I love words. The first thing I noticed when I discovered the music of Lee Bains and the Glory Fires was Bains’s masterful use of language in lyrics. I was first drawn to the music by a title, actually: Their 2012 debut album is called There Is a Bomb in Gilead. Growing up in Alabama, attending a Baptist church, reading the Bible, that title’s play on the much-recorded spiritual “There Is a Balm in Gilead,” from a passage in the book of Jeremiah, struck a chord and I had to check it out. Now, in 2026, those lyrics from fourteen years ago seem especially prescient for the current Netanyahu/Trump-driven mess in the Middle East. It begins:

Children of Abraham, don’t say you ain’t been warned,
For there will come a burning day.
Strait are the checkpoints to your enemy’s house,
And narrow is the way.

Bains’s hard-driving and unapologetic lyrics continue to be front and center in music that Rolling Stone describes as “Southern Gospel Punk.” After … Bomb in Gilead, other infectious albums and those addicting lyrics followed: Dereconstructed (2014); Youth Detention (Nail My Feet Down to the Southside of Town) (2017); Live at the Nick (2018); and Old-Time Folks (2022).

Lee Bains is a native of Birmingham, now living in Atlanta, and when he’s not touring with his music, he’s working as a handyman. His working class Southern roots inform his writing and his authentic, unfettered, and progressive resistance give voice to the things that many Southerners are thinking but some may be hesitant to say. In “We Dare Defend Our Rights,” his response to Alabama’s state motto (which was adapted in 1939 by Marie Bankhead Owen, a “Lost Cause” advocate, in a contentious mood), he shout/sings “Show me what you can build up / Show me what you can burn down.” In songs like “God’s A-Working, Man” and “(In Remembrance of the) 40-Hour Week,” he extols the virtues and laments the hardships of those who actually work hard for the money. I’ll admit that I basically stopped keeping up with new bands around the time Talking Heads and Television split up, but Bains’s music hits me in a visceral way; it’s energizing.

In 2021, Bains accomplished a bit of a writing coup when several of his poems – not to be confused with his lyrics – were published as part of a photo essay called “Work Lunch” in The New Yorker. Now, those poems will be published as part of his upcoming book of poetry titled Work Lunch (Hub Press; publication date: 10/13/2026). I suggest you preorder it now.

In the meantime, Bains has a new live solo album, Free South 2025, that was just released. His international tour for the new album kicked off with a performance at Seasick Records in Birmingham’s Lakeview District on August 7. By the time this essay is posted, he’ll be performing in Norway and traveling on to Sweden and the United Kingdom before returning to the U.S., launching his book, and going back on tour with his solo music. See www.thegloryfires.com for the tour schedule.

The Seasick event was an intimate affair, a homecoming of sorts, and Bains seemed at ease with people he knew as they gathered among the stacks of vinyl. Like Springsteen, he often introduces his songs with personal reflections and occasional battle cries – and he’s not shy about sharing his points of view. His guitar work is outstanding and his songs are delivered with grit, energy, and passion. The set kicked off with a snarling rendition of “Old-Time Folks” and was relentless from then on. Anyone who is a student of the South and the issues that afflict the South and the nation as a whole will find something to recognize and connect to in Bains’s music. Chuck Reece, writing for The Bitter Southerner after the 2014 release of Dereconstructed, opines “I think this kid Lee has made the record I’ve been waiting for somebody to make since before he was even born.” He goes on to say it’s “the most important record to address the Southern thing in 13 years, since Drive-By Truckers’ 2001 ‘Southern Rock Opera’. And it may be the most important record about the South ever released.” The first time I read that, I thought Woah boy, get a grip, but then I thought Can you name another contender? Nope. I can’t, actually.

I recently introduced myself to Lee Bains in the hopes of writing a magazine article about him and his poetry. He was agreeable and we’re going to try to work in some conversations while he’s on tour, promoting the book, and generally working nonstop. In the course of the introduction, I mentioned that both of my grandfathers had been steelworkers in Birmingham. He responded, “Being the grandson of two steelworkers is about as Birmingham a story as it gets!”

Poet / Musician / Handyman Lee Bains’s trajectory from East Lake to wherever he’s going next seems to be a pretty singular Birmingham story, too.

.