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'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.'
IG 1 "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.
IG2 "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.
IG3 "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.