Bio

When Steve Lee decided to make an album all about guns, he didn’t realise it would be such a big deal to so many people.

Before the gun album idea had even been born, Steve sat down one day and wrote a song to put on the new album his family band The Lees was working on. But when he finished the song, titled “I Like Guns”, he realised that maybe it wasn’t going to work on an album full of family songs. It got him to thinking. Where had all the good gun songs gone? When had grown men stopped singing about shooting and started singing about love? And more importantly, what could he do about it?

Steve Lee grew up in outback NSW and guns have always been a part of his life. “I never knew that people didn’t have guns when i was a kid, it just seemed like a normal, practical thing to have and shooting seemed like a normal, fun thing to do”. Now 42, Steve hasn’t slowed up and still loves guns just as much.  He’s a member of his local pistol club, and enjoys nothing more than spending a weekend camping and shooting with his family and friends. His love of guns has led him all over the world from Africa to America to Cambodia, all places that allowed him to experience freedom with different types of guns .

So when Steve rang his good mate and alt-country legend, Bill Chambers and asked him to produce his “gun album” for him, Bill replied, “I’ll do it, but no one else but you could get away with this”. Bill, who also grew up around guns as a professional fox shooter, could see the vision Steve had and together, they created an album full of songs which showcased different aspects of guns in everyday life.

The album features 12 songs; all about guns. Each song was carefully picked by Steve and for a particular reason. From the cult classics, “Devils Right Hand” and “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town”, to the politically incorrect, “I’ll give up my gun”, each song has it’s own place in this collection of great gun songs. The captivating “Gun Shy Dog”, and the moving, “She Don’t Like Guns”, give this album a sense of emotion, while the songs “7 Shells” and “Modern Day Bonnie & Clyde” complete it with their bluesy feel. These songs will show you a bit of who Steve is, especially the first single, “I like guns”, with its likeable spin on a usually very serious topic.

If you spend five minutes talking with Steve you will realise he is not a man who stands for cruelty or violence, quite the opposite actually. “I really wanted this album to help us reflect on the good aspects of gun ownership and remind us that guns are a part of our Australian heritage. Both my dad and my grandfather owned guns and never had any trouble”, he says, but then cheekily adds, “and as my first single says – ‘I ain’t  gonna shoot  anyone, and no one shoots at me, cos I’ve got a gun’”.