William Lee Golden and The Goldens offer an old favorite with a new member of the group.
It’s official: Elijah Golden, grandson of Oak Ridge Boys legend William Lee Golden and son of award-winning singer-songwriter Chris Golden, has joined the family business.
“I've just kind of grown up around it,” Elijah recently told C&I, “but it’s nice to have everybody together doing the family business together. I remember the first time I ever rode the tour bus was going to Renfro Valley with the Oaks, and grandpa got me out on ‘Thank God for Kids’ and ‘Elvira.’ And I guess that’s when the bug bit, if we had to had to say a time when it happened.
“But yeah, it’s really fun to be a part of the family business and to do it more often. Every chance is an answer to a prayer, and it's a fun and beautiful thing we get to do together is to harmonize.
Elijah can be heard on three albums — Southern Accents, Country Roads and Old Country Church — comprised of standards and favorites recorded by William Lee & The Goldens, the new group William Lee informally formed during the COVID lockdown.
“It was a time,” William Lee recalls, “when it was either do something positive or watch negative hate on television news. I turned off the television. I wouldn’t watch TV there for seemed like close to a year. But I got the family together. We got to sing old songs that had inspired us in our life, and made us want to sing and be in the music business.”
William Lee and his familial ensemble — including sons Rusty, Craig, and Chris, among others — wound up recording over 30 songs while in lockdown, and have been slowly releasing music videos for each track on the three albums that resulted from their joint project. Even as he’s continued to on tour with the Oaks on their extended American Made: Farewell Tour, he has also maintained a parallel performance schedule with William Lee Golden & The Goldens, with a current lineup of himself (lead vocals), son Chris Golden (acoustic guitar, mandolin, vocals), granddaughter Elizabeth Golden (fiddle, vocals) — and Elijah (vocals, percussion).
Continuing to make music together has served as a spiritual and emotional comfort for the Goldens as they have endured a series of tragedies during the past year. Rusty Golden passed away in 2024 at age 65. One week later, Joe Bonsall, a 50-year member of the Oak Ridge Boys, died from complications of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Earlier in 2024, on Easter Sunday, Norah Lee Allen, the wife of Oaks frontman Duane Allen, also passed away.
“After all of the stuff that we went through,” William Lee says, “and the losses that we had, it was when we started getting back together, and singing songs together and harmonizing together — that was what lifted us up out of a valley of sadness. And we found healing mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.”
Elijah admits that he may have more than music in his future. “Right now,” he told C&I, “I’m working on grad school with Harvard Extension, and I hope to be an English professor one day. That’s the ultimate goal.
“But I also love singing and writing songs, all of that. There’s a great quote, I believe by Carl Jung, that sort of encapsulates a lot of my philosophy around singing, and around stories, and all the things that I’m passionate about: Learn all the theories, master all the techniques. But as you touch a human soul, be just another human soul.”
And as for that alleged “farewell tour” by the Oak Ridge Boys — well, William Lee says they keep adding more dates. Between that and his performances with The Goldens, retirement sure looks like it will be a long way off for him.
“To me,” William Lee said, “it’s like Keith Richards said when a journalist asked him, ‘When’s the Rolling Stones going to retire? Keith Richards said, ‘Man, that would be like a death sentence to me.’ And I think that that pretty well sums up how a lot of people that spend their whole life on the road 150 days a year, singing songs and harmonizing together again. The music makes it worth being away from home. It’s the feeling when you’re actually being able to sing. That’s the fun part of the day.
“You get through the whole day building up to being able to walk out there and sing songs and play music together, and being in the middle of all that great music. That’s always been stimulating, it’s uplifting, and it still is. And we need that in our lives. We need to be uplifted every day that we can. And music is the only thing that I know of that can lift you up and keep you up.”
Elijah readily agrees.
“I think singing and being on stage and making music is such a beautiful moment of surrender — both to other people in the audience and to God,” Elijah said. “I used to be in my head a lot whenever I’d sing, making sure everything was perfect, trying to be uptight. And one time before a show, [William Lee] said to me, ‘Just sing from the heart. It’s about the feeling a song is a feeling.’
“And one thing that I’ve learned through touring and being new to this industry and learning from people who are industry veterans is that people don’t go to shows to see you. Even if you're a legend like [my grandfather]. They go to a show to see themselves. Everybody is grieving something. Everybody is hurt, downtrodden, and broken somehow. And the persistence and the perspicacity to keep moving and to keep pursuing music is something that’s been inspiring to me through all the bad hands we've been dealt this past year.
“Through all of that, it’s more essential to be on stage and to be together. And for us and for everybody else to have that message of togetherness, and in a divided world to have a sense of groundedness. I think it’s been a lot of things to all of us, and I think that's a big part of it.”
Elijah Golden performs lead vocals in this William Lee Golden and The Goldens music video for their infectiously joyful and irresistibly playful version of the Oak Ridge Boys classic, “Elvira.”
