaking.

On “Property Line” Lee goes full Prine, describing two incidents where people crossed over the titular area; one in reality, the other more philosophical. On the title track, a love song of sorts, he turns his sights inward lamenting If faith were a shovel to a man of means / Why am I always standing dirt up to my knees? in a voice as delicate and intimate as Paul Simon’s in “Duncan.”

These tales unravel elegantly, without histrionics or excessive emotion. Lee’s comfy, conversational voice unspools his accounts of common folks with understated gravity, which the similarly scaled-down backing mirrors.

“Drink the River is about our shared human experiences,” he states in an interview. It’s a simple statement capturing the vibe of this lovely, somewhat minimalist release with the grace and charm of a performance that pulls you into the lives of people you may not know, but recognize as if you did.

Photo by Brooke Stevens