Amos Lee - Transmissions

 

Amos Lee — Transmissions

First new album of original songs in more than two years!

Heralded by graceful lead single "Hold On Tight"

The force behind such acclaimed albums as Mission Bell and Mountains of Sorrow, Rivers of Song, ever since his gold-selling 2005 debut, Amos Lee has been known for his association with a long list of collaborators and touring partners, from Paul Simon to Zac Brown Band.

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.

"This (the lead single "Hold On Tight") 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," says Amos Lee. "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."

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 12 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."

Self-produced by Lee for only the second time in his chart-topping, RIAA gold-certified career (following 2013's Spirit), the Philadelphia, PA-based artist augmented his band's soulful, folk-funk sound with arrangements that extend the scope of songs like the autobiographical "Beautiful Day" and the upbeat, jam-powered "Darkest Places."

"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."

Transmissions represents the first release of original music on Lee's recently launched label, Hoagiemouth Records (distributed through Thirty Tigers), following last year's Honeysuckle Switches: The Songs of Lucinda Williams.

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