Amos Lee's star rises on hard work & the advice of luminous friends

A great thing about the music business is that you never know who you might trip over in the dark and discover. Might even be someone who'll wind up scoring a No. 1 album (this year's critically applauded "Mission Bell") and a hot-ticket tour.

So it was that I first encountered a wet-behind-the-ears Amos Lee nine years ago, literally in the dark,at a Northeast Regional Folk Alliance conference, performing for a "crowd" of 10 in the tacky lounge of a Catskills resort.

On Tuesday, by contrast, Lee will headline a verging-on-sold-out homecoming show here at the 1,800-seat Merriam Theater.

That November 2002 night in the borscht belt was most memorable, we recently recalled with a laugh, for an ice storm that had blown out the power, forcing musicians to perform in the glow of candles and flashlights.

"It was one of my first performing experiences anywhere," Lee shared. "I went there on a fluke, because a friend had a spare seat in his car. There was music going all night in various hotel rooms, and you had to feel your way through the dark halls to get from one to another. Definitely a weird and wild experience."

As I recall, Lee had a modest presence and pleasant though hardly memorable set of songs to share that night, original material that hinted some of early influences Bill Withers and John Prine. What struck me most, though, was the power of his voice, so soulful you might have taken the guy for African-American, had his 6-foot-2 Caucasian frame not loomed so large in the flashlight glow.

Raised in Kensington, South Philly and then Cherry Hill, Lee was a late bloomer musically. Basketball was his first passion, but when that didn't pan out at the University of South Carolina, he got into English lit and an artsy crowd that included some erstwhile singer-songwriters.

Watching one dorm entertainer wow the girls, Lee got the bug. On his return home after graduation, Lee supported himself "for a couple of years" as a second-grade teacher at Mary Bethune Elementary School in North Philly, he shared in clipped conversation, and only with coaxing. At night, for fun, he worked on music, doing open-mike nights, then graduating to the Tin Angel, though his first paying gigs there were as a waiter.

"For a long while, I gave him every opening slot I could," Tin Angel talent booker Larry Goldfarb said recently. "Eventually he seasoned, gained confidence and a following, built into a headliner."

WXPN DJs Helen Leicht and Gene Shay and local talent manager Bill Eib also joined his corner. An indie EP won interest from "a couple labels," said Eib, who no longer works with Lee. "Universal was anxious to sign him, but I feared they wanted to . . . package him too much."

More kindly disposed to let Lee be was Blue Note Records and its star act Norah Jones, "who invited me to open her second European tour, playing the most incredible rooms, before I even made my first album for the label," Lee recalled.

Lee and Jones were soul mates in their common mashup of melancholy, easy-listening adult pop, folk, blues and gospel vibes. After Jones and her bandmate Lee Alexander contributed to his self-titled Blue Note debut album, Lee started getting pegged as "the male Norah Jones," a description he still finds "flattering." Oh, and it didn't hurt that the project moved almost a half-million copies.

Lee's second and third albums (the latter made with producer Don Was) proved less successful, commercially and artistically.

Lee had become a workhorse, playing 60 to 100 shows a year, opening solo for Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello but not liking the road rigors. After one of his idols, Bill Withers, counseled that "maybe you should get away from the strumming thing a bit and work in other ideas," Lee came back to Philly, thought some about quitting the biz, then threw himself into serious living and woodshedding.

For a change, he wrote songs based on his own experiences, including a breezy kiss-off song called "Windows Are Rolled Down" that's become an FM radio favorite from "Mission Bell." Other standouts in his less-is-more fashion are the country ramble "El Camino," and the haunting, death's door encounters inspired by his work with Musicians On Call ("Stay") and the loss of his grandfather ("Jesus").

The fervor of the latter also takes inspiration from old-timey gospel legends like "Thomas Dorsey, the Stanley Brothers and Sister Rosetta Tharpe," Lee said. "I can listen to that stuff for hours."

He ventured out to Tucson, Ariz., to record his fourth album with the producing and playing guidance of Calexico mainstays Joey Burns and John Convertino at the band's Wavelab Studio. These guys are masters of rootsy, heartland styles, and their studio is "full of all kinds of instruments, which opened up the possibilities," said Lee.

Merriam Theater, 250 S. Broad St., 8 p.m. Tuesday. A few family circle tickets (second balcony) remain at $29.50, 215-893-1999, www.kimmelcenter.org.