I first met Grady Lee well over a decade ago, when we were both in the junior lifeguards summer program in front of the East Beach Grill. He was a stringy kid with dirty blond hair, a goofy sense of humor, and irrepressible energy. On more than one occasion, it got him in trouble. Buoy swims at East Beach served as a kind of collective punishment for Grady’s constant antics, and it sometimes earned him the scorn of his comrades. Why couldn’t he sit still? Why couldn’t he keep his mouth shut?
These days, nobody is asking Lee to keep quiet. In fact, it’s just the opposite: He’s in the early stages of what looks to be a promising career as a pop musician, and he’s just signed on with his first label, Artist Publishing Group (APG), which describes itself as “a modern label for forward thinking and entrepreneurial artists.” His profile on the digital music service Spotify has more than 350,000 monthly listeners, with songs such as “500 Days of Summer” and “Can You Hear the Moon” among his most popular.
Grady was born and raised in Santa Barbara, and the city that raised him has made its way into his music. “I don’t think I realized how special it is to grow up in Santa Barbara until I left for the first time,” he said. “I think it took me moving to a different city to really understand what it meant to grow up here.”