I started working on the songs for Dreamland in 2019, and we recorded the bulk of it in 2020. Much of it was done before the pandemic, but a lot of the themes that are in the record, like isolation and hope, are as relevant now and they were when I wrote the record. During the pandemic, I wrote probably two whole new records which I'm going to start recording now. So the journey has been pretty winding the past couple years, as it has been for all of us. I don't really know anyone who's had an easy time adapting to it the last two years. I think it's changed everyone, and it's certainly changed me.
Editors at AllMusic rated this album 3.5 out of 5 stars, with critic Matt Collar writing that this music offers "a soulful musical balm for a troubled world" that "is relaxed in tone, pitched at the speed of early afternoon sun streaming through an open window".[2] In American Songwriter, Lee Zimmerman gave this album 4 out of 5 stars, calling it a "decidedly telling narrative, one that details a journey to discovery" that "echoes the notion that an empathic attitude can allow us all to sleep a little more soundly".[3] Writing for No Depression, Matt Conner summed up his review that "Lee bares [his emotional scars] for all to hear, and the album is somehow made all the more beautiful for it".[4]