Soul music veteran Lee Fields brings a message of love alongside his highly dance-able music to the Palais for Adelaide Festival this year.

Lee Fields makes music for God, but it doesn’t bother him if his audience are less holy than he.

“Soul music is a music that is about the spirit – really what we call the soul,” he says, “and the spirit is from God.

“When I say soul, a person may have not committed themselves to any religious purpose –But what it’s about is love, and the whole universe is about love.”

The veteran soul singer, who had a late career renaissance after teaming up with backing band The Expressions and releasing the 2009 album My World, is bringing that love to the Palais as part of Adelaide Festival.

His collaboration with The Expressions has been fruitful over more than a decade – with a further three releases following on from that of 2009. Lee credits the band with giving him the energy needed to continue creating and performing well into his sixties.

“The Expressions are my musical sons,” he says. “I went many years hoping that the magic band I had been waiting for will come, and at the moment in my life where I was almost teetering on the edge of my belief, they came.”

While more recent records, like 2016’s Special Night, do show signs of experimentation and progress, the sound of Lee Fields and The Expressions is still firmly grounded in an older aural era.

But Lee says the music he and the band make together resonates with a new, younger audience because it is filled with genuine feeling.

“Some artists, for whatever reason, maybe can’t project what they feel. It is all about delivering that feeling,” says Lee.

“A soul is a living spirit, so true soul music has to be played by human beings.”