Itβs been a few years since singer-songwriter Amos Lee performed in Tucson, but thereβs a good chance when he takes the Fox Tucson Theatre stage Thursday night, it will feel like no time has passed at all.
βI love Tucson. I still have a bunch of pals there,β the Philadelphia native said during a phone call from home to talk about his Sept. 27 Fox concert.
In many ways, the concert will feel like a homecoming.
For a couple months in the summer of 2010, Lee lived in Tucson while he recorded his breakthrough 2011 album βMission Bell.β He moved into a little adobe house a short walk from WaveLab Recording Studio downtown. He was a regular to Cafe Poca Cosa and a little downtown dive bar whose name escapes him. He absorbed the cityβs soul and fell into its rhythms as he recorded with members of Tucsonβs venerable desert rock band Calexico.
βWhen I made βMission Bell,β I fell in love with the city. Itβs such a cool place,β he said. βWe would go to Congress and get drinks. We would go to Poca Cosa, Little Poca Cosa, and get really great Mexican food. But mostly it was work intensive. We would work really long days and go back and cook or just chill, hang in the house.β
Nearly a year after he finished recording βMission Bell,β Lee was back in Tucson in August 2011 to film a special concert at the Fox for the PBS series βLive From the Artist Den.β Calexico shared the stage with him and Lee said it was almost like he had returned to the same spot heβd been in in the summer of 2010.
βBeing able to do that Artist Den show at the Fox and making all these friends that I still have after all these years who live in Tucson, itβs kind of like I had no expectations,β he said. βI didnβt know what Tucson was like, but itβs such a warm, cool and connected place to be. I just love being there.β
βMission Bellβ will no doubt play a role in his concert Thursday. But he is coming here to celebrate his month-old album, βMy New Moon,β his seventh studio record and one that he says is among his most personal.
βI try to make every record personal. I donβt want any of my albums to lack the personal aspect from the writing standpoint,β said 41-year-old Lee. βBut I think on this one I drew from some pretty vulnerable places and I hope that it comes out in the performances. β¦ βHang On, Hang Onβ kinda hurts to listen to.β
βHang On, Hang Onβ and βAll You Got Is the Songβ are dedicated to his late grandmother. Lee spends most of the rest of βMy New Moonβ telling other peopleβs stories.
βDarkness,β inspired by the young victims of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in February in Parkland, Florida, delivers an optimistic and hopeful message.
βThatβs the idea. It was definitely inspired by those kids and their story, the idea of β¦ if you allow yourself to be defeated, the people trying to sow chaos and negativity win,β said Lee, who spent a year teaching in public schools before devoting his energy full-time to his music. βIf you donβt let them decide your state of being, then you can at least, in whatever way you can, effect change and make the world more like the way you want to see it. And thatβs what I hope this song communicates.β
One of his personal highlights on the album is the inspiring song βLittle Light,β which he wrote for a young Seattle girl named Maya when she was sick.
Lee said the album, recorded in Los Angeles with producer Tony Berg, features contributions by keyboard players Benmont Tench and Patrick Warren, Greg Leisz on pedal steel guitar and Ethan Gruska and Blake Mills picking up the slack on a number of instruments.
βI think itβs a really musical record that I think has some great playing, some great drumming, some great guitar playing,β he said. βThe people who played on it were so incredible. Itβs just beautiful.β
Lee said he hopes to have time to slip into Poca Cosa while heβs in town. He might even look for that old, historic dive bar.
βItβs a really cool town and the music scene there, especially the Calexico cats, they are so great,β he said. βI have a real love for Tucson. I do feel deeply connected to it.β
