The Bobby Lees’ Macky Bowman on growth, touring, and making Bellevue

Photo Credit: ​​Cyrille Bellec

The new The Bobby Lees album Bellevue starts off with a squall from vocalist Sam Quartin. With Bellevue, the four-piece Woodstock band, rounded out by Nick Casa on guitar, Kendall Wind on bass and Macky Bowman on drums, has solidified their place in punk / garage rock music. 

The band got together through a short series of events. Quartin, who learned to play guitar for a film role, moved from New York City to Woodstock. Quartin became more interested in writing songs and starting a band than acting. In Woodstock, she met Albert Di Fiore, who would later produce the band’s first album. In 2017, Quartin met Bowman and Wind through Rock Academy, with Casa joining the following year. In 2018, the band released their debut album Beauty Pageant. 

The Bobby Lees manage to expertly weave together influences ranging from punk rock to soul to blues. On Bellevue, Quartin, who acts as the band’s lyricist, explores topics such as fame, selling out and internal conflict. On the title track “Bellevue,” Quartin vocalizes the fear that comes with rejection. The song “Strange Days” starts out with the repetition of a few notes on a piano and ends with Quartin singing the chorus a cappella. The song touches on the distance that we often create to separate ourselves from the real world in order to maintain our sanity. The track “Monkey Mind,” is about the internal struggle of letting our mind play tricks on us. The songs on Bellevue feel instinctual. It is almost as if Quartin has to get the words out in order to survive.

Quartin has been open about an alcohol induced 9-month long schizophrenic episode that she experienced when she was younger. She has mentioned that some of her lyrics touch on that experience. Interestingly, the songwriter is also influenced by the artist Takashi Murakami, who is known for his surrealist literature. Perhaps these songs are Quartin walking us through her unconscious mind. 

With each album, Quartin continues to dive into the strangest corners of her mind, finding and devouring ideas, then spitting them back at us in the form of lyrics. The band’s energy, which fluctuates between subdued and chaotic, is very much captured in live recordings. On “Limosine,” “Radiator” and “Mad Moth,” for example, off their 2018 debut Beauty Pageant, producer Albert Di Fiore captures the band’s raw and visceral energy. For their second album, Skin Suit, the band enlisted producer Jon Spencer, of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. On songs like “Guttermilk,” “I’m a Man,” and “Blank Generation,” you can hear The Bobby Lees push themselves into a new territory using their voices and instruments. On Bellevue, produced by Grammy award winning Vance Powell, known for his work with Jack White, Chris Stapleton and The Raconteurs, the band goes beyond that.

“[Vance] was the first producer of his professional stature that we’d gotten to work with, so it was a whole different experience to working with someone like Jon [Spencer]” Bowman tells us. “They were both amazing, so I’m not really saying that in a value judgment sort of way. More so in that the dichotomy in how both people chose to tackle the same problems has been super helpful to study,” he continues. 

The band also had more time with these songs. While each of the band’s first two albums took a few days to record, Bellevue was recorded and mixed over three weeks. “[I]t was three weeks spread out over the course of a year and a half,” Bowman writes. “Having that amount of time to record, with a lot of time in between, allowed for a lot of brainstorming and internal refinement without leaving room for making something bloated.” The final product shows just that. Bellevue is 13 tracks of short and sweet, straightforward punk and garage rock influenced songs that never go over the three-and-a-half minute mark. 

It wasn’t just the band’s sound that got stronger during the making of Bellevue. The band members also experienced a change. Bowman explains, “the thing I’m most proud of about this album is the amount of work we ended up having to do to improve our group dynamic. Because of that, we’re easily at the most egalitarian and kind band dynamic we’ve ever been at.” The results of that work are on full display across the album. The band has never sounded tighter. 

The Bobby Lees spent about a month touring Europe prior to the release of the album. “The moments when we stepped into a room we thought would be empty only to be greeted by a room full of enthusiastic people who knew all the material already was just mind blowing,” Bowman writes. While Quartin has been frank about her stage fight, Bowman takes a different approach. “[A]s soon as a show starts, I enter a completely different headspace. One that’d be kind of impossible to adequately articulate. All I can say is that if something feels right to do in the moment, I do it and it usually pays off,” he states. 

When Bowman is not playing music, he spends his time painting. On the subject he writes, “I’ve never been someone to really fixate on a process beyond the pragmatic sense. I think beyond the specifics necessary to accommodate the medium at hand I avoid meta philosophizing to the best of my ability.” His work can be seen featured on the band’s merchandise. 

The band is playing some gigs here and there, but have not announced a full tour since the album’s release. “I haven’t necessarily conferred with my band mates on that one. But once that conversation happens I’d love to get back to you,” Bowman writes. We shall wait, Macky!

For now, check out Bellevue.

Bellevue is out now on Ipecac Recordings. To purchase the album on CD, cassette and vinyl, head to Bandcamp. The album can also be streamed on Spotify and other platforms. Follow The Bobby Lees on Instagram and Facebook.