PHOTO BY SIMON ERTLER |
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Preview: Lee Fields & The Expressions, Monday, Dec. 9, 8 p.m. Astronaut Ice Cream opens. Advertisement
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It’s a rare thing to hear fresh new songs from a legacy artist, let alone one who took a full decade off from performing to pursue another career. But Lee Fields is nothing if not a rare exception of talent, and 50 years after his first single, he has a new album, It Rains Love, recorded with his band The Expressions and released this past spring.
Nicknamed “Little JB” for his physical and vocal similarity to James Brown, the soul singer began recording music in 1969, working with legends such as Kool and the Gang and B.B. King. An upward trajectory seemed inevitable, but after experiencing a family tragedy, Fields decided to halt his music career and switch tracks. He and his family relocated to New Jersey, where he began working in real estate.
“I was trying to find myself in the ’80s, things hadn’t panned out like I thought [they] would,” Fields said during a recent phone interview. “My sister-in-law was killed by her husband, and I was trying to make sense of it all, being a god-fearing man. I felt I needed to be with my family instead of being on the road so much. I spent years re-creating myself in real estate and being there with the kids. The family became more important to me, and still is really, but the family was the ultimate thing in my life.”
It was family that led him back to his first calling. Fields was considering going into the restaurant business and had plans to open a small fish joint in one of his buildings, but his wife advised him to return to music instead.
“[She] took a look at the place and she asked me, ‘What do you know about fish?’ And I said, ‘Well, it tastes good.’ And she said I should stick with what I know,” Fields said. “So we invested in musical equipment in the early ’90s and I’ve been on the road ever since.”
It’s been another steady climb for the soul artist. He eventually signed with Desco Records, which evolved into the infamous Daptone Records, home to artists like Sharon Jones and her band The Dap-Kings (who also backed up Amy Winehouse) and Charles Bradley. Fields even linked up with French house DJ Martin Solveig and began singing on dance tracks, which took him all over France.
In 2009, he switched to Big Crown Records and teamed up with backing band The Expressions, most recently for the beautiful It Rains Love, a collection of tightly stacked soul songs with tasteful arrangements and uplifting lyrics about coming together in divisive times.
“It seems like what’s happening in the world today, it’s not generated [from] love, it’s generated [from] self-satisfaction,” Fields said. “Everybody’s so about self today, which is good, but self to me is all of us. All of us are one. If we become so concerned about ourselves, so vain, that means we’re breaking away from others. The chemistry of mankind [will] disintegrate. We have to be about all in order to keep that bond where we’re all working as one system. Love is that bond. Anything other than love, it breaks down unity, and we must be united in order to endure whatever calamities the future brings. The album is all about love, it’s all about us, and us is the world.”
At 68 years old, Fields is touring constantly (visiting the Sierra Nevada Big Room in Chico on Dec. 9), with shows booked into 2020, plans to make a new album, and no intention of slowing down anytime soon.
“I really consider myself retired now—this is my hobby, but fortunately it makes money for me,” Fields said. “There’s a scientific thing that a body in motion tends to stay in motion, and a body at rest tends to stay at rest, so I’m trying to stay in motion.”