The easy read on Lee Fields’s 2014 album, Emma Jean, is that most of its 11 songs are predicated on that deep-soul staple, the loss of a good woman.

On album highlight “In the Woods” the singer finds himself lost, alone, and frightened; in “Don’t Leave Me This Way” he’s so overwhelmed with sorrow that he breaks down in tears.

But the primary inspiration for Fields’s fifth studio release was his mother, not a lover—and Emma Jean Fields remains the veteran vocalist’s biggest influence, despite having passed away long before her son created the album that bears her name.

“She sang; she was a gospel singer,” Fields says, reached at his home in Plainfield, New Jersey, less than an hour after his return from a very successful European tour. “She didn’t ever cut a record, but she sang gospel in the church. I guess everybody will say this about their mother, but she was the person in my life who shaped my mind, my thoughts. She showed me things at such an early age that made me think the things I’m thinking today.”

One of the things Fields is thinking is that while the original Emma Jean may be gone, she’s not dead. “I believe that she still exists,” he contends. “You know, the grave that her remains are in now, those are just her remains. Those were just my mother’s machine, her device for getting around in.”

Fields goes on to explain that he sees life on Earth as a vacation from some other, more eternal form of existence and as a process of learning from which we must ultimately all graduate. Emma Jean Fields was a devout Christian, but her son follows a more cosmic creed, one flexible enough to embrace both an all-seeing deity and the scientific method.

“I have always been a person who believes, without a doubt, that there is a God,” he says. “I have no doubt about that. And I believe that we don’t expire; we’re just being reborn in another dimension. I think that everything is part of an everlasting dream. Science will tell you that matter cannot be created or destroyed, and I agree with that.”

What the Baptist preachers of Fields’s North Carolina childhood would make of the singer’s cosmology remains moot. But they’d likely agree that music is a powerful force for good, and that a well-paced performance can bring hope and release to audiences often deprived of both.

“We want to take it as high as we can,” Fields says of his on-stage appearances with his Brooklyn-based band, the Expressions. “And when I say ‘high’, I mean that we want to give people as much pleasure, as much enjoyment, as possible. It’s all about a musical excursion, you know. We’re not travelling to any particular destination that can be measured in miles or distance, but we’re travelling together in an experience and seeking a state of euphoria.

“That’s the plan,” he adds. “And you’ll know when you’ve reached it, because you’re going to be feeling so good! It’s going to be total joy, for a moment. That’s what we shoot for every show—and I can’t answer whether the people go there, but I know I get there. I get there every show, and when I come off the stage and hear the crowd cheering, apparently some of them get there too.”

Lee Fields and the Expressions play the Burnaby Blues + Roots Festival at Deer Lake Park on Saturday (August 8).