AJ Lee & Blue Summit are an award-winning, energetic, charming, and technically jaw-dropping band quickly rising on the national roots music scene. Based in Santa Cruz, California, the group met as teenagers, picking and jamming together as kids at local bluegrass festivals until one day, they decided they would be a band. 

Currently made up of AJ Lee on mandolin, fiddler Jan Purat, and guitarists Scott Gates and Sullivan Tuttle, the band carries that youthful, festival-parking-lot energy with them still today, but at the same time there’s a genuine ease and confidence to their music making. As they ready their third studio album, City of Glass – their first label release, out July 19th via Signature Sounds – their product feels mature and fully realized, while deep in the Blue Summit pocket.

City of Glass is a slow burn album, remarkable when considered alongside records released by their peers in recent years. Lee & Blue Summit seem unconcerned with mimicking or emulating other successful groups in their scenes. Instead, they’re most interested in discovering themselves, their own music, and sonics and textures truly their own. And, they’re most interested in doing so with their musical and Californian communities. 

City of Glass, as a result, is an album that’s just as much country soul and gritty, bluesy Americana as it is rock club and festival-ready string band fare, all framed through a California folk lens while clearly primed for a much wider audience. 

AJ Lee & Blue Summit are an exemplary band so unconcerned with being remembered, with being enshrined, that they have gone about making a set of songs that will surely be held onto and cherished forever. City of Glass may one day crumble, but this music will never fade away.

Before I started my career I had a choice: to take over my parent's thoroughbred farm in New Jersey or pursue music full time in California and relinquish the farm to sale.  I still wonder what life would have looked like had I stayed, but who can resist the gold rush?  Besides, I plan to get back there one day on another farm with some other red barn. 

My music comes from life’s moments -- smelling 4 acres of freshly cut grass, watching the steam from a horse's breath in the early morning, finally holding the neck of my guitar after holding bridles and worn wooden handles all day.  4000 acres of freshly burnt wildfire, watching the steam from the Pacific Ocean's breath in the early morning, finally holding the neck of my guitar after clutching the worn steering wheel of the tour van all day.  

Now my reality is in Bonny Doon, CA, where mountains meet the sea. I am in my recording studio, aptly named Hippie Cowboy, every day.  Slow and steady; keep it fun, stay engaged.  All for the moment when the song finally sounds right.  My dad passed away a couple years ago -- his bullwhip is on the wall, his Harley is in the driveway. He visits me in dreams, and oh, the moment I wake up!  Sometimes I write for him. Sometimes for my mom, who I hope will move out to California soon.   Maybe she could volunteer at an equestrian center... 

A person is made from their moments, like their music is made.  I know this is a bio but I shouldn't have to say much.  Listen to the record.  If I've done my job well, you will know me by the end.

This is a special record to me.  Unlike the past few, this one sounds like a more cohesive 'band' statement.  Most of it was cut together live, in a room over five days.   Rob, Elliott, and I had been playing for a long time with Mikey and then Hawes on drums, and while the music always felt great, the 'band' feeling hadn't made its way into the recording studio.  'Time Spent In Between' and 'Sending Money and Stems' were very pieced together albums; me playing most of the instruments, collaborating with many different drummers but working one song at a time, etc. However, when Jeff moved back from Nashville and joined the band, it felt more cohesive. Maybe we gelled because Jeff came from the same musical world.   In our little family Jeff championed nicknames, Elliott invented musical travel games, and Rob and I rolled our eyes at their enthusiasm for Arby's. We travelled around sharing our art and feeling free. When we went to Enterprise, OR to record the first session, most of the songs were learned on the spot.   We strove for the zenith moments when we knew the song well enough to not make errors but still had to fly by the seats of our pants to keep it from coming unglued. Everything has an arc like this.  After all, when you know something well enough you can take the present for granted. After those sessions we toured our new songs for a year (it usually goes the other way around) and decided some of the songs were misunderstood the first time so we recorded them again, live and together.  I am thankful and proud of that process and proud of them.  The music captured on this record occurred in very special moments between four people who had a special bond, musically and beyond. We hope you enjoy it.