The Short Version :

1953 - San Antonio, Texas : Born into an army family Terry Lee attended 10 schools in 10 different cities. After finishing high school in Yakima, Washington he set out for Seattle, then California and continued from there to travel in the States all the while learning to play guitar and write songs. TLH has worked as a carpenter, truck driver, farm and ranch hand, cook, laborer, bar tender, booking agent and various other occupations to support himself, his daughter (as a single parent) and his music. From the first time he heard Bill Haley's "Rock Around The Clock" he wanted to be a guitar player and indeed, bought his first Stella when he was 14. Terry Lee has lived and traveled extensively in America and, since 1993 in Europe as well. His first appearance on record was on 1987's "Lowlife" compilation from Ironwood Studios and the following year with his song "Dead Is Dead" on SubPop 200.

Now, there are 12 Cd's released in Europe, all of them (except the last) on German recording labels. The first was in 1993 with "Oh What A World" on Normal Records . The next 8 CDs (Frontier Model, The Wilderness Years, Tornado Alley, Leaving West, Old Hand, Blue Room, Frozen, Tender Loving Hell: The Best Of…) were with Glitterhouse Records. The next 3 releases were with Blue Rose Records. Celebration What For in 2004 and one self-titled release called Hardpan along with one live CD/DVD - Hardpan Live – which featured American songwriters Chris Burroughs, Joseph Parsons Todd Thibaud and Terry Lee Hale. In 2007 he released his latest CD called “Shotgun Pillowcase” on the Spanish Borderdreams label.

Terry Lee lives just outside Paris, France with his wife Katy.

“The Long Story” by Terry Lee Hale

‘50's & ‘60's-

Hank Williams died the year I was born. May 12, 1953. San Marcos, Texas in a small flat above a bakery. A hard way for an 18-year-old air force private and a 19-year-old farmers daughter from Norwegian stock to begin a family. I asked him (much later) if it was love? He said he thought so at the time but he wasn't so sure now. I said I knew the feeling.

I don't remember much of those early and hard years. Bits and pieces mostly... Sneaking down the stairs to watch Zorro on some old B&W television set. Tuna fish casserole. The forever smell of animal barns and the hollow hidie-hole of some long dead cedar tree. Christmas and Santa Claus on the roof. My folks drinking and the father playing brushes on the footstool along with stacked LP's. The trip out of Texas in the back of an old Nash Rambler along with my baby sister. Cellilo Falls and the ferry boat across Columbia River. Hank on the radio (he would always be in and out of my life…always) along with Fats Domino, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash. That long drive up Washington State and a new life for my Father, sister and myself near Seattle.

I saw my first guitar player in a Pentecostal church my sister and I were made to go to every Sunday morning (the folks stayed home and drank bloody Marys). That church, a rickety affair set in the middle of some cheap swampland surely put the fear of God into me. The preachers name I knew as Brother Bear and along with his wife they had 4 little Bear children. No money there for a piano but I do remember that little red electric guitar he played (I 'm sure now it must have been a Fender Mustang!) and my utter fascination with the sound. She played the trumpet and boy they did rock the house!

An older cousin had a lot of 45's and I'd sneak in when he wasn't around and play all the guitar records, especially liking Duane Eddy and his song "40 Miles of Bad Road". I found a 78 (?) of Bill Haley's "Rock Around The Clock" on the floor in some bedroom closet which I did wear all the way out! I remember seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show in '63 (Sunday night 7PM?) and thinking now that's what I want to do! Begging my cousin to show me how to play "King of the Road" (“Trailers for sale or rent, rooms to let fifty cents…”). The hours of practice on his old nylon string guitar and that first beautiful D and G chord. Clarinet in school band and the beautiful music that all those inept children managed to honk out. Me, an army brat-10 schools, 12 years.

No real lasting friendships but a good solid imagination and comfortableness with being alone that I carry with me to this day. Finally high school in Yakima, Washington home of Gary Puckett and The Union Gap, Oletta Adams, Raymond Carver and my first real friends.

Late 60's and I came awake and alive. My first band- hours and hours of jamming as loud as we could. We called ourselves "Jess" and what the hell did that mean? My first live rock concert was with The Youngbloods and opener Mason Profit. I wasn't exactly sure what I seeing but I was surely hungry for more.

‘70's-

I never could figure out how to play other peoples songs and simply enough I started writing my own. "Sleeping With Mother Earth", TLH 1970 (and I still remember the chords!) was the very first ‘good' one. I bought my first guitar with the money I made from picking fruit during the summer months working alongside my grandpa. It was a big Stella that I eventually put my foot through in frustration a few years later. I got kicked out of Davis High School ("graduated early") at 17 - too radical they said and "glad of it", said I. Slipped on down to San Francisco and Berkeley, California where I saw my first live blues show - John Lee Hooker. Also Van Morrison, The Grateful Dead, Hot Tuna, Elvin Bishop, Alice Stewart and much more. San Francisco was too close to what I had run from though (it was pretty dismal there by '72 anyway) and so the thumb, backpack, guitar and I made our way to the East Coast and the great state of Maine. There I was introduced to the sounds of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Skip James, Odetta, Light'ning Hopkins, Blind Blake and my very favorite, Reverend Gary Davis. It was there that I also started picking up the carpentry skills that would see me in good stead over the coming years. Decent money and I could usually get a job just about anywhere I happened to be.

A fine songwriter and guitar picker living on Cape Cod named George Gritzbach (Flying Fish Records) with great patience showed me how to play Elizabeth Cotton's song, "Freight Train". I spent the next year learning how to play that song and a whole lot of others too. My very first live show was there on the Cape playing along side of George. I had bought an old Gretch Tennasian guitar before I'd left Washington for $90. Mint condition and I' m sure worth a damn site more than the little power amplifier, mixing board, microphone, and naked speakers I traded it for! But I wanted to be a solo musician and I needed a PA so I traded that beautiful guitar for the gear, built some speaker boxes and got my very own gig together! 3 years I lived out East but I ended up broke and so hitched back to Washington to work the fruit harvest and get up another bankroll.

On that particular trip I ended up in a Country & Western band (I answered an ad in the local newspaper “guitar player wanted”) for one year in Yakima. 6 nights per week, 4 sets per night, $20 dollars a night. Stockman's Bar & Grill. It's gone now of course but it was pretty cool and I learned a hell of a lot. Mostly all cover songs that Fred sang in the style of Marty Robbins and I was the "lead" player alongside Bob Hicks who was a kick-snare stand up drummer. I did sing a couple of my own songs and a few Johnny Cash covers. It was a great education for a young guitarist for sure! Then it was back to the east coast for another stab at the folk music world but it was much too stifling for me and so I took off for Chicago along with my first custom-made Froggy Bottom acoustic guitar (which would be stolen from me years later out of the trunk of my car in Seattle).

3 days after my arrival in the Windy City I walked into a small blues bar carrying my guitar, sporting my western threads and cowboy hat. "Elsewhere on Lincoln" was the name of that bar and they are still there today although in a larger and nicer space. A pretty woman sitting right by the door at the bar said, "Hey there sugar, want to be my guitar player"? She was kinda laughing when she said it and I laughed the same laugh but still said yes. I had just met my future ‘wife' and singing partner for what would be the next 6 years of my life. She sang in the style of Lil' Greene, Janis Joplin (how she hated that connection but it was true) or a Patsy Cline. A country girl from Michigan already with two small children of her own but I didn't give a damn. I fell in love and thought I'd found myself the perfect partner! I continued my travels only now with a small family. I was bent on trying to absorb and learn the many different styles and sounds that make America the great musical bonanza she is. Chicago, Boulder, back to Austin (where my daughter Liza Lee was born in '77), up to Lansing, Denver, Yakima (again and not for the last time either!) and finally a couple years later we landed in Denver.

We were a duo called Hale and Sarow (pronounced sorrow, her name being Rebecca Sarow. 1952-2005). I wrote all the songs and she sang 'em with me backing her up plus a few covers thrown in for the bar crowds we mostly played for. $100 dollars a night we got way back then and I'd get up in the mornings 5 days a week to go work as a carpenter building other peoples houses. I didn't care though. I was doing what I wanted and getting better every day doing it. Finally though I think all those miles and hours took their toll on us and I left her there in Denver.

‘80's

Along with my guitar, I took my daughter Liza Lee (age 4) and headed for Mexico where I thought I could find some place in a little beach or tourist hotel where an audience might be interested in a 'genuine' American songwriter. Ha! I (mostly) left my guitar in the case for the next few months and just watched and listened to the wonderfully talented musicians and singers of Mexico. Los Angeles was the next stop for us but with no car and few clubs for songwriters (1983) this was a very tough city. I wanted and needed to be playing again and Liza needed to be in school. So once again we headed back to the Northwest. I knew I could at least find work there and I'd heard the school system in Seattle was pretty good (it was).

After a short time (again) in Yakima getting up another bankroll, I landed in Seattle, Washington January 1st of 1984 at the age of 30 years old. I had a 7-year daughter and owned 1 guitar, a handful of pretty good songs and the clothes in one suitcase. Seattle would become the place I would live in the longest.

Those middle 80's years for me were good ones I remember. Liza was growing up healthy and strong and was happy in school and at home. I was writing songs like crazy and practicing all the time. I still had to work as a carpenter for a while but I also started working part time as a bartender on the weekends and supplementing that income as a booking agent. And always, of course, gigging whenever and wherever I could.

One thing I liked about Seattle back then was that there didn't seem to be a whole lot of pressure to act or sound like anything or anyone. We were so far from everywhere (geographically that is) that you could just about invent any kind of sound or noise you wanted and even get a gig playing somewhere. This was to be the perfect atmosphere for me to put together all those different sounds and styles that I'd been chasing and collecting over the past years. The audiences were small, the clubs were few but it didn't seem to matter so much then. (Although perhaps over this long distance of time my memories are distorted and a lot of the frustrations of living in the wastelands have been forgotten!).

I was gigging solo but I met drummer Chris Adams in late '84 and we started a little electric band calling ourselves "Need-A-Bass"! It worked because a few shows later we met Jack Endino who would come aboard as our bass player and we renamed ourselves "The Ones". Garage rock at its best I think and one day I hope to re-release the 17-song cassette/LP we made. Anyway, we gave it a good try but never really got much off the ground. Jack left to form Skin Yard and The Ones closed down after 1 year a few dozen shows. I tried to put more bands back together with Chris but we never did find the right combination of players and finally we drifted apart. Quite naturally then I started really concentrating on developing my own style of solo guitar playing and all the time pursuing my songwriting efforts.

I continued to work as a booking agent and over the next 10 years I had an excellent front row seat for some great music in Seattle (1984-1994: 5-0 Tavern, The Central, Squid Row, Crocodile Café and The Weathered Wall). That is another story and has been told better by others but the best part of it for me (besides the music) was that I made some great and lasting friendships along the way.

The middle 80's was the time when the world started to pay attention to rocking "acoustic" singer-songwriters. Some early pioneers from those days I remember being inspired by were Peter Case, Luka Bloom, Violent Femmes, Billy Bragg, Richard Thomson and Michelle Shocked. I started opening up for local rock bands as a solo act in the late '80's (i.e. Walkabouts, Screaming Trees, Soundgarden, Danger Bunny, Green Pajamas, Young Fresh Fellows, Skin Yard, Pure Joy, etc) and worked on making as much noise as possible so that I wouldn't get killed or booed off the stage. I loved playing loud too!! Sneaking into studios with musician buddies and engineer friends Bruce Calder and Johnny Rubato during off-hours, I managed to make the first of my 4 solo cassette/LP's entitled "Fools Like Me" in 1988. (A compilation of all of those early tapes was later released on Glitterhouse as "Wilderness Years").

‘90's

Finally in 1992 I got a phone call late one night from the German label Normal Records asking me if I would be interested in releasing my latest LP cassette entitle “Oh What A World” on their label (Europe only). Of course I said yes and the rest is history as they say. My time as a booking agent and bartender was (and needed to be!) over. Seattle had moved from being a backwater, end-of-the-road city onto center international rock and roll stage. Hundreds of bands and scenesters were moving there along with all the other critters. I had a lot of frustrations about all of it both personal and professional. My debut album in 1993 seemed like a prayer answered.

I released just that one CD with Normal before moving over to the Glitterhouse label, which would become my label home for the next 10 years. 2004's release "Tender Loving Hell- the Best of Terry Lee Hale" was a compilation of all of the 8 CD's I released with them but and by mutual agreement it would be the last. That CD included as a bonus CD the out of print "Oh What A World".

I first traveled to Europe in the spring of 1993 as support act for a Walkabouts tour (10 shows I guess it was). I went back that next fall for my own solo tour and while on that tour I met and made some new friends at one of the French gigs we were doing in the Bretagne city of Concarneau. After the show that night I was invited to return and visit with them, which I did.

That offer and gift was basically the how and why I was able to start a life in Europe. I was also very lucky to have had the freedom to say yes! I still kept my “official” residence in Seattle throughout the 90's but my stays in Europe became longer and longer. The Northwest was and still is very important to me and it's a place I feel very connected with. I still have family there and many good friends. The city itself has changed quite a lot since I first moved there in '84 but I guess that's to be expected.

‘00's

By the 21st century I was spending most of my time in Bretagne (western France). Still, in 2001 I joined forces with Blue Rose American artists Joseph Parsons, Todd Thibaud and Chris Burroughs to form a project band called Hardpan. We released one studio and one live CD and did one Euro-tour and that was it. This did however connect me with Blue Rose Records and in March of 2004 the label released my 11th CD entitled "Celebration What For". That self-produced record was recorded in Zagreb, Croatia using Croatian musicians and production. My transfer to Europe was pretty much completed by this time. And finally, in 2007 I teamed up again with long time friends Chris Eckman (producer) and Tucker Martine (mixing engineer) to record “Shotgun Pillowcase” in Ljubljana, Slovenia. This recording found a home with a start-up label from Spain called Borderdreams.

 

Through all of those years I've toured and played shows when and wherever I've been given the chance. Mostly as a solo act but I also do the occasional bass and drum band touring as well. At various times those bands have originated in America, Czech Republic, Croatia and France. And of course though all of this I've had a personal story as well. My daughter is now 31 years of age and with 2 small children of her own she's doing just fine. In 2006 I married my long-time French sweetheart and we bought a small house just outside of Paris where we currently live. And to make it really official, in 2008 I obtained my permanent resident visa for living in France. Voila!

The life of a traveling musician can be inspiring, fun and rewarding. And it's also (for me anyway) about work, effort, tenacity, honesty and patience. I enjoy very much what I do and, so far anyway, I've been very lucky doing it.

See ya down the road!

Terry lee Hale - Paris, France - January 2009