Ferris wheels, cotton candy, crickets singing, thunder storms, carnivals, road trips, watching the light from the rushing water beneath you flicker and dance across your legs, rocking chairs, and imagining how others live and what they think about. These are just a few of the images that flicker through my mind as I listen to Amos Lee’s latest CD,
Supply and Demand. He sings about life; you know the kind regular people live because he’s a regular person too. He signs of things we all ‘get’, broken dreams, love, loneliness, empathy, sunsets, joy, watching children grow, and those infamous southern skies. He’s one of those musicians that could easily end up in mega stardom, (which luckily is different for singer/ songwriters than say Brittney Spears) but for now he is still a regular guy, who happens to spend most nights in front of hundreds of fans singing while touring and writing about the lives he intersects with along the road.
The man can feel. He has an uncanny ability to mix music and lyrics and seamlessly blend them so that you are caught up in the story much like you find your self laughing or crying during a movie. I can only imagine how cool it will be to experience him live and even more raw and on the fly. He reminds me of Citizen Cope in his story telling ability, which is truly a gift that only some possess. Amos however, not only shares a story but adds what he thinks of it, and you can tell that he must be a positive soul, because he makes a point of adding the redemptive side to his stories. I admire his courage to lay it out there and call it as he sees it. You can hear some live tracks on his myspace page.
Supply and Demand makes me want to jump in a car on a sunny day, and hit the road, wind in my face, dog in the back, no set destination in mind, just needing to ramble down the road and let the adventure of life come as it will. Lyrically it is a slice of reality that many of us are entirely too familiar with, “The more I strive, the less I’m alive and seems I’m getting further away … I been doin’ more screaming’ than I been doing dreamin’ and I think it’s time I figure it out”. But Amos adds the solution right in the chorus singing, “Baby I need a plan to understand that life ain’t only supply and demand”. Spring is the best season I could imagine hearing Amos Lee, his music is about life, the fullness of it, the good, the bad, the ugly, and how they all work together. Like those rough storms of winter are actually good for the trees because everything that is weak falls to the ground and it is only the strong healthy limbs that grow into a new season. And even those fallen branches find a new home from birds building nests, and campers looking for kindling, or a hiker needing some support …
Amos Lee will be here this Wednesday, April 25th at the Bijou Theatre.
