Making their way to The Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles, California for a night full of impassioned energy and memories that we’ll hold onto forever, Lee Fields & The Expressions commanded the stage. Do yourselves a favor and read our review of the night, as well as a photo gallery attached below.

You never really get to pick how your dreams will lay out once you've started trying to enact them. Sometimes your privilege and luck does most of the heavy lifting and other times the society you are born into predetermines how far it thinks you can go in life. Mr. Lee Fields was born in Wilson, North Carolina in 1950. He loved music from a young age and when he was 17 he moved to New York to start his musical career then once married soon moved to the city he still resides in today Plainfield, New Jersey. He started his career in 1969 with his excellent single "Bewildered" and slowly over the next several decades (and a career outside of music in real estate) he would release music and tour whenever the opportunity arose. Releasing music on several labels including releasing his excellent 2022 record “Sentimental Fool” on the legendary Daptone Records.

Cut to last week when Mr Lee Fields and his back up band The Expressions took the stage of the exemplary Fonda Theater in sticky (somehow even with the rain) Hollywood, California. Playing mostly from their most recent album with a mix of Mr. Fields’ biggest hits the crowd was losing their shit before the green velvet curtains rose and imagined that tripled once The Expressions warned up the crowd evenmore with a fiery instrumental number before The Expression’s guitartest introduced the crowd to “THE MAN THE MYTH THE LEGEND STRAIGHT FROM PLAINVIEW, NEW JERSEY!! MR! LEE!! FIELDDSSSSSSSSS!!!!” This expression of joy through sounds and music was the launching point for the next two hours of soul burning Soul and R&B. When I tell you this man did not stop moving for two hours I mean it. This man lent his voice to a James Brown biopic for a reason.

To hear this man scream was giving me beautiful flashbacks to a late legend The Screaming Eagle of soul himself and Mr. Fields current labelmate Charles Bradley. I have never seen a crowd instructed to wave their hands in the air from side to side so much without the crowd rolling their eyes into the back of their skulls and with such glee. Two hours later, several false endings and one of the loudest and longest “ONE MORE SONG!!” chants I have ever been a part of Mr. Lee Fields exited the building and so did we with the biggest smiles on our faces.

If you ever get the opportunity to see him in any capacity, don’t waste your opportunity, grab a ticket!

Review & Photos by: Ben LaCross

Like what you read? Follow our social media and playlist for the latest in independent music:

Lee Fields & The Expressions Command The Stage at LA's Fonda Theatre