Some people take a little longer than others to get to that debut album – A. Lee Edwards has had thirty years in music making and the time has, it seems, finally arrived. The album ‘Interpreting Heart Sounds Vol. I‘ will be released February 28th, and ‘Ride On‘ is the first single from it – a rather perfect combination of folk and bluegrass it’s a song that has been around for some time before finding itself on this first solo album.
Edwards wrote ‘Ride On’ in a different time. At that time, his first band, Lou Ford, had just released their debut, ‘Sad But Familiar’, and Edwards had just left the peaceful Blue Ridge Mountains for the busy metropolis of Charlotte. “I was feeling the weight of everyone’s expectations—my bandmates, folks in the industry—all of them with their own ideas about who I should be,” Edwards shares. Inspired by Willie Nelson’s Sad Songs and Waltzes– ‘it’s a good thing that I’m not a star, you don’t know how lucky you are’– ‘Ride On‘ became his way of imagining a break from it all, just riding out on his own. “It’s about craving real freedom—the kind that comes when you’re finally moving on your own terms.”