First things first: There’s no one named “Rufus Lee” in the band known as Rufus Lee and The Handful. The name is a tribute to singer-guitarist Donnie Blackwell’s dad, a true character in the best sense of the word. Now, with that out of the way, on to the music.
On the band’s just-released debut album, “The Ballad of Rufus Lee,” you’ll find classic honky-tonk country and Southern rock nestled comfortably together. On the album’s 10 tracks, Blackwell’s laid-back vocals blend effortlessly with Mike Bagwell’s elegant pedal steel and lead guitarist Mike Merck’s gritty, understated twang. If you’re a fan of The Marshall Tucker Band or more modern Southern bands such as the Drive-By Truckers or American Aquarium, you’ll find plenty to like in Rufus Lee and The Handful.
The band came together just before the COVID-19 pandemic as a sort of dream project for Blackwell.
“For the last 10 years or so,” Blackwell says, “I had an idea that I wanted to have a band that was an ode to my father and his bands.
When I was a kid, they always played ’60s and ’70s classic country music, and I knew that I wanted a band like that someday.”
Blackwell decided to gather a group of Upstate music scene veterans for his band, recruiting Bagwell on pedal steel, Merck on lead guitar, bassist Chuck Hughes and drummer John Ervin (who has since left the group, to be replaced by John Taylor).
The country music part of the equation was intentionally there from the start with Rufus Lee and The Handful; Blackwell says the Southern rock portion of the sound came naturally to the group.
“I think it’s definitely part of growing up here,” he says. “I grew up in Greer, and back in the ’70s and ’80s I remember there were basically two radio stations.: WESC for country and Rock 101 for rock ’n’ roll. And so I grew up listening to those two stations. And I’m sure that has influenced me and the other guys in the band. I think also those two genres are intertwined. I think they’re just a great blend and I think that’s what we do.”
Once the lineup solidified, Blackwell already had most the songs ready to go. In fact, he had been kicking around at least one of the tunes on “The Ballad of Rufus Lee” since the 1990s.
“One of the songs on the record, it’s called, ‘I Think It’s Over,’ I wrote that song in college in ’93 or ’94,” he says. “And when I wrote it, it was just a simple little country song, and I never had a band where that song fit. But somehow that song just stuck around for all these years until I formed this band. I remembered that song and it just worked perfectly with the pedal steel in it.”
The band convened at Greenville’s Sit-N-Spin Studios with producer Matt Morgan to record the album, and then COVID hit, turning what should’ve been a short set of sessions into something entirely different.
“It feels like it took years because it literally took years,” bassist Chuck Hughes says. “We started it, and sure enough, COVID hit and shut the world down. We had this long pause and then we got back and a couple of us would pop in here and there, which is kind of weird for me because whenever I went to a studio and recorded it was like everybody at one time. So, we had a few hills and mountains to climb during the process.”
The result is an album of rough-hewn country-rock gems that sounds like a band playing live, which is a testament to the talent of the players involved.
“Donnie’s songwriting is fantastic,” Hughes says. “We had very good things to build on as far as songwriting, and so we just went in, and everybody did this thing and did a great job at it.”
