Elizabeth Lee has the perfect outlet for some daddy-daughter time.
Lee, a 31-year-old Carmel resident, and her father perform and write music together under the name Elizabeth Lee
Lee’s group includes her father Bobby Pugh, a 62-year-old Sheridan resident, and Jason McKay, a Noblesville resident who turns 64 in August.
“I think that’s the main thing for me is just being able to be together with your kid,” Pugh said. “I mean, I don’t know if I’d want to go out and play somewhere with my parents when I was a kid. So, I feel very blessed that she wants me to deal with her. No knock on my parents, it’s just a different generation.”
Lee said it’s just as fun for her as well.
“He has amazing harmonies,” she said. “I don’t think I would be gigging if it weren’t for him because I was too shy.”
The one drawback for Lee is Pugh and McKay have their dad jokes.
“I have to keep my eye on them so that they don’t do anything embarrassing in the show,” Lee said.
Lee performs on vocals and guitar. Pugh sings and plays guitar and sometimes plays keyboards. McKay plays bass guitar.
“Jason started out as a classical guitar player, so you can see that in his bass,” Lee said. “He’s awesome,”
McKay has played a few shows and performed on the recording of the single “Regal” that was released earlier this month.
“This is the first original song we’ve released in five years,” Lee said.
Lee and her father have an album out with 11 original songs called “Flyin’ ,,, Bye.”
“We’re both good at writing half songs, so we need each other,” Pugh said.
Lee said her mother, Cari, is a band mom, supporting their efforts.
Pugh said Lee started taking guitar lessons at age 9.
“My son started taking piano lessons and he would never practice,” Pugh said. “She said, ‘I didn’t want to disappoint you,’ so she kept practicing. She said she kind of liked it, so he never did play piano but she stuck with the guitar.”
Pugh said he loved to listen to his daughter play classical music.
“Then one day she graduated from high school and went to college, (and) I thought, ‘It’s so quiet around here,’” Pugh said.
The father and daughter started playing together about six years ago.
“I wanted to major in music in college, but I got scared,” Lee said. “I had a mutual fund job, and it just crushed my soul, even though it was a great company.”
So, she got back into music five years ago. She did it part-time until this year when she went to full time.
“I talked her into working with my window cleaning business for a while and that crushed her spirit, too,” said Pugh, who retired earlier this year.
The group has been playing throughout the Indianapolis area, including wineries, restaurants and festivals.
“We’re fairly chill for the bar scene,” Lee said.
Lee said she describes their style as singer-songwriter or folk pop.
“We do covers from the 1960s on to now,” she said. “We do Jim Croce, The Beatles. I have to teach them some newer stuff, so we do some Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish.
McKay has been playing bass for about 30 years.
“Mainly I played praise and worship through church,” said McKay, a Hamilton Southeastern High School graduate.
McKay and Pugh played in a short-lived band several years ago. Pugh contacted McKay, who is retired, a few months ago to see if he wanted to play bass.
McKay said he was thinking about going into a different direction other than music before Pugh called.
“We gave him some direction,” Pugh said.
Lee said McKay is a fast learner.
“We joke that he knows some of our songs better than (we do) now,” she said.
The group’s music can be found on Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon music.
One of the songs, “Quicksand,” from the most recent album, was used in a 2023 Lifetime movie called “Sabotaging the Squad.”
Lee said she hopes the music is used in other movies or shows.
For more, visit elizabethleeband.com.
