At the risk of putting a further hurt on Bklyn6’s stimulus check, let’s talk about suspected undercover black man Amos Lee.The singer-songwriter’s career has been on the rise since 2004, when Norah Jones hand-picked him to open for her on tour.
Lee’s new CD, “Last Days at the Lodge,” comes out next Tuesday. He will be plugging it tonight on Tavis Smiley’s TV talk show.
I’d never heard of Amos Lee until Kellybelle mentioned him in a comment this week (on my post about white Negro Lipbone Redding).
I soon found a FREE MP3 from Lee’s new album on the internets. So click here and listen to “Ease Back” on my Vox blog.
To download it, follow this link to Download.com.
13 comments:
I love Amos Lee's first album. Sooooo many memories. This is a little more country than he's been, but I like it. I'd put him on with Alana Davis on a muggy hot Sunday afternoon.
I love Alana Davis too.
What's she up to these days? I know she released an album entitled "Surrender, Dorothy" on her own label a few years ago.
Amos Lee is a brotha, UBM? Any proof? Can't find any info.
Amos Lee tricked me, just like that Jonny Lang!
Amos Lee is a brotha, UBM? Any proof?
I read somebody refer to him as an "artist of color." But until I get more conclusive information, I'll hedge my bets and call him a suspected undercover black man.
I saw a rumor that Famous Amos was his daddy.
I hadn't heard of him until your post. I caught him on Tavis. It's interesting that he included blogs as an outlet for discovering new music. Only occasionally to I listen to the radio these days, yet I'm always discovering new artists via blogs and the internet in general; artists I doubt I'd ever hear on the stations I listen to.
I've been hearing Santogold's "Creator" and another song in a Bud Lite" (I think that's the beer) commercial lately. Amos mentioned that his music has been used in a commercial too. Wasn't there a time when artist didn't like this?
In a 2006 Virginian Pilot story, a black reporter (Malcolm Venable) asked Lee about his background.
An excerpt:
The first thing I noted, when looking at a photo of him, is that he had interesting features that I couldn't easily categorize. Which is to say that I couldn't guess what ethnicity he was, and so I asked.
He replied: "Mixed."
Interesting, I thought. Most people I know of multiple ethnicity -- including other singers like Kelis (black, Asian, Latino) for example -- glady rattle off their ancestry. Most un-biased people, I think, find this sort of thing interesting.
Yet Lee just said "mixed," which prompted the next logical question: with what?
"Many things," he said, adding that he didn't really know.
Now the reporter in me was sensing something amiss. You're saying you don't have any idea about your ancestry? It seemed odd. So I asked if he knew about his parents background.
He offered another vague answer, so I dropped it and changed the subject.
Thanks, daughterofthedream. Interesting. I might have to see about getting his UBM pass revoked.
"Undercover" is one thing, but if you don't acknowledge the blackness... you just gamin'.
I've seen him live a few times. He was on tour with Bob Dylan and Merle Haggard in '05 and with Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello in '07. Did a great version of A Change is Gonna Come.
^ Oh shit, Amos Lee is starting at the top of his profession, huh? Those are some heavyweight tours.
Hey, if Amos doesn't want to get specific and wants to preserve his privacy, that's okay with me. I think sometimes we want to know TOO MUCH about a person and have no automatic right to that knowledge. We need to respect that and drop the UBM tag. Amos Lee is a great singer and that's all we need to know. Enjoy his artistry. If he wants to go beyond "mixed" later on, more power to him. Personally I don't care what he is.
I first heard Amos Lee when "Keep it Loose, Keep it Tight" played in that crappy Law & Order prosecuter show.
Great song.
To Clarify, Amos's dad is African American and his mom is white. He is from the Philly area, but raised by his mother & step father in New Jersey.
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