" Lee is a terrific guitarist with a musical sincerity that is rooted in the emotion of the blues..." - Ralph Mctell The Reviews for Lee's Last album: The Great War 1914-18 " The vibe of the whole CD is haunting...I really felt the resonance of the songs..." - Kenton Hall / Ist Rock band A review of the Great War CD by Margaret Casey I've now listened to "The Great War" more than a half dozen times over the last couple days and it only gets better with every pass. Each piece is a unique arrangement written with well-balanced harmonies of lyric over melody. From its poetic lyric to instrumental riffs to its Belgian blues I find I've been captured as my thoughts ponder the realities and I become acquainted with a war I never knew. I see the Irish guards with their strength and bravery abounding, never to be broken but ready and willing to fight and die for freedom...I feel a soldier's isolation while he lies in wet trenches of territory unknown. While there, he longs for his homeland and wonders if its raining or if his Ladylove will wait for his return. He then ponders his existence and how much his life has changed... he tells me about how he used to be a carpenter but now he carries a gun and prays... prays that he might have the strength Jesus had to rise above his pain... damn, I wish I had a beer we could share! A year has passed and I walk with him along the silent ground and listen as he explains the terrors of being gassed... and how the muddy trenches and lands have given way to the now green grass...and the white butterflies we see flittering about must be the souls of British soldiers who gave up their lives.I, too, feel haunted by the beating of the butterfly wings... The Great War CD reviewed by Kenton Hall I don't think the artist could have had any notion of this when this CD was flung in my direction, but the First World War is a period in history with which I have always been fascinated. It was such a turning point for 20th and 21st century life and yet, in essence, it was just the largest of millenia of petty land disputes and tribal disagreements. Unlike the Second World War, where a simpler ethos of good and evil could be easily used to buoy up national spirits, its predecessor's legacy was to be defeat from victory - both destroying the innocence of millions and sowing the seeds for further defilement on all sides. Yet the strongest image from that war - that of the young soldier slowly coming to grips with surrounding horrors and his own mortality remain with us. In poems by Owen and Sassoon, amongst others. In novels, dramas and, even, the closing scene from Blackadder Goes Forth... Lee Mitchell's work is the beautiful and haunting soundtrack to the inner conflict that almost always marries to the outer. And, yet, it doesn't feel like a vanity project or even a dry, historical folk effort.To listen to these songs is to have the sights, smells, joys and tribulations of a young century's journey towards adulthood. We're in a difficult adolescence even now and it pays to be reminded of the human cost. Of course, along the way - every haunting has its ethereal side - there is beauty, hope and the triumph of humanity over the human race. Seek it out...