Jay Sanders

Jay Sanders is a guitarist, bassist, composer, producer, and bandleader based in Asheville, North Carolina. A master of stylistic variation, Jay’s music is charachterized an overwhelming sense of space, time and genre. His personal style mixes jazz, rock, blues, metal, and African influences with years of improvisational study and training. Compositionally, he tend towards the melodic and sublime; expertly traversing from peaceful melody to free jazz and cacophonous noise music. He claims his primary influences as Sonny Sharrock, John McLaughlin, Bill Frisell, Dave Holland, Ornette Coleman, and John Hartford.

Jay has recorded over two dozen records and performed in 47 US states and six countries. As a composer he has worked with the ETHEL string quartet, Rational Discourse, and scored several independent films.

Originally from Nashville, TN, Jay grew up surrounded by the immensity of Nashville's music scene. He has early studies with Regi Wooten opened his mind to the concepts of fundamental vibration, sacred geometry, and the Music of the Spheres. Jay later moved to Knoxville, TN, where he cultivated his curiosity through a series of extended conversations with former Sun-Ra drummer, Samurai Celestial. He formally studied music at Belmont Univeresity and the University of Tennessee.

"[Jay Sanders] skirts the boundaries of jazz-rock, free-jazz and progressive metal-jazz. Jazz and improvisational elements accentuate most of his works, fueled by adrenaline rushes amid a broad arsenal. It's all been done before in various ways, shapes and forms, but he integrates numerous genre-based inferences into his repertoire. With asymmetrical doses of swing, rock, and fuzzed-out psycho guitar licks, the music generates remembrances of New York City's vibrant downtown scene, at times drawing comparisons to John Zorn's Naked City ensemble. However, he doesn't abide by a staid methodology. He counterbalances a feeding frenzy with softly woven innocence, and is a consistent paradigm. He doesn't work within one particular formula; he maintains a distinct persona." ~ All About Jazz

Jay is most commonly known as the bass player for Acoustic Syndicate, which has for decades been setting the pace for a style of music that fuses southern roots music, bluegrass, rock and roll and a healthy dose of improvisation in an approach that now permeates the American music scene... Acoustic Syndicate is hailed as a progenitor of and inspiration to generations of jam and jamgrass bands, the group has taken its distinctive, North Carolina-bred sound across the country more times than any of its members can recall.

“Jay is a brilliant and innovative musician. He’s there to make whatever style of music he’s playing take priority – a chameleon without compromise and a super talent. I’d have him on any session!” ~ Grammy Award Winning Producer Stewart Lerman