Amos Lee

BIOGRAPHY

“There's a lot of existential stuff in these songs,” says Amos Lee. “If you really listen to what's in between the lines, there's a lot of grappling with your place in the world, grappling with loss.  There's a lot of grappling with the balance between bailing out the boat and rowing at the same time—the experience of writing music and playing songs while trying, as we all are right now, to make sense of a world that feels like it's changing really quickly.”

On his eleventh studio album, Transmissions, singer-songwriter Lee continues to expand his sonic range while sharpening his closely observed lyrics that squarely address death, aging, and love. The force behind such acclaimed albums as Mission Bell and Mountains of Sorrow, Rivers of Song, ever since his gold-selling 2005 debut Lee has been known for his association with a long list of collaborators and touring partners, from Paul Simon to Zac Brown Band.

For the new project, he craved a return to an old-school style of recording, working with his longtime band in a studio in rural Marlboro, New York that was built by drummer Lee Falco and his dad out of reclaimed wood from an old church (“it’s exactly what you’d think a studio in upstate New York should be,” notes Lee). Playing live on the floor for long hours, in close quarters, they were able to capture the album’s twelve songs in less than a week.

“I really wanted us to be all in the room, making music together, listening to each other and responding to each other,” says Lee. “In this age where you can do everything at home and fly it in, there’s something really beautiful about getting in a room and starting at the top, the drummer counting in the song and everybody just playing. I would call it vulnerability.”

Despite the simplicity of the set-up, though, Lee also augmented the band’s soulful, folk-funk sound with arrangements that extend the scope of some songs. “I've done a lot of shows over the past few years with orchestras,” he says, “and I wanted to find a way to have miniature moments that could represent those experiences. If you listen to the end of ‘Night Light,’ or ‘Built to Fall,’ there are moments that express those ideas of collaboration and orchestration.”

Transmissions marks only the second time that Lee has produced his own album (following 2016’s Spirit), a daunting challenge even for someone so familiar with the musicians. But he was determined not to overthink or over-complicate the task.

“As a producer, I had to have a clean and clear vision of what I wanted before I went in,” he says. “Especially now that I've done ten albums. I'm not lighting a bunch of candles and trying to conjure the spirit—it's either there or it isn't. And it was there from Day One. We were playing the song ‘Beautiful Day,’ and I thought, ‘Okay, here's a song I have a demo for, but I don't have a full version in mind. I've never played it with anyone, I've never shown it to anybody, and it's a bit of a weird, herky-jerky tune.’ And the bass and drums kicked ass, the guitar playing is really cool—so yeah, I felt it from note one. I was never in doubt.”

The’ last few years have been wildly productive for Philadelphia native Lee. After 2022’s Dreamland album (which featured “Worry No More,” a Top Ten AAA hit and his biggest single in over a decade), he followed up with two full-length projects paying homage to musical heroes—My Ideal: A Tribute to ‘Chet Baker Sings’ and Honeysuckle Switches: The Songs of Lucinda Williams. He expresses his awe for these two renegade artists; Williams for her incomparable language and Baker for his delivery. “I love songs that have the ability to expose a wide range of emotions in a short song,” he says. “That's what my favorite songs always do.”

The Baker album in particular had a strong influence on Lee as a vocalist. “I didn't grow up singing anything other than what was on the radio,” he says, “and when I started playing guitar, it was John Prine and Dylan and Bill Withers and this classic songwriter stuff, but also all this ‘90s R&B that I loved. I'd never approached what we're calling jazz—the classics, the songbook—and listening to Chet singing and singing along with him was like, ‘Oh, my God, how is he doing this?’ It was like taking a master class in control and where to use your voice. That level of singing, that level of musicianship, was hugely inspirational—you don't have to sing loud all the time. You can be really vulnerable, and soft, and really be at your best.”

Transmissions is Lee’s first release of original music on his own label, Hoagiemouth Records. “It's just a sign of the times,” he says. “Things have really changed for someone like me, and I’m going to adapt. I always wanted to have some kind of small label, so it's a cool opportunity.” (The imprint is distributed through the Thirty Tigers company, which Lee is especially excited about since he and president David Macias are friends through fantasy baseball.)

Fresh off of some dates with Willie Nelson and heading into a co-headlining tour with the Indigo Girls, Amos Lee notes that his attitude about being embraced by his peers and his idols has transformed over the years, and that his gratitude deeply informs the emotions throughout Transmissions.

“I just appreciate everything a lot more now,” he says. “When you're younger, you get it, but you don't really get it because you're like ‘Oh, cool—my first tour ever and I'm opening for Bob Dylan? Cool.’ Or Norah Jones, the biggest artist in the world, bringing you out right off the street. How do you appreciate that? I was just sort of clueless, honestly. Not out of malice, but you have no context.

“So now I'm just grateful to have a career,” he continues. “I'm grateful to be asked to share the stage with folks who I respect and admire and love and want to learn from and want to support. Now it’s about really being present while it's happening and knowing that this is not promised, none of this is destiny. It's a lot of chance. So I’m making sure to really enjoy and appreciate all these opportunities.”

“TRANSMISSIONS” TRACK-BY-TRACK

Hold on Tight

This is about having a much tighter handle on how important our people are to us, your friends  and your family, and watching people go that you love. It's about appreciating people and  wanting to make sure everybody that you love knows you love them and find them important.  It's a pretty simple little song. There's not a ton going on. I like the lyrics because they're saying  a lot with very few words, which I really love. The band really did a great job on this one. I  didn't want it to be hard to get through, I wanted it to be a thing people can sing to each other.

Beautiful Day

I have had serious anxiety problems my whole life, panic attacks from the time I was very  young. I don't remember much time in my life where I wasn't depressed. This is a song about  accepting that in yourself, and not fighting it—knowing that you have this bear inside of you,  this thing rattling around, and just being like, “It's okay; I know, you're never going to  completely disappear, but that doesn't mean you're going to eat me.” So the whole tune is sort  of self-acceptance, and then the bridge is accepting other people—when they're coming to you  with their pain, you don't have to judge them. They're much more than just the pain that they  have inside of themselves.  

When I wrote that song, I was like, “Look, man, you don't have to judge yourself so hard. The  shit you feel is just shit you feel. Work through it and try to get out and do stuff.” Just because  you feel pain or feel fear doesn't mean that you have to be incapacitated by it.  The last verse is very autobiographical. I live in this little shack-y house right on the side of a  huge highway. Every single day, all day long, these tractor-trailers just shake the whole place.  When I moved in there, I was cursing myself and wanting to leave, but now, I sort of find them  to be soothing.  

Carry You On

I met this gal, this really sweet person, six years ago. She was a family member of a friend of  mine. I knew she was sick, she had gotten diagnosed when I met her and she was going  through treatment. She would tell me songs she liked—she liked Billie Eilish before anybody  knew about her. She sent me the song “Ocean Eyes” before anybody had heard it and I was  like, “That's actually really good.”  

The next few months were really brutal, and she didn't live much longer. She lived maybe six  months after I met her. It progressed really fast. As a songwriter, I sometimes try to slip into situations. Not everybody can write a song, and I'm not saying I'm writing a perfect song, but I  wanted to write a song for her, and to express to her twin sister, I'm here with you.  I have no idea why I wrote it. I just did. I loved her, I thought she was really special and  beautiful and amazing, and I wanted to write a song that she would be remembered by.  

Madison

Sometimes you fall in love with someone's art. I do that a lot. You're not trying to be in love with  the person, but you fall in love with something about what they're doing. I don't really want to  say much about who it is or what it is. Obviously, it’s a love song but it feels nonspecific, in a lot  of ways on purpose. It's about loving the idea of someone. There's a deep longing in that tune.  I don't know exactly who it's about, but it's about a lot of people.  

Built to Fall

That was just a huge stream of consciousness thing. A friend of mine, Coy Bowles from Zac  Brown Band, sent me a really beautiful hand-made dobro. I don't know how to play dobro, I  wasn't even going to pretend to know how to play dobro. But I wanted to use this instrument,  which is so beautiful and when you play it, there's real magic. So I did this open tuning, and the  song just sort of happened. It’s cool to have a new tuning on a new instrument because it will  lead you to different directions.  

The demo was vocal and dobro, just those two things, but they were recorded separately, so  the timing was a little weird. And when we went to lay it down on the record, I was like, “Man,  this dobro is awesome, but this is not the right sound for this song, it’s not capturing what I  want.” So I had Jaron Olevsky, who I’ve been playing with forever, transfer the dobro notes and  chords and feel onto piano. He laid some other keyboards on it, and there's some electric  guitars and then Rob Moose played a gorgeous string part over it.  

Darkest Places

I wrote that one in LA. It's about a strip club, but you wouldn't necessarily gauge that. It's not  metaphorically dark, but literally dark—but I guess it translates to metaphorically dark, too.  It's just a jam, an up-tempo tune that feels good and has a nice message to it. I was spending  a lot of time, like I do everywhere, just observing things and people and places. But really, it's a  song about not thinking that you're supposed to fall in love the Disney way every time.  

When You Go

My friend Jesse died of an overdose two years ago, and we miss him a lot. We love his  parents, and I stop and say hi to his mom a lot. I went to her house, and we talked for a bunch  of hours, and when I left, I was pretty fucked up and I went home and wrote that song.  But it was really based on something else. I read this article about Jeff Buckley, an interview  with his mom, and they asked her what she would say to Jeff if she could talk to him. And she  said, “Take me with you.” And it broke my heart, man, broke my fucking heart. To lose a child— yeah, maybe you just don't want to be here.  

Baby Pictures

Jesse was my bandmate Zach’s husband, and he passed away from an overdose. Our whole  crew are very tight. They're my family—I don't even consider them friends, they're not  bandmates, they're family members to me. And Jesse was just brilliant, he was the kind of  person that when he walked into a room, I always felt better.  

Zach and I were texting a couple weeks after he passed, and Zach was sending me all these  pictures of him. So it's just a song about how beautiful he was, but also about the idea of going  into the light and the duality of what the light is—Lucifer is the Lord of the light, and the light at  the end of the tunnel is often thought of as good. With heroin and opiates and fentanyl, I’m  saying don't go into the light. Because it's not what you think it is—yeah, it's beautiful. It's  warm, it's going to hold you for a minute. But I just don't want you to go there.  I wanted to express to him that he was loved and that we hold him dearly. Everybody in that  session loved Jesse, and a big reason why I wanted to record these songs with these people  in that space was really to honor him. The engineer, Pete Hanlon, was really tight with Jesse,  and he said, “After I listened to that song, I took it home, and I listened to it all night.” He said  he was so angry at Jesse, and I understand that—you feel like he left you and he was being a  careless fucking idiot. He said, “I can finally let go of the anger,” and I was like, man, that  validates everything, I don't have to write any more.  

These last couple of tunes are real centerpieces of the record emotionally. I don't know how  we're gonna play them every night. I hope we can, but I don't know.  

Night Light

I was dating this woman who I felt a strong connection with, but she was really mentally unwell,  and she couldn't sleep at night. She always made me keep this weird night light on for her.  She had all kinds of weird visions and stuff. But the song is, again, a bit two things. It's sort of  about her, but then it's also about when you lose that person who makes the world make sense  to you. What do you do when there is no night light anymore? I don't exactly know what that  song is about, but there's something to do with losing that last glimmer of what you thought  was keeping you safe.

Transmissions

Very, very pandemic song. My mom had COVID, and she was really sick and was in the  hospital. I didn't know if I was going to see her again. A lot of these songs are about  appreciation—as you get older, you appreciate things a lot more. The simple things, like the  beauty of nature, the slowness of nature, the way that silence is.  

And what can a “transmission” be? Why did I choose that word? Well, it's a lot of things. it's a  disease being transmitted, it’s a post being posted, it’s a thing that makes a car run—if it's not  working, it doesn't run anymore. When your head’s under the hood, you ain't driving! So it was  meant to be all of those things, along with an ability to be present in the world.

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