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Music

Lee Fields & the Expressions

LEE FIELDS & THE EXPRESSIONS with COURTNEY WELLS as part of the Toronto Jazz Festival at the Horseshoe (368 Queen West), Saturday (July 2), 10 pm. $25-$30 or festival pass. tojazz.com. See listing


Underground soul-blues legend Lee Fields has a straightforward reason for maintaining a tireless pace of recording and touring at an age when most consider an afternoon on the golf course keeping busy.

“My main goal is to stay perpendicular,” Fields says from his home office in New Jersey, “because I feel like I’m going to be horizontal long enough.

“People say, ‘Lee, you 60. You up there. You need to relax.’ But they gonna lay me down and I’m going to rest, guaranteed. I have a bed waiting for me.”

In conversation with Fields, it’s not hard to see where the James Brown comparisons come from. He often punctuates long, oratorical thoughts about life, love and the totality of humanity with hair-raising howls. At one point he even says, “I feel good this morning.”

What’s also clear is that his energy level and enthusiasm for music are still strong after a 40-year career of highs and lows. After cutting his first single in 1969, Fields spent the better part of the 70s releasing smoking-hot funk 45s on various labels before finally dropping a debut long player, Let’s Talk It Over, in 1979.

That album didn’t find traction in its time, though it’s since become highly sought-after by funk collectors and fetches four-digit sums. It sent Fields into a less productive phase in the 80s, when he virtually vanished, aside from a few European-released disco tracks.

He re-emerged in the 90s with a retro sound and look, donning sequinned jackets and playing the kind of Southern soul and blues that first inspired him. Sharon Jones was a young backup singer on one of those records in a session that would lead to her discovery.

A decade later, Jones again backed up Fields and his new band, The Expressions, on 2009’s smouldering, Stax-inspired My World. The record earned him a new audience after tastemaker websites caught on and kick-started a Fields comeback.

He’s just dropped a new jam, an eclectic self-released project called Treacherous (BDA).

“Everybody says, ‘Stay in your comfortable zone,'” Fields says. “On Treacherous, I’m breaking the rules and going beyond the retro zone. It has everything on it.

“It was something I really wanted to do independently, and the Expressions understood that. We still together and we’ll have a new album next year, more of the My World kind of stuff but deeper. We’re taking My World higher. But I’m hoping people embrace Treacherous.”

As far as being embraced live, Fields isn’t concerned. He says he is shown love wherever his travels and career take him.

“Everywhere is just like home, because people treat me well. I go in with the intention of giving people an honest and truthful experience, and they recognize that. They say, ‘This man ain’t coming in here messing around. He’s coming in here serious.'”

music@nowtoronto.com

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