Ed Note: Due to a misunderstanding, we were unable to take any photos of Amos Lee. See what he looks like here.
Amos Lee, Vusi Mahlasela House of Blues February 12, 2011
House of Blues was packed with more upper-crust, middle-aged people than a summer Dave Matthews Band concert in The Woodlands Saturday night. Not that there's anything wrong with that; apparently this is a great market for aspiring singer-songwriters.
These people love Lee so much they'll dish out almost 50 bucks for a general-admission ticket. After painfully overhearing some (presumably) drunk thirtysomethings relive their college glory days, Aftermath approached will call to discover that the show had even sold out.
We did some extensive research into Lee's catalog a few days prior, and found out he's a singer-songwriter of the acoustic-country-soul persuasion. Acoustrysoul, if you will; let that marinate for a while, it might catch on.
Aftermath tried to ask a few people hanging around outside how they'd heard of him and what type of music he played, but no one was really sure. Some people said it was folk, some said country. A few people said they had heard him from Pandora, and a few said they'd discovered the wealth of his music from a TV show or movie. The shared idea was that they "had to listen to it to understand it."
Lee experienced some possibly premature success at the beginning of his career with his 2005 self-titled debut. A few of his songs were featured on TV shows like Grey's Anatomy and Army Wives; shows that perhaps relied on his music, rather than the acting, to evoke the desired emotional response.
You know, the backup music for that mandatory scene where someone's walking away into the distance or having a breakdown in the janitor's closet at the hospital. Anyways, he released two more albums after his debut, 2006's Supply and Demand and 2008's Last Days at the Lodge, neither as well-received as his first.
Since releasing the past two albums, he's severed a few relationships, worked on new material in his downtime, and recruited some notable names like Willie Nelson, Sam Beam of Iron & Wine, and Lucinda Williams to work on his fourth album, Mission Bell, which was released at the end of January.
Vusi Mahlasela was Saturday's opening act, and sounded great... we think. It was hard to hear him over the chatty crowd, armed as he was with only an acoustic guitar. At one point, Mahlasela even shushed everyone so he could "tell his story," and the volume only decreased by about half a decibel.
