AJ Lee & Blue Summit are products of the California Bluegrass Association Youth in Bluegrass program, something the organization invests in heavily with both time and treasure. The program seeks to find and nurture talented young artists in their teens, or even earlier, and provide them opportunities to perform, and learn about the industry as youngsters.
Who’s to say whether these future headliners would have found a way to achieve even without such a head start from CBA, but it is hard to argue with their success. Lee is part of the same class of YIB artists that produced Molly Tuttle. In fact, AJ was a member of Molly’s family band for many years, performing as The Tuttles with AJ Lee when they were teens.
Now heading up her own group, Lee is out front on lead vocals and mandolin, supported by Molly’s younger brother, Sullivan Tuttle, and Jesse Fichman on guitar, Jan Purat on fiddle, and Chad Bowen on bass.
They have a new album, I’ll Come Back, due on August 20, and we are delighted to premiere a new single today, the third from the upcoming record, called When You Change Your Mind. It was written by AJ, and will be available tomorrow from streaming and download services.
Like many young performers, when Lee started her group in 2015 they began to experiment and push against the boundaries of what they had grown up playing, but in the end the grass calls them home.
She says that…
It’s fun to play different genres of music, but we always come back to bluegrass. It’s our favorite kind of music to play and sing.”
Speaking of this latest single, Lee tells us that it is about…
“Drinking and thinking about how you’ll never be deserving of someone who loves you because you’ll only hurt them in the end. You’ve also got your own issues and it’s too much trouble to explain yourself to someone else.”
Here ’tis…
An album release concert is scheduled for this Saturday, August 7, at The Independent in San Francisco. That will be followed by an east coast tour through much of the month, and several dates in Colorado, before returning to shows in California next month. Check the AJ Lee & Blue Summit web site for tour details.
