Cactus Lee

Flip through the site and there’s no shortage of scribbles on Cactus Lee. Kevin Dehan’s work under the name has moved from the bedroom to the studio, sometimes drawling out into the cosmic curls, but more often than not finding a kinship with the folk country that wound its way from the ‘50s through the ‘70s. As he’s scrubbed the sound he’s never lost the link to those early days on the box spring. A van record by reputation, there’s something of a feeling of white line laments and nights spent working through hotel hangups. The album earns its eventual ease onto the porch for a few Lone Stars under the heat lightning, but it’s a long road home. Lee’s Dream is as clean as he’s ever sounded, session fresh but each song seems like it could be stripped to Dehan and a guitar and still land on its feet.

Dehan brought the album to Billy Horton’s Fort Horton Studios in Wyldwood, Texas, a house that’s seen legends like Charley Crockett head through the halls. Horton’s classic sensibility is a perfect fit for Lee’s Dream, an album that conjures images of pipe smoking session vets slung over an upright. This is cowl kneck country, equally at home on one side of a c-90 long haul mix and on the hi-fi in the den. The album is polished and patient, full of future jukebox gems that settle you back into the cracked plastic of the corner booth. It’s hard to slip out of the album’s sway, but that’s no bad position to be in for ‘ol Lee. Life’s full of friction, sometimes its nice to find ten tunes that just feel like the hand on the front door and ice in the glass.

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