Singer-songwriter Amos Lee has announced his new album, Transmissions, available Friday, August 9 on his own Hoagiemouth Records via Thirty Tigers. Lee’s 11th studio album and first new collection of original songs in more than two years, Transmissions is heralded by today’s premiere of the graceful first single, “Hold On Tight.” (listen above)
“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,” 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.”
Transmissions sees Amos Lee continuing to expand his sonic range while sharpening his closely observed lyrics that squarely address death, aging, and love. 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 returned to an old-school style of recording, working with his longtime band in a studio in rural Marlboro, NY built by drummer Lee Falco and his dad out of reclaimed wood from an old church. Playing live on the floor for long hours in close quarters, Lee and his fellow musicians were able to capture the album’s twelve songs in less than a week. Despite the simplicity of the set-up, Lee 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.
Lee will celebrate Transmissions with a busy live schedule that includes Schermerhorn Symphony Center accompanied by the Nashville Symphony on May 9,10 and 11. GET TICKETS HERE!
BEST Nashville Concert Tickets!Nashville.com
The Visitors Guide to Nashville!
