Burlap Willow Cigar Club Featuring Lee Rolfes

If you weren’t in attendance at Bert Driver’s Burlap Room for Lee Rolfes on Thursday, 9/16/21, you missed an opportunity to hear live Americana music at it’s best during this special edition of Burlap Willow Cigar Night. The evening was special also in the fact that for the very first time, Bert Driver’s Burlap Room was serving a select assortment of wine, craft bourbons, and Golden Cadillac Margaritas (with Grand Mariner floaters) 

Lee Rolfes hails from Cincinnati, OH, and has refined his art over the years by being exposed to a plethora of heard-of musicians who are either from Cincinnati or have played this key “music town” during their travels. 

Lee met the great Lonnie Mack in Cincy, and became life-long friends. One of these days we’re gonna a do a Lonnie Mack Tribute Show for the Burlappers who knew and loved Lonnie and his music, who, BTW, spent his last years on this plane over in Keltonburg, TN. You can bet Lee Rolfes will be a key factor in that project. 

So with a background like that, it stands to reason that Lee picked a spot-on setlist out of his (probably 1000’s) of songs he knows, ranging from James Taylor and George Jone’s Bartender Blues to several original songs that were very well received by the music-loving Burlappers- Original songs are HARD to get an audience to react to, unless they’re somewhat familiar with the piece, but that general guideline did not hold up Thursday night, with Lee getting solid response from the Burlappers on songs he has composed, including God Made the Rain and Should Have Sobered Up Before I Settled Down.  He also did a great rendition of a song his drummer wrote called Fourlane- a lament of losing our natural simple joys of life to “Mr. Progress”. 

Be sure to make plans to join us for our inaugural Center Hill Blues Fest on 10/2/21, featuring the incredible new talent of Jackie Venson (check her out on Austin City Limits). Get all the details at bertdriver.com/event-calendar/center-hill-blues-fest-featuring-jackie-venson.

Photos by Matthew Antoniak.