Don’t worry “bee” happy is the calling card of Athens County, Ohio singer/songwriter Megan Bee. It’s not that her songs are all butterflies, honey bees and rainbows. There may be dark end on the street where her muse exists in a few of her songs, but it’s always beneath a bare streetlight to remind listeners that the sunny side is not just a way to order eggs at a diner.
For AUK’s latest exclusive mini-gig, recorded in her home, Megan Bee plays three songs on her Taylor 414ce-R guitar, of which she notes fondly, “I took it home on Valentine’s Day two years ago after a short courting period.” And you wonder what’s love got to do with it? It’s there in her DIY pursuit of a musical career with no label or generational wealth to support her. Instead, she’s resorted to crowdfunding to finance a tour, roaming to coffeeshops, house concerts, festivals, and theaters, bunking with friends and hoping her Dodge minivan keeps rolling down the roads of the Midwest for another 50,000 miles. *Breaking News*! Megan has traded up to a newer model Dodge minivan. “It’s domestic, not domesticated.” You could imagine that Dodge slogan tagged on her.
Her music is a blend of distinctly homespun vocals, acoustic simplicity, yearning soulfulness, and winsome storytelling. Her background as an environmental educator, farmhand, and vagabond once took her into a desert wilderness where she found her voice around a campfire. It comes out of her mouth quivering like a trembling leaf in a breeze, sending arrows of emotion that pierce straight to the heart of her songs.
In this recording, you can plainly discern Megan Bee is an assured and confident performer. She leaves abundant empty space to allow the songs to breathe. There’s an emotional response you get listening to her songs and perceiving their honesty and depth.
She plays two songs from her most recent album “Cottonwood,” (2022), which has been called, “as real as it gets” and was listed in the best of 2022 by this publication. Ian Kennedy wrote in AUK: “Great albums take you through music and words to another place, lift your mood even on the darkest of days, and the memory lingers long after the last track has finished.”
In ‘Ecstasy’ a friend caught in an endless loop of drug use gets lost in the hallucinations, wishing to experience the good times all, over again without the aid of drugs. You were on some pretty strong drugs You took them like a sacrament I was sitting by your hospital bed You said you could see inside my head And on your face was a big ridiculous smile And I want to see you smile that way again.
“We all have a friend like this. Or maybe we are that friend,” Bee says enigmatically. “Used To Be” is “a song about checking in with yourself amidst our busy lives.” She sings with a depth of emotion that brings back memories of the late English folksinger Sandy Denny. “I’m trying to be quiet I’m trying to listen Trying to figure out what I’ve been missing.
Megan shares a new composition (‘The Deepest Blue’) that will be included one day on a fifth album. “Written at a quilt show while pondering the intricacies of fabric art and the intimacy of making someone a blanket. Perhaps this is about the relationship between two people, or perhaps this is from the point of view of the quilt speaking to its maker. You can listen to it any way you want.” That would be by clicking on the video below and letting the open window provide a view into the soul of her music. That’s your cue. Go ahead and click now. Thanks for attending another in the series of AUK mini-gigs, and thanks to Megan Bee for leaving us with a lasting impression of fine songcraft long after the last notes have faded.
Over the past ten years she has released four full length albums and toured relentlessly. You can find her music either on her Bandcamp page or at https://meganbeemusic.com/home where her tour schedule for the remainder of 2024 is posted.
