While most middle-aged couples are contemplating retirement and anticipating grandchildren, Tim and Susan Bauer Lee write songs and book their next rock shows.

Two-thirds of the rock trio Tim Lee 3, the couple, along with drummer Chris Bratta, have established themselves as a rock staple within Knoxville.

Playing for what he says has been “forever,” Tim has always been in bands and playing music by himself and with friends. However, an epiphany from Susan propelled the couple into the creation of making music together and eventually starting the Tim Lee 3 with Bratta.

“I had a band, like right after reptiles walked on land, and Susan and I have been together for a really long time,” Tim said. “One day about 12 years ago, Susan woke up and decided she wanted to play bass. Literally woke up Saturday morning and went, ‘I want to learn how to play bass.’ So I went to the pawn shop like a beautiful husband and bought a bass and brought it home. Six months later, she was on stage, and we had a band. Then after a while — it was late 2006, I think — we narrowed it down to a three-piece band. Really, it’s just a natural progression of things.”

Tim and Susan met at a fraternity party at a college neither one of them attended. Tim’s then-band was invited to play the party, while Susan was there at the invitation of her brother.

“I ended up at the party because my parents were worried that I wasn’t dating anybody, and they thought that my brother needed to introduce me to some of his ‘nice’ frat-boy brothers,” Susan said. “It was a well-laid plan, but I liked boys in bands. I was more partial to music than fraternity life.”

Married for 32 years, some couples may cringe at the idea of working so closely together. However, the self-described “goofballs” swear to have never had an argument stem from their close work together. Susan attributes their success now to avoiding such a venture at the beginning of their relationship. She has since seen many of their friends who played music together earlier on split up.

“Maybe that’s why it’s totally appropriate that I didn’t start playing until we’d been married 20-something years,” Susan said.

Now, the only disagreement they have is over songwriting. Susan has a tendency to put off finishing a song for a couple months, while Tim claims he “can’t sit on a song for two or three hours.” Yet Tim’s encouragement has kept their musical relationship steady.

“He’s not critical at all really,” Susan said. “He’ll make suggestions about things for me, but he’s not like mean critical or anything like that. He’s been, the entire time, so encouraging. I think that has really helped me get better more than anything.”

The band can often be found at Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria or the Pilot Light. However, their connection with Pilot Light runs a little deeper, as Susan believes “the philosophy of the Pilot Light is a lot like our own.” Every October, Tim Lee 3 plays what they call a 4×4, where they take up a residency at the venue every Thursday at 7:30 p.m. for the month.

“The Pilot Light is probably our favorite place just because it’s just a music place only,” Tim said. “There are plenty of other places in town that we like to play. It’s not the only one we like. But Jason Boardman that owns it is all about having stuff go on.”

When they aren’t playing, Tim and Susan have “day jobs” working from home in magazine production. They also do work with basset hounds. Yet, Tim Lee 3 never takes a backseat for long, as they are always working on new material.

According to Tim, the band doesn’t “get caught up in that genre game.” Instead, he believes the group’s sound is distinctly rock ‘n’ roll. Recently, a band contacted Tim Lee 3 wanting to play a show together and voiced concern their outlaw, country sound wouldn’t mix with Tim Lee 3’s, to which Tim explained they “just play with people we like, and we don’t care if it supposedly goes together.”

“My pat explanation is that it’s rock ‘n’ roll, and rock ‘n’ roll is that melting pot of everything,” Tim said. “Of folk and blues and country, jazz and creole and everything. Anything that can be distilled down to three chords and a cloud of dust.”

Even their songwriting reflects the sense of variety both Tim and Susan see in their music. Despite being a three-piece band, they still write what they want and avoid lingering on whether they can pull it off with what they have. They “just do,” Tim said.

“That’s kind of the beauty of rock ‘n’ roll, too; that there are no rules,” Tim said. “People get caught up in it and go, ‘There’s this rule and that rule, and there are certain things, like drummers should keep their shirt on.’ But it’s not like we enforce that or write tickets if a drummer loses his shirt, that’s just common sense.

“Our definition of it all is pretty loose. It’s all just music. We’re all playing the same three chords. Why worry about what you call it?”