Singer/songwriter Lee Gallagher originally comes from the Midwest but soaked up the many genres of music in San Francisco where he formed the band The Hallelujah.
While presently residing in Nashville, where he and his wife relocated during the pandemic to be closer to family, Gallagher wanted to take advantage of previous positive experiences he had with Jason Soda at Palomino Sound to record his new album, The Falcon Ate The Flower. That meant holing up in an Airbnb in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles with an acoustic guitar and notebooks of song fragments to head back to work.
For the album, Jason Soda (Everest, GospelbeacH) returned on Production, engineering and lead guitar, and Lee Gallagher also brought in his L.A. band from his previous album, L.A. Yesterday, including Steve Mertens (Moldy Peaches), Jonny Niemann (GospelbeacH Old Californio), Will Scott (Wolfmother, Mooney Suzuki), and Scarlet Rivera (Bob Dylan). It was an all-L.A.-based “Hallelujah” this time around.
The album will be released on November 3rd, 2023 via Clean Livin’ Records and arrives in multiple formats, including a limited edition vinyl.
Gallagher says about The Falcon Ate The Flower:
I think this album is an evolution and different from anything that I’ve ever done. The improvisation, the shades of dark and light, the feel.
We’re very pleased to debut a new track from Lee Gallagher’s album today on Wildfire Music + News: “Baby I’m There.”
The track grants a visionary perspective on a person who’s captured the speaker’s attention, an elusive spirit who needs to “be somewhere”, but the speaker confirms their intention to be there, too. Perhaps the most surprising element of the song’s tone is the willingness to overcoming differences that is expressed, which contrasts so heavily with the era of conflicts and clearly etched divides that we seem to live in these days. The confidence of the lyrics is grounded in this resolve to go the distance, maybe quite literally.
Musically, the song starts with an anthemic swell straight out of the gate, suggesting that any sense of uncertainty or doubtful pondering is something that’s already in the past. The “now” of the song recognizes a time of urgency, movement, and commitment, instead. The tone of the music only rises, while suggesting an emotional appeal being made, but leaves plenty of room for powerful electric guitar solo. The track also ends with an interesting piano flourish that hints at a wider feeling that this could be a song sung in a group of people around a piano or performed live with audience participation.
Lee Gallagher shares about the track:
This song is about somebody who is the yin to your yang, laws of attraction and all that. It’s about standing with someone through thick and thin and giving them shelter from the storm. And in my mind it seems like an Irish drinking song. I can definitely see closing out shows with this one.
Aside from a little harmonica, this is the first record Gallagher has made where the only instrument he played was the acoustic guitar.
Gallagher comments on the effect of that:
It created space within the songs, added a percussive texture, and allowed all of us to be able to play together with minimal microphone bleed. Perhaps the best part of recording this way is that it allowed Jason Soda to be in the room with the other instruments and record all of his guitar parts live.
Gallagher thinks of himself as a singer-songwriter who fronts a Rock ’n’ Roll band and brings a “tent revival energy” to performances. Whether working more in the singer/songwriter or Rock ‘n Roll vein, he says “vibrations always have to be high.”
