Tim Lee & Susan Bauer Lee of Bark

Interview with Tim Lee & Susan Bauer Lee of Bark Bark is a drum set, a Fender 6-string bass, two voices and more hooks than Bill Dance keeps in his tackle box. Loud is their new album. Bark comprises the collaborative duo of Susan Bauer Lee (drums and vocals) and Tim Lee (Fender VI bass and vocals) based in Water Valley, Mississippi. Susan has played and toured with Tim the past two decades with Bark and Tim Lee 3. Tim got his start in Missisippi’s The Windbreakers before going on to tour as part of Mitch Easter' Let’s Active and seminal college rock band Swimming Pool Q’s. Loud is being releasedby Dial Back Sound / Cool Dog Sound on 12” LP vinyl, CD, digital download and stream September 5. “If you can fill the unforgiving three and a half minutes with two hundred and ten seconds of Rock n Roll, yours is the earth and everything that is in it.” I think Rudyard Kipling said that. What do you do when you don’t know what to do? In the face of commercial failure, heartbreaking loss, environmental collapse, grief, one too many beers. You make a record . . . and you make it loud. It starts with “Love Minus Action,” and the lyrics “I’m a loser not a fighter.” Lennon couldn’t have said it better. But the real story here is that you can’t lose if you don’t play the game. But what do you do if you don’t play the game? You carry on without the baggage of giving a shit about the game. You dance on the graves of the forgotten winners and you play for the regulars. There’s a field in North Mississippi. Several years from now. After the screens have all gone dark. The lush green glows in the dull light of a cloudy afternoon. In the middle of the field there is a drum set and two amplifiers. An old generator rattles in the silence. A woman sits at the drum stool and fixes the mic to reach her lips. A man tunes his Bass VI guitar and twists the volume knob all the way up. A ragged crowd gathers from out of the woods. A rumble of distant thunder rolls through the sky. Then the snare cracks and the band plays on. It’s Bark, and they’re playing us out just before the rain. They’re playing Loud; it’s the distillation of Rock n Roll—the beat, the riff, the words and the voice. The things that have always been there from “Psychotic Reaction” to “Satisfaction.”

Bandcamp: dialbacksound.bandcamp.com bark-bark-loud.bandcamp.com

Website: bark-loud.com

Facebook: @Bark.Bark.Loud

Instagram: @bark.timlee3