'Sweet' Singer Brings It Home

TV viewers can be forgiven if a certain Amos Lee tune makes them weepy with sweet memories of a little girl and a toy monkey.

Lee's "Sweet Pea" was used in an inescapable AT&T commercial this past winter. In it, a girl gives her father her stuffed animal as he leaves on a trip. Dad uses his cell phone to take and send photos of the monkey along the stops of his trip.

Lee's gentle ditty - Sweet Pea/Apple of my eye ... You're the only reason I keep on coming home - reflected the clip's sentimental tone.

And it gave Lee's folk-pop music some massive exposure.

"It played during the Super Bowl," Lee says, months later but still sounding amazed. "That's crazy. But it was cool for me. A lot of people heard my song."

The song comes from Lee's second album, 2006's "Supply and Demand." The success of "Sweet Pea" notwithstanding, the album doesn't provoke the fondest memories in Lee.

"I just wasn't ready to make it," Lee says, on the telephone from Richmond, Va., enjoying a day off from his current tour. "My head wasn't in the right place."

His head must have been in the right place for his latest album, this year's "Last Days at the Lodge."

The title refers to a Los Angeles inn called the Sportsmen's Lodge and plans to change its look.

"They're gonna be renovating it and making it fancy," Lee says. He says the title reflects his feelings about change, which are less about pining for the old days than resigned acceptance. "That's the way it goes."

It also reflects the upheaval in his own life over the past few years, since the release of his eponymous debut in 2005.

"Being on the road so much, traveling the world so much from where I was in Philly" influenced the new songs, he says. He calls it "a look at where I've been for the last four years."

Lee honed his performing skills in his hometown of Philadelphia before coming to the attention of Norah Jones, for whom he opened some shows in 2004. He signed with Jones' label, Blue Note, and his first album was produced by Jones' bassist, Lee Alexander.

Since then, Lee, 31, has shared bills with performers such as John Prine and Bob Dylan.

Not bad for a former second-grade teacher who didn't pick up a guitar until age 18.

A high school basketball player who listened mostly to R&B and hip hop, Lee turned to music while at college.

"It's just what I needed to be doing at the time," Lee says. Music "spoke to me thoroughly."

After graduation, though, he returned to Philadelphia to teach second grade. He doesn't exactly crow about his achievements in the field.

"I could barely do anything" in the classroom, Lee says. "My attention deficit disorder was my biggest problem as a teacher. But it was great to be with those kids."

Instead, music became his career. He has taken to the itinerant lifestyle to the point that now, he says, "I don't really live anywhere."

"I've become pretty accustomed to it," Lee says. "In fact, I find it more disorienting to be somewhere."

ON TOUR

Amos Lee

WITH: Dayna Kurtz

WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday

WHERE: State Theatre, 687 Central Ave., St. Petersburg; (727) 895-3045

COST: $25