Pre-Order: Cover To Cover [CD]

Cover To Cover, AJ Lee & Blue Summit’s intoxicating fourth album, taps into the ecstatic energy of the group's live show, collecting eleven of their favorite covers into a dazzling showcase not only of the band’s superlative musicianship, but also their remarkable ambition and imagination as arrangers and interpreters. Recorded with longtime friend and engineer Jonathan Kirchner and featuring appearances from Jerry Douglas, Lindsay Lou, Trey Hensley, and more, Cover To Cover reinvents tunes by the likes of Sheryl Crow, Bob Dylan, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and Emmylou Harris, offering up a fresh perspective on the American roots canon.

The songs are delivered with joy and reverence here, several are drawn from the band’s earliest days playing bars and cafes around Santa Cruz. The arrangements are dynamic and spacious, with plenty of room for dazzling solos and lush harmonies. Add it all up and you’ve got a love letter from AJ Lee & Blue Summit to the songs that shaped them, a whirlwind journey through the last century of American roots music delivered by some of the brightest young torchbearers of their generation. Rolling Stone recently declared, “the band can seamlessly weave from bluegrass to country to western swing to folk-rock, with the powerhouse vocals of Lee as the core.”