AJ Lee and Blue Summit made their first appearance in Santa Cruz in 2015. The latest full-length project, “I’ll Come Back,” debuted August 2021. Although falling loosely under the bluegrass label, AJ Lee and Blue Summit generally plays sans banjo, with Sullivan Tuttle and Scott Gates on steel stringed acoustic guitars, AJ on mandolin, Jan Purat on fiddle, and Chad Bowen on upright bass - a configuration effectively used to create unique space and texture in the arrangements not as commonly found in the music of their peers. Drawing from influences such as country, soul, swing, rock, and jam music, the band uses the lens of bluegrass as a vessel through which to express and explore the thread that binds and unifies all great music.
