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Every Monday we will be bringing you interviews with unsigned UK or Ireland artists for Independent Music Monday. Recently we caught up with unsigned Bath based singer Lee Christian to find out more…

Where are you from and how did you first get into music?
I’m Lee Christian (solo, smilex, the prohibition smokers’ club, chateaux69, boywithatoy, quickfix recordings etc). I currently live in Bath, UK – but have lived in many places including where I was born in Surrey, Oxford, Manchester, Los Angeles plus Spain, Portugal and South Africa. I’ve only made music in 3 of these places but I’ll leave you to guess after you have read this interview – like a little memory exercise!
I first got into music via my parents playing records – Bowie, Hendrix, Ian Dury & The Blockheads, Led Zeppelin, Roxy Music, Bob Marley, Smokey Robinson, Kool & the Gang, Deep Purple, T Rex, Elvis and many more early memories – plus the tunes of the day – Duran Duran, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Terence Trent D’arby, Michael Jackson of course and in 1984 when my Dad bought Purple Rain on cassette, the start of a bit of an obsession with Prince. He’s the only artist I really cared about getting all the albums by and listening to over and over til the tapes wore out or broke! With him being so diverse, I found it easy to get into a broad range of stuff across all genres!

Who were your musical influences when you were growing up and who are your influences now?
In my teens I got into the band scene via my local youth centre which had a thriving scene with some bands who played some pretty big gigs and it being the 90’s a huge interest in playing instruments and seeing local bands. I formed my first band with a friend on the way back from a Living Colour gig. It was Nirvana I would credit with showing me that songs were chords and melodies essentially and I didn’t have to try to write/recreate Guns n Roses’ ‘November Rain’ in my garage or bedroom. A little later, Nine Inch Nails, Tricky and Beck taught me that I didn’t have to be a virtuoso like Prince to put my ideas on tape as I got heavily into recording on my 4-track tape machine.
Alternative/Indie music had a huge impact on me and really lit a fire for musical exploration it’s hard to pin down my influences now, though I do think I retain bits of all the people I’ve mentioned whilst also throwing in Jazz, Blues, Soul, Funk, Dance, Dub and HipHop influences along the way as my thirst for inspiration in sound grew so rapidly.
I studied and worked recording music too (not to mention label and gig work) which really broadens the palette!

How would you describe your sound?
It’s a melting pot of styles – fairly straightforward songs but with an experimental approach sometimes, I guess!
Each album is different from the others – thematically, sonically, writing and recording approaches – well, so far!

What is your latest release called and what was the influence behind it?
My new release is ‘The Boys Experience’ (which is a riff on Prince Maxi-Singles in the 90’s) – a handful of different mixes/treatments for a song lyrically inspired by the comic of the same name by Garth Ennis, which just so happened to come out as a series recently, so I decided to actually finish it and put it out while it’s kind of relevant at all. The music was built from a ‘jam’ that I had with myself (this happen a lot lately!) the day after my last birthday, so represents the very latest version of my ‘sound’ if you can call it that. That said, it’s one song, so not lots to go on!

The previous release was an interactive role playing game/concept album (which was conceived, made and released in about 5 days) and accompanying soundtrack (which took another few months to finish off and release somehow!) which was really fun to make and realise from a tiny idea so quick and is hopefully fun for people to play/listen to!

What’s your local music scene like?
I was fortunate enough to be part of the very developed, successful and sophisticated Oxford music scene for my formative musical years and for my time with rock band Smilex and helping Quickfix Recordings – it had the lot: press, radio, gigs, studios – it really was like a rock school disguised as a city! Bath is not really the same by comparison so I’m a little bit too much of a hermit for my own good these days. I don’t really enjoy most (often quite random and average) cover acts and live music venues are limited with a bit more of a folky community if still going. That said, I saw Mavis Staples when she visited recently and on the other side of the spectrum I’m excited to see Nova Twins here soon too! Bristol is close by, with an even busier and more diverse gig calendar, so I can easily hop on a train for a night out too! Plus, I recently discovered the train back from Reading is quite late too when I caught Living Colour there recently! London has priced itself out of the running recently what with travel, stay, food and drink – not to mention the ticket prices and booking fees that add up to the same price as a week’s holiday! It’s tragically comic that local gigs are the same £5-7 they have been since the 90’s to see a whole bunch of bands play close up!

What do you have planned for the next 12 months? Any albums or festivals?
Over the next year? Wow! Good question! So before September 2020 I would like to have put out two more albums (I write and record a lot and want to put more out but life gets in the way sometimes), a few other projects in the area of Comics (Theodicy comics) and Film (Aversion Films) plus collaborative musical projects. I need to get back to doing a radio show as I now miss that after doing it for years until I was a bit sick of it! I also should DJ more again but I get a bit jaded with the way DJ’s are less tastemakers and more public servants these days. I have a few ideas for club nights and radio shows and YouTube shows and such so I might get busy on one of them. I’m really hoping the new Smilex material we are working on sees light of day next year too and I’m super keen to get out and do some gigs (though I’m not sure which band/project line up of musicians that would be with!) and festivals. A lot of it I play by ear and let one thing lead to another really – often I will have an offer of something and (because it’s all such a big operation to have everything come out in tandem and tie in with dates etc with pre-warned press etc) that can snowball into a record and dates and such and that tends to gather momentum for a while until I get bored of it!

Is there anyone you’d love to collaborate with?
Good question! I’d love to work with Janelle Monae – though I might be too lovestruck to concentrate! There’s loads tbh and I love to work with other artists plus have a great contact book of underground talent in many fields!
So I guess I’d like to collaborate with some investors so I can put all these folks to work on some cool project! ha!

Any funny stories surrounding your live performances?
I have a book worth of tales from gigs – especially with Smilex! From being escorted off family festival sites to headlining others with pyrotechnics. Chased out of venues for destruction, covered in blood, spit and even candle wax occasionally! Smashing mics, bottles, glasses and more over my head and scaling and leaping from anything in sight. Injuries and confrontations! Even just weird stuff like being told I was miming to a tape when I was clearly not! Obviously I’ve been flashed by babes but who can say they have had an old man wave his wrinkled todger at them?
Even having gigs stopped because I climbed over the side of a boat or to the top of something or someone! There’s never a dull moment and considering the fact my other bands are decidedly less chaotic by design, a lot of crazy things happen at some of those gigs too. I’ve even played some really grand venues like Royal Philharmonic, The Cavern and St George’s Hall in Liverpool playing George Harrison and Beatles covers – which is bit like selling ice to Eskimos! My absolute favourite thing though is the way little kids tend to go mental watching us – as if I’ve met my intellectual match/target market in a toddler who also loves to jump around madly, smash stuff up and scream a lot.

What is the one thing that you want readers to know about you?
Just one thing? That I’m serious about what I do but I’m not always being serious! And I can’t stop doing it! Ever!

You can find out more about Lee on his website or via Facebook, Spotify, Twitter or YouTube.