Born in Jackson, Mississippi, and raised all over America, Wallace Lester has been playing drums from an early age. Wallace spent the 1990s touring nationally with the Boulder, Colorado-based funk-jam band Zuba. He played over two hundred and fifty dates a year with Zuba and placed his songs in the Farrelly Brothers’ classic comedies Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary. Once he moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, Wallace drummed with the space rockers Bipolaroid and the soul blues shouter Mathilda Jones. Hurricane Katrina sent Wallace north to Mississippi, where in his first week in Oxford, he was asked to join the Yalobushwackers with Jim Dickinson. Besides the Yalobushwackers, Wallace has also toured nationally and internationally with Kenny Brown, Reverend John Wilkins, the Como Mamas, Shannon McNally, Eric Deaton, Blue Mountain, and Garry Burnside. After twelve years in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Wallace now resides in Nashville, Tennessee.
Interviewed by Holly Hobbs, 09/18/2020.