When he’s not on the road – something of a rarity the past 15 months – Amos Lee is still a man in motion, shuttling between New Jersey, South Carolina and his native Philadelphia.
There, Lee flops at a downtown hotel because the soul-rock singer gave up his apartment and bartending gig last year to hit the road with label-mate Norah Jones.
All three of the places Lee calls home resonate in his music – in the acoustic funk of “Give It Up,” the working-class R&B of “Seen It All Before” and the Southern-fried mysticism of “Black River,” a song Lee wrote on a friend’s Telecaster one soggy-hot Carolina afternoon when “the humidity had its way with the guitar.”
Amos Lee brings his rootsy, acoustic-driven storytelling to Boulder’s Fox Theatre on Saturday.
Speaking recently from Philadelphia, the entertainer said he learned the most about music when he was a college kid in South Carolina. There, he worked in a record shop and surrounded himself with a picky music clique in what sounds like a very “High Fidelity” couple of years.
Lee also started fiddling with the guitar given to him by his stepfather when was 18. “As soon as I got a guitar, I started writing,” he said.
The 28-year-old spent several years “honing my chops” before heeding music’s call. Soft-spoken and contemplative – two other qualities that translate to his songwriting – Lee said many of the tracks on his self-titled debut “stem from an emotional experience.”
“I’m not necessarily going for the easy songs,” he added.
The album was released earlier this year around the time Lee jumped from opening for Jones to touring with songwriting heroes Bob Dylan and Merle Haggard. It was produced by Jones’ partner and producer, Lee Alexander, garnering Lee the occasional description as “the female Norah Jones.”
The album opener, “Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight,” spotlights Lee’s subdued guitar work and James Taylor-style vocals. Jones plays the piano. The songwriter reveals his reflective side on “Seen It All Before,” a gospel and R&B-tinged tune about relationships and closure.
“Arms of a Woman” is reminiscent of Aretha Franklin’s “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” while the jug-band groove “Bottom of the Barrel” switches gears entirely. “They’re all sort of a hodgepodge,” Lee said.
The guy may be green, but he captures a sweet sincerity that people respond to, without being wide-eyed or sappy. Audiences sense the idealist who spent a year teaching in Philadelphia public schools before settling into his musician’s skin. That experience left Lee with an appreciation for a profession at which he didn’t necessarily excel.
Amos Lee the teacher and Amos Lee the artist could not cohabitate.
“If you’re somebody like Harvey Pekar, sitting at a desk in Cleveland, you have time to (create),” Lee said of the cult writer behind the “American Splendor” comic books. “But when you’re teaching, you don’t have time to do that.”
Some critics observe that Lee’s album is more a reflection of his highbrow influences – Bill Withers, Neil Young and especially John Prine – than of the songwriter himself. Lee grew up listening to Boogie Down Productions and A Tribe Called Quest.
But after going from small club dates to large venues in which he opened for bona-fide legends, it was clear Lee and his Starbucks-endorsed album would quickly find an audience. It’s what he has done with that audience that’s really winning people over.
Staff writer Elana Ashanti Jefferson can be reached at 303-820-1957 or ejefferson@denverpost.com.
Amos Lee
The singer-songwriter inspired by 1970s soul and folk artists opens for Spin Doctors with Shannon McNally during the R&R Triple A Summit.
Fox Theatre|1135 13th St., Boulder|8:30 p.m. Saturday|$20, 303-443-3399 or foxtheatre.com
