Colin Lake

Eight years ago while visiting New Orleans in the springtime, Seattle native Colin Lake met his future wife in the airport. The meeting sparked a cosmic chain reaction that would change his life forever. Overwhelmed by the gravity that seemed to be drawing him to the city, Lake moved to town less than a year later and his passion and innate feel for roots music would find fertile ground from which to spring. While his powerful vocal style and soulful touch on the guitar and lap steel owe heavily to countless blues greats, it’s Lake’s knack for song craft that sets him apart from almost anyone in that genre. 

Lake’s latest album, One Thing That’s For Sure, captures the songwriter’s unique musical vision, delivering penetrating lyrics with soul and gritty sincerity. On the album’s eleven original songs, Lake sings of love and longing, truth and transcendence, hope and struggle. These are love songs, but not just in the romantic sense — these are songs that celebrate love’s well earned triumph over fear and tread the territory where light and shadows meet. 

On songs like “I’m Trying to Tell You” and the heavily distorted “Pay the Price”, Lake sings in desperate pleas, reminiscent of a man fighting for his life, while in the chorus of the laid back title track and the sun-soaked refrain of “She’s Mine”, the singer swells with joy as he revels in the spoils of love.  And why shouldn’t he; these songs were born in New Orleans — the world capital of revelry &  joyful expression. And while Lake may not have been born there, you could say that in New Orleans he was born again. 

In recent years, Lake has opened for acts like Dr. John and Gary Clark Jr, and performed at festivals around the country, including the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the Austin City Limits Music Festival, Alabama’s Hangout Beach, Music and Arts Festival, the Key West Songwriters Festival, Telluride Blues & Brews Festival and New Orleans’ French Quarter Festival.