photo by Geoff Wilbur

Lee Biddle

Chopps Italian Steakhouse & Bar, Burlington, MA

July 5, 2025

Tonight, I popped into Chopps – the restaurant in the Boston Marriott Burlington – for a quick bite to eat and caught the last hour or so of Lee Biddle’s performance. In the past, back in 2016 and 2017, I wrote about a couple Chopps performances and noted that whoever books Chopps knows their music. I had thought perhaps live music at Chopps was a thing of the past, since it’s not mentioned at all on the restaurant’s website anymore. However, as I discovered tonight while taking notes for this review, you will occasionally find it mentioned on the restaurant’s Facebook and Instagram pages. I can’t find July’s artists mentioned anywhere online yet, though, so I had to walk up and get a close look at Lee’s merch – his CD cover – to make sure I got his name right. As for the quality of the restaurant’s musical line-up, a glimpse at June’s live music line-up suggests Chopps is still booking reliably excellent performers, so it’s a reliable musical destination on Friday and Saturday nights if you’re looking for an evening of covers from some of the area’s high-quality vocalists.

Enough about the venue; let’s talk about the artist I caught tonight, Lee Biddle. Lee’s rich, controlled voice is an idea fit for the wide range of music he selected this evening. I’m sure the playlist reflected the audience at a place like Chopps, hotel guests and restaurant guests only a few of whom are paying super-close attention to the musician. The crowd is likely to skew older, not likely to know anything obscure, and most wouldn’t be too interested in originals. Fortunately, Lee’s vocal talents allow him a broad range of songs befitting such an audience. Lee’s voice and vocal delivery lend themselves well to mid-tempo timeless rock and country. The country songs seem more pop-rock than country, based on Lee’s delivery, especially when guided by his straightforward acoustic guitarwork. But man, they sound good.

Some of the country songs I heard Lee perform this evening were very old country like “Folsom Prison Blues,” ten-year-old country like “Wagon Wheel” and Ryan Bingham’s “Nobody Knows My Trouble,” and newer country like Tyler Childers’ “All Your’n,” Chris Stapleton’s “Starting Over.” Lee equally deftly tackled classic rockers like “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” and “Brown Eyed Girl.” And he closed out the evening with a neat pairing. First, clearly knowing his audience, he delivered a solid rendition of “Margaritaville,” and then he closed with a song that had me scrambling – I knew the song; heck, I reviewed the album way back when it came out. It was Blind Melon’s “No Rain.” In all, it was a nice mix of styles and, though all the songs were easily recognized, there were several less-frequently-covered yet well-known songs that kept the performance interesting.

Tonight’s live music attendance was unplanned, but it was a pleasant surprise. I’ll be following Lee on Facebook and Instagram, as well as checking out his originals on Spotify. I can’t imagine his original music being anything short of enjoyable given his strong voice and song delivery talents.