News that the Lee Boys are coming to Tahoe comes with a pair of questions: How can there be no cover charge and how can the room contain all of that music?
The Lee Boys’ music is sacred steel, a high-energy, blues-based style of gospel music. The sound was developed in pentecostal House of God churches in the 1930s. Sacred Steel was discovered outside of the church in the late 1990s when Robert Randolph and the Family Band became a commercial success.

While Randolph’s music is secular, the Lee Boys are devoutly spiritual. The Miami group, comprised of three brothers and their three nephews, have developed a following of jam band fans.

“Really, we’ve been doing jam band our whole lives,” band leader Alvin Lee told Music@creativeloafing.com. “When Robert Randolph moved to the next level (and) started doing stuff with people like (Eric) Clapton, he left an opening and the Lee Boys kinda fill that gap. The jam band community, once they get you, they want to keep you.”

Fans of gospel, blues and folk are also catching on to the Lee Boys, who learned to play music in church, have played at more than 50 festivals and have two albums.

“We’re the Sunday morning band that wakes everybody up,” Alvin Lee told Music Underground. “We’re still a gospel-based band. That’s one element that we’ll never lose. But we’re like messengers, not preachers. We’re not trying to teach religion. Spirituality happens because the music, the instruments, is spiritual.”

Guitarist Alvin and his brother Glenn started the band. Glenn taught his nephew Roosevelt “Velt” Collier how to play the pedal steel guitar, the signature instrument in the group. Glenn died of cancer in 2002.

The other members are singers Derrick and Keith Lee, and their sisters’ sons Earl Walker, drums, Alvin Cordy Jr. bass and Collier.

“There truly has never been a show like this before on the North Shore,” said Crystal Bay Casino Manager Bill Wood. “They play gospel harmonies infused with lap and pedal steel with jazz, hip hop, country and R&B influences. What a great show, and these guys should blow the roof off that little room. Heck, I’m not sure how we are going to fit them on the stage.”