AJ Lee and Blue Summit at the Cat’s Cradle
California’s AJ Lee and Blue Summit are touring the south, and that brought them to the legendary Chapel Hill venue Cat’s Cradle. While they are based in bluegrass, that category really doesn’t encompass the breadth of their catalog; the fact they don’t have a banjo player is a quick hint that they aren’t your mama’s bluegrass band. With two dynamic guitar players, a fiddle, a bass, and AJ on mandolin and guitar,  they pretty much cover the waterfront in terms of their song selection: some traditional bluegrass numbers, hot swing tunes, some jazz-based numbers, some blues, and some tastefully curated covers, including from Neil Young and The Monkees (if that gets your interest up).
Bandleader AJ Lee grew up around bluegrass and great musicians. She started playing onstage at the age of five, and by the age of ten she was writing her own songs and performing with The Tuttles with AJ Lee… a band put together by California legend Jack Tuttle and which included his son Sully, a member of AJ’s band today, and his daughter Molly, who needs no introduction. Looking at YouTube videos when they were very young, it’s clear this was a bunch of folks with tremendous talent and dedication at a very early age; AJ is currently in her early 20s. I first saw her in 2019 at the International Bluegrass Association meetings, where she won the Momentum Vocalist of the Year; her voice is one of the purest in bluegrass/Americana. This Cadillac Sky cover heated things up.
 Scott Gates and Sully Tuttle are both blazing guitarists as well as vocalists. The tradeoff between them and shared breaks with the other members are head-shakingly excellent. Both also do some lead vocals; Sully took off with this ’30s swing song (“Who Walks in When I Walk Out”) and blew the doors off the place.
Berkeley-based Jan Purat is an arranger and writer whose fiddle playing is a dynamic part of the band. His fiddle tune “Rodney Dangerfield” blew me away the first time I saw them do it and again at this show. I really appreciate his tasteful and subtle backup work; frequently plucking the strings provides a great addition to some of their songs, especially one of their most popular numbers, a cover of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon.” Larry Cook provided solid bass and some fine harmony singing as well.
Their set included a great mix of songs, from the classic Harlan Howard song “He Called Me Baby” to the popular jazzy “Lemons and Tangerines,” a showpiece for Lee’s vocals, as was the fine solo original song “Someone Please.” Sully Tuttle did an original new song, “Seaside,” and Scott Gates did his “old country song,” which turned out to be neither but instead a Monkees cover. You could assess the knowledge base of the audience as Scott started singing; gradually more of the audience recognized the song and sang along (as a critic, I have to add “badly”). A jazzy version of “I’ll Come Back” followed with spectacular harmonies; their encore was “Harvest Moon,” and the audience was wired. They are fun, engaging, and ridiculously talented, and the audience loved every minute.
Jason Isbell once said he wanted to be able to play large venues but that he didn’t want to actually play those venues. I got a chance to talk to AJ Lee before their set. I mentioned I was a little surprised that they were playing relatively small venues, almost all of which were sold out. She said that they liked the smaller rooms, and I reflected on the places I have seen them. They played at the Red Hat Amphitheater at the IBMAs last year, a large venue, and I’ve seen them in the Music Hall at Spirit of the Suwannee, a small indoor setting. The fact is that they are way more involved with the audience in small venues, which is exactly what Isbell was saying. The crowd at the Cradle was fired up for every song; it was electric. Interestingly I kind of asked several random crowd members if they had ever seen the band before or even heard anything by them. Of the six people I asked, five had never seen them, and only two of those had ever heard anything by them, but all said friends insisted they should not pass up this show. I guarantee you they thanked their friends profusely. I cover a fair number of roots festivals, and right now there isn’t another band anywhere I’d rather see than this one. They are playing in Atlanta, Charleston, and Asheville this week. Since they are headlining at the Gamble Rogers Folk Festival April 12-14 in St. Augustine, I’ll get to see them again next week. After that festival, they’re heading back out west, so if you get a chance to see them, don’t pass it up.  This is one of the best bands you’ll see anywhere.
AJ Lee & Blue Summit
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