The Bachelors have been remarkably busy over the past month, with three record release parties in Shelby and Carrboro, North Carolina and Columbia, South Carolina. Whether you could join us or not, we hope you enjoy the above images from the Shelby event at the Don Gibson Theater, presented in collaboration with Destination Cleveland County and the Smithsonian New Harmonies exhibition.
Thanks to Joe DePriest for his excellent article in the Charlotte Observer, which discusses David’s career, the Said I Had a Vision LP, and the release party concert on Sunday, Nov. 7th at 4:00pm at the Don Gibson Theater in Shelby.
The LPs are here, and they look and sound beautiful! Email us to pre-order a copy before the official release date of November 26. Pre-orders will ship right after the below release party events.
On Saturday, October 23, the Bachelors traveled back to Shelby, NC to watch an historic performance by Cecil P and the White Street Band, the Constellations, David Lee, and Ann Sexton at the Cleveland County Arts Council, one of the final concerts of the local Art of Sound festival. On the occasion of Ann Sexton and David Lee’s first reunion after over twenty-five years, we Bachelors were finally able to meet Ann in person.
We’re pleased to announce two upcoming concerts related to our Said I Had a Vision LP. After more than three decades, Ann Sexton and David Lee will be reuniting onstage–backed by the Constellations and Bunny Clyde!–at the Art of Sound Festival in Shelby, NC, this Saturday, October 23rd.
Visionaires, the time has finally come! We are now accepting pre-orders for Said I Had a Vision: Songs & Labels of David Lee, 1960-1988. The test pressings sound incredible–rich, bassy, and booming–and the first Paradise of Bachelors LP will be in our hands within just a few weeks.
Bachelor Brother Aaron Smithers curated Dreaming About Chords, the compilation CD for the annual music issue of Southern Cultures (Fall 2010), the impressive journal published by UNC Press for the Center for the Study of the American South (CSAS). He kindly included the Constellations’ “I Got a Woman,” as well as “My God Is Real” by Joe Brown and the Mellerairs.
Our repeated excuses for tardy posts are beginning to sound like a litany, but we hope that the reasons and the delayed news are absolutely justified this time. This summer has blessed us Bachelors with a marriage and a honeymoon (ironically, we recognize), publications, fruitful research projects, an NPR interview, University lectures, and a major career change, so things have been unusually busy.
On June 8, Bachelor Jason Perlmutter and fellow researcher Josh Davis spoke to Frank Stasio on the State of Things on NPR. They discussed the history of African American record shops in the Carolinas, and of course, David Lee–subject of our upcoming compilation of his songs, Said I Had a Vision–was an important part of the conversation.
