Gabe Lee's 'The Hometown Kid' highlights growth from inspiration to innovation

"Do you have the meatloaf today? I'll have that with the cole slaw and creamed potatoes -- gravy on the potatoes -- that'd be awesome. I'll have a roll, too."

Gabe Lee's style of Americana-flavored country music -- much like his dining choices at North Nashville's Wendell Smith's Restaurant -- fulfill expectations in a way that delivers heavily on heartwarming goodness with no thought as to modern evolution.

The Nashville native singer-songwriter's forthcoming album, "The Hometown Kid," errs in the direction of a decade-long period between 1975-1985 where acts like Jackson Browne, The Eagles, Gram Parsons, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Tom Petty created a seamless blend between folk-style story songs and hook-driven arena-filling rock anthems.

Lee's earlier material, like 2020's critically-beloved "Honkytonk Hell," sounded like dusty, inspirational homages to well-curated record collections and pleasantly ear-worming East Nashville outlaw folklore. That yielded a record roundly praised as one of 2021's finest. For his latest, he aimed to improve excellence based on a familiar standard.

He's a practical creator, now three albums into working alongside his manager, Alex Torrez and their small, co-founded independent label Torrez Music Group. Currently constantly touring, his time on bigger stages (he counts recent gigs with American Aquarium, Kip Moore, Jason Isbell and Molly Tuttle in the past year as particularly noteworthy) with more significant stakes has led him past being what he'd consider being something of a "John Prine-inspired imitator" to now having evolved his singing voice and playing style to add "nuances and diversity" that have polished his rising star status to shine brighter than before.

New music:Molly Tuttle embraces 'where the music started for me' on bluegrass album 'Crooked Tree'

Liner notes:Chris Stapleton's 'Traveller' was an album for the ages

The sound he notes he's "chasing" is the same one that Prine -- another musician in the past 70 years who loved visiting what Wendell's owners describe as a "blue-collar" diner -- did. "Guys like Prine, Hayes Carll, Chris Stapleton? They were plugging away for quite a while, patiently improving while putting butts in seats and selling tickets," says Lee.

Highlighting his new album, the previously-mentioned "chased" sound is best defined by Billy Joel-style piano ballad "Buffalo Road," which reflects a "Iive" sound built around a vocal-led soulful groove that was "easy for the band to play," with deep harmonies. Also, more expanded sensibilities come to the forefront via "Wide Open," which, with its "interesting" drums and synthesizers, highlights Lee's growing desire to experiment with his formula for success.

"I'm showcasing a rougher, more soulful music, like the kind of stuff that Brent Cobb, Shooter Jennings and Nikki Lane are into, [on "The Hometown Kid"], says Lee. His statement tips a hat at a well-worn musical journey 15 minutes down Interstate 40 from Music Row to Gallatin Road, including pit stops to the North Nashville section of Dickerson Pike.

That journey is familiar to many stars of the past two decades of country's divergence from rootsy Americana. However, earning sleeves of tattoos and growing fond of photo shoots filled with mile-long stares down dusty roads is not where Lee's influences have led his sound.

Instead, a growing comfort and friendship working in an intimate studio set-up and Farmland Studios with session musicians with a half-century of experience and producers like well-respected keyboardist David Dorn (Jimmie Allen, Rodney Atkins, Luke Bryan, Chris Janson) lead to him being able to call out needing "Jeff Tweedy and Wilco," or "Ryan Adams" vibes to evolve a recording. Then, because of their experience, they can impart those vibes on a track.

Lee's the Nashville-raised (his parents originally moved to Arizona) son of Taiwanese immigrants and the son of a mother who was an accomplished piano player. Thus, his talents at the instrument leading him to Belmont University and an eventual music career feels logical. Unfortunately, sustained Asian-American roots in country music are difficult to locate. However, Lee's songwriting talents were influenced by a life that's seen him spend summers in places like country music's ancestral home of Bristol, Tennessee, in the wake of relationships gone awry.

He describes a summer there working for Johnson City, Tennessee's Axis Security, at festivals and motocross rallies while living in a double-wide trailer by the Tennessee River as a "spiritual crossroads" where he "reset" his career aspirations as a singer-songwriter.

The bittersweetness of that summer has forged his root inspirations as a singer of distinctly evocative love songs like 2020's "Emmylou," in which Lee sings, "I can see the tattoo on your shoulder, every night that mockingbird still haunts my dreams. He gets to chirpin' and a callin' whenever I'm not around, raggin' on me every time he sings." On "The Hometown Kid," "Over You" parallels a Tennessee Titans National Football League playoff game loss in 2021 with his own underwhelming experiences in faith and love ("I've gone and done it again, run my emotion razor thin"). It's a three-quarter-time waltz that showcases how well he's advanced his sound between his second and third albums.

While finishing up his meat and three at Wendell Smith's, Lee notes that he's excited to break past Nashville's growing desire -- be it in Americana or country -- to make "homogenous" music bearing similar, folk-styled sonics and sensibilities. Instead, he describes an ideal scenario in the future where he's making "casual" songs that are best played live, "with a little [John Prine-style] rambling about the stories behind them between playing."

"I've got some miles under my belt -- I'm now visiting venues in the Carolinas and Texas for the third time sometimes -- but I'm just getting started," says Lee.

Advancing his storytelling past towards creating more easily accessible emotional avenues to his work, is "The Hometown Kid's" most significant victory. He notes that as much as he wanted "every line to be a hook," he instead erred toward longer-form storytelling -- "I'm like a carpenter, and the work takes a long time. You have to build hundreds of chairs to perfect the craft," he says.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Gabe Lee's new album 'The Hometown Kid' highlights growth