Storytelling has been an anchor of Lee's music since the very beginning. He launched his career as a genre-bending musician after returning to Tennessee, quickly progressing from dive bar gigs to high-profile opening slots (including shows with Jason Isbell, Los Lobos, and other artists who, like him, blurred the lines between roots-rock, country, and other forms of American folk music) to his own headlining shows. Throughout it all, he drew upon the narrative skills he'd sharpened as a student. If albums like Honky-Tonk Hell and The Hometown Kid often unfolded like autobiographical entries from his road journal, then Drink the River shows an even broader range of his storytelling abilities. Lee isn't just writing songs about himself; he's writing songs about all of us. And maybe, in doing so, he can bring us a little closer together.

Born on the Wasatch Front and raised at the foot of the Colorado Rockies, Ben Garcia got his musical start with early success in the alternative rock scene. Yet, after years on long Western highways—often with only bird dogs, horses, and a Gibson Guitar as companions—his music picked up grit from mountain passes and country roads. His songs drive through sometimes stark, sometimes sublime landscapes towards a jagged but unbroken skyline, stopping occasionally at Honky Tonk bars to tell stories of rough, worn cowboy hats, boots, and tales of love.