Amos Lee is playing his biggest hometown show ever at the Met

Amos Lee had his eighth album recorded and all but ready to go in early 2020, and a big hometown show at the Met Philadelphia was supposed to happen the following spring.

No surprise: Due to the COVID-19 shutdown, nothing came off as planned. “We had to kick a lot of things down the road,” Lee said recently , speaking from Portland, Maine, where he was rehearsing before the start of a tour that will bring him to the North Broad Street venue April 15.

The 44-year-old singer-songwriter who grew up in Kensington, South Philly, and Cherry Hill did finally release his album, Dreamland, on Dualtone Records in February. It was recorded in Los Angeles with producer Christian “Leggy” Langdon and finds Lee grappling with anxiety and depression,

At the start of the pandemic, Lee shared a sense of loss felt by many when perhaps his two biggest influences — Bill Withers and John Prine — died within days of one another.

He did some virtual appearances, including showing off an exquisite falsetto on a cover of Eddie Holman’s “Hey There Lonely Girl” in the PHLove charity COVID fund-raiser in May 2020. And he played a handful of shows in the southeastern U.S. with his band last fall.

But like so many musicians, Lee has been unable to do what he loves the most — get out and perform in front of people — for the better part of two years.

Getting ready to throw himself back into touring, “I don’t really know what to expect,” says the guitarist, who taught second grade for a year at Mary McLeod Bethune School in Philadelphia before rising out of the early-00s Philly scene in clubs like The Fire and Tin Angel (where he tended bar). In 2005, he signed to the prestigious Blue Note label who released his self-titled debut. (For his Met show, Lee is giving out free tickets to school teachers at amoslee.com/tickets-for-teachers.)

“There were definitely times during 2020 and even early 2021 where I was like, I don’t know man, this might be it. The future felt kind of bleak. I never gave up hope, but I was going through a lot of personal stuff, too. And I honestly just got really, really depressed. And when you go into those dark places, you forget the joy that you have in your life.

“A lot of people felt that way. And I luckily have music to fall on. That’s why now even though I am kind of nervous about playing shows again, I honestly feel so indebted to the spirit of music, that I don’t even care. I just want to be out there sharing again because music saved my life multiple times. And I just want to offer whatever saving spirit is in my music to people.”

Lee’s music can be an emotional balm. That’s true of his best loved songs like “Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight” from Amos Lee. It makes musical sense that Norah Jones hand picked him as an opening act when he was starting out.

But there’s also an undercurrent of turmoil and tension that frequently lurks beneath smooth surfaces, as on Dreamland’s haunted “Seeing Ghosts.” On “Into The Clearing,” the singer finds living with regret to be almost too much to bear.

There’s also optimism. “Should’ve Known Better,” rides a carefree groove and displays Lee’s love of classic R&B. And the album’s lead single “Worry No More” repeats the title phrase like a mantra, moving through a dreamland where beauty can be found amid every day strife.

“Listening to the sound of Miles, Spanish sketches, playground smiles,” Lee sings, reassuring the listener that “there’s an open door for you.”

In the song’s video, directed by George May, actress Tiana Villar, crosses the Ben Franklin Bridge on foot and walks the streets of Philadelphia. Lee sings while sitting in Starr Garden playground at 6th and Lombard.

“If we were going to make a video, I said, let’s make it Philly-centric, and let’s go back to Starr Garden, where I played basketball as a kid, when we lived in South Philly. That’s a place where I actually have good childhood memories.”

Lee wrote “We Was Right (Say The Name)” the snappy funk theme song which kicks off the popular Sixers podcast The Rights To Ricky Sanchez. He was also recently on the MLB Network, talking about Dreamland, the Phillies, and his fantasy baseball team.

Because Lee often sings about isolation, Dreamland is well-suited to times when people are gingerly stepping back into the world.

“Social anxiety is a word a lot of people use,” he says. “But I’m just a loner by nature.” During the pandemic, Lee lived alone in a friend’s parents’ house in Cheltenham where he had a Steinway piano at his disposal for a few months. He then moved to a rented house in the Pine Barrens in South Jersey, which he calls home.

“Over the pandemic, even though it was bleak,” Lee says, “I felt so fortunate to have time to write and the time to chill.”

He made the most of it, writing 45 new songs. Dreamland is the focus of this tour, but he plans on slipping some unreleased material in, and hopes to record a new album later this year.

“I know every artist probably tells you that every one of their records is their most personal yet,” he says. “But these songs are really the things that kept me home, in my head, during the last couple of years. I feel more connected to this batch of material than I have since my first record.”

Lee’s mother, Loretta Pollock, was diagnosed with cancer and then with COVID in late 2020. “It was a really dark time,” he says, though “she’s doing better now, knock on wood. But she’s my favorite person on earth, and when people you love suffer, it hurts a lot.”

He’s looking forward to playing in front of family, friends, and some of his mother’s doctors at the Met. And after the long hiatus, the road beckons.

“The reason we’re doing this,” he says, “is so that we can be present, and be with each other in a room and feel things, and process and heal. And it’s not for me. It’s for us. For these shared experiences that we have. When you sit in a room with other people, and you experience these vibrations, it’s just magical. There’s nothing like it. Sports can’t do that. Movies can’t really do that … Music is the only thing that for me, transforms my soul in such a way.”