After many years of writing music and performing seven nights a week in his native Northern Ireland, Lee Rogers recorded a demo that piqued the interest of several record labels. In February 2005 he signed a recording and publishing deal with Paul & Nikki Turner’s Cambridge based label ‘Zenith Cafe’.
“Like all labels, we received lots of demos but when we first listened to Lee it was as if Christmas had come early.” – Nikki Turner (Zenith Cafe)
Not long after, Lee found himself in Italy recording his official debut album ‘Drawing clocks’, under the watchful eye of renowned Italian producer, Marco Canepa. Songs from this album were featured in ’La mano de Dios’ (Maradona documentary), TV shows such as ‘Friends and Rivals’, and Hollywood movies including ‘The River King’.
The album also gained extensive airplay on Radio 2, Xm world space, Sirius, BFBS amongst others.
‘Drawing Clocks’ was set to be a juggernaut of a release until the ground was shaken for both Lee and Zenith Cafe, when a (now infamous) banking scandal involving HBOS Reading, sadly drew an immediate halt to the project in 2007.
With music prospects halted, Lee turned his creativity towards tattooing and opened his own studio in County Antrim in 2008. While he became a multi-award-winning tattoo artist, his music took a back seat. Lee lived a hellishly colourful personal life during this time, until out of the blue, twelve years later, Zenith Cafe set the wheels back in motion to pick up where they left off. Today as this is written (2020) Lee is finally gearing up to release his highly anticipated new album ‘Gameblood’ – recorded and produced by (long term friend & fan) Gareth Dunlop.
“Lee has a natural ability to tell a story like no other, his raw and unfiltered talent simply draws you in” – Gareth Dunlop
Listen to ‘Stayin Alive’ – BELOW:
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