2nd Annual Summer at The Center Series Featuring Lee Fields and The Expressions at The Center for the Arts

The Center for the Arts is pleased to welcome Lee Fields and The Expressions to the Marisa Funk Theater on August 10, 2022. Soul music pours out of the legendary Lee Fields, as free and unstinting as his God’s love. With all these years, and all this life, comes a sort of divine wisdom, and Fields has it in spades. “I am a sinner, just like everybody else,” he says gravely. He is no “holier—than—thou guy,” he adds. He just believes in people’s ability to love and be loved, and he understands that music is the divine bridge to these places. Now in his early 70s, Fields is ushering in the most successful and fruitful period of his career which began in the 1960s when he was a teenager in North Carolina sweating it out on juke joint stages, with crumpled dollars hailing at his feet.

Sometimes nicknamed “Little JB” for his physical and vocal resemblance with James Brown, Fields has been channeling soulful rhythms since his first single in 1969. Most of the second half of the 1970’s, Fields spent cutting singles for Angle 3 Records, including “The Bull Is Coming” and “Funky Screw.” In 1979 he released a full-length album called Let’s Talk It Over. In the 1980s, disco became increasingly popular, at the expense of soul and as such, venues that had previously booked Fields now booked DJs instead. The 90s marked a triumphant return to soul-blues music for Fields, signing on with Mississippi-based Ace Records with the album Enough Is Enough. On Ace, Fields released Coming to Tear the Roof Down in 1995 and Dreaming Big Time in 1996 in which he played keyboards and synthesizers.

Later that year, Fields signed to Desco Records along with fellow soul artist Sharon Jones, who sang backup for Fields on an early single. Fields was featured on the debut album Gimmie the Paw by the label’s band The Soul Providers in 1997. He released several singles with Desco and in 1999, dropped a full-length album Let’s Get a Groove On. Desco later split into Daptone Records and Soul Fire, and Fields eventually recorded for them both. With The Expressions, Fields released the 2011 album titled Treacherous. After releasing Faithful Man in 2012 the singer toured globally and released two additional albums Emma Jean in 2014 and Special Night in 2017. In April 2019, Lee Fields & The Expressions released their latest album It Rains Love, while standing at the forefront of the soul revival, a bustling and ever-growing corner that has nourished the nutrient-starved waters of 21st century pop music with the timeless traditions and virtues it lacks.

Lee Fields is proud to announce he has reunited with Daptone Records and is working on a new album slated to be released in fall of 2022, celebrating his return with the single “Ordinary Lives,” a song from a previously unreleased Dap-Kings session. Fields’ music doesn’t belong to now; it belongs to eternity – he is living history. Lee Fields and The Expressions promise a night of soulful music at The Center for the Arts on August 10, 2022.