My father brought us there from a tiny Illinois town called Cross…

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Every August, I witness this incredible, hypnotic event. Just this morning, I woke up at 9:30 on a Saturday to the sound of…

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Just before my fifty-second birthday on October 16th, I traveled up to Little Rock to see my mother, Gladys Sanders…

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In 1999, I set out to write a gospel album, but as the project took shape, it grew into something far beyond traditional boundaries. It became an album that was universal in spirit—an exploration of light, consciousness, and the profound forces that connect us all.

My perspective on these forces goes back to a pivotal moment in 1968, when I had a sudden, life-changing revelation. It felt as though a vivid vision and telepathic frequency were dropped directly into my mind from the heavens or an extraterrestrial intelligence. That single event completely altered my world and changed how I viewed the universe forever. I came to believe that what we historically call “angels” are actually super-intelligent, cosmic spirits—advanced beings traveling through the realm of spirit at the speed of light or faster.

When it came time to present Flight of the Angels, I intentionally stepped away from traditional artwork or classic master paintings. Instead, I featured a painting that captures the actual cosmic vibration of that encounter—a visual representation of higher intelligence channeling energy down to me and to so many others... more

released July 30, 2026

All all instruments and lead vocals by John Lee Sanders

johnleesanders.bandcamp.com

Flight of the Angels, by John Lee Sander

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If you want to understand where the music truly lived in me, you have to go back to Denton. I had transferred from Northeast Louisiana …

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We didn’t just play Louis Jordan’s “Saturday Night Fish Fry”—we covered it like a mofo!.

When we tracked it, I had the whole engine roaring in my head. I didn’t even need to look at a chart. I just sat there and started stacking those horn lines—four saxophones cutting through in brilliant 4-part harmony. When you spend a lifetime letting gospel music wash over you in church, that kind of arranging just becomes part of your DNA. It’s a gift, I guess, being able to quietly orchestrate a whole score in the background of your mind and just bring it to life on the floor.

That track, and that whole album, really set the tone. It was my very first record with Garth Webber. Together with Dennis Murphy holding down the low end on bass and Peter Boras driving the pocket on drums, we built a powerhouse. I took care of the keyboards, the background vocals, and those horn arrangements, while Garth engineered the hell out of the sessions. I absolutely loved that studio. It had a spirit to it. Whenever Garth needed some serious, gritty backing tracks to anchor a project, he knew exactly who to call.

Garth actually called me a musical genius. Now, I know I’m nowhere near the genius of Mozart, but coming from a man like him, it truly means something. He believes it.

And he knows what greatness sounds like. Garth played with Miles Davis, and right after he left Miles’s group, we started playing casual gigs together. We’ve been playing together ever since. Over the years, I’ve shared the stage and studio with giants like Robben Ford, Chris Cain, Dr. John, and the absolute king of the New Orleans groove, Zigaboo Modeliste—but the connection I built with Garth was something else entirely.

He is truly one of my favorite people on Earth, and he understands me like no other. Beyond the stage and the studio, we would stay up until the wee hours of the morning talking about everything under the sun—and way beyond it, diving deep into conversations about extraterrestrials. I have so many stories from those late-night sessions.

I’ll post some of the videos down the line, but for now, you can check out this recording of “Saturday Night Fish Fry” and some of the other tracks where we locked it in. I love all the sessions we did together, and I hope you appreciate them too.

I appreciate these stories immensely. The sheer musicality of arranging four horns on the fly by ear, combined with the humility of just letting the music flow, is beautiful.

...I’ll post some of the videos down the line, but for now, you can check out this recording of “Saturday Night Fish Fry” and the and background vocals track was also me some the other tracks where we locked it in. I love all the sessions we did together, and I hope you appreciate them too.

If you want to hear the whole album, please click on the link to find it on Bandcamp. I truly hope you listen to it—and if you love it, please buy it. Streaming doesn’t fill the bank account up, but buying the music directly does, and it keeps the engine running for the next project!

I really appreciate you sharing this piece of your history. Stacking those three-part harmonies by ear and locking in with a powerhouse like Garth is legendary stuff.

If you wanna check out the whole album, it's below. Thank you so much for listening

Long before I was an eleven-year-old kid sweating in Mrs. Synco’s non-air-conditioned fifth-grade classroom in Vestavia Hills, the script for my childhood was being written in the high-clearance corridors of Washington, D.C.

From 1945 to 1948, my father, William D. Sanders, served as a Major at the Pentagon. Those weren’t just any year…

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By 2012, looking at my discography felt a bit like looking at a fractured mirror. There were live records vibrating with the sweat and adrenaline of the stage, gospel sessions reaching for the rafters, blues dates that dug into the mud of the Delta, and even a project where I took the structural genius of Mozart and bent it into my own kind of shape. My…

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The music didn’t come to me; it arrived. It was 1968, I was sixteen, and I was asleep in a house that felt too small for the sounds rattling around inside my skull. I wasn’t just dreaming; I was being broadcasted to. Whether it was some extraterrestrial agency or a silent, telepathic tap on the shoulder from the beyond, the pathways of my musical inspiration were violently opened. Complex, soaring melodies began pouring out of me—a sonic architecture I hadn’t built but was suddenly forced to inhabit. I woke up in a sweat, asking, where is this coming from? I’ve been chasing the answer to that question ever since.

I’ve spent a lifetime as a vessel. By the time 1997 rolled around and I bought my first house in Oakland, California, the music was ready to move in with me. I sat down at the piano, and “Beacon of Light” didn’t feel like a choice; it was a memory of a childhood dream I had in Jackson, Mississippi—falling through the dark, only to be caught, safe and held in the arms of love. When I struck the first chord in 1997, I heard the whole thing—the intricate, gospel-soaked harmonies and the way the voices would stack and lift—before I’d even finished the first phrase.

In 1999, I took that vision to Raw Records to begin the sessions. I had the privilege of working with Danny Hull, the engineer whose work with the Doobie Brothers and so many others brought a seasoned brilliance to the board. Michael Cobb served as my executive producer, helping me immensely and guiding the project with a steady hand. Bringing in the heavy hitters from the Glide Memorial Church Choir and Jeanie Tracie was the final step in putting flesh on those spectral bones. My history with the church—the Mississippi Methodist roots, the Sunday morning radio broadcasts, and serving as the Hammond organist at Beebe Memorial in Oakland—it all funneled into those sessions.

Recording the rest of the project at my studios in California, I wasn’t just making a record; I was documenting a recovery. The project became even more poignant in 2007, when the passing of my father left a massive void. During that transitional time, the memory of that beacon guided me back to the piano, reminding me that no matter how far I felt I was falling, I was still safe in the arms of love.

“Beacon of Light” is the anchor of that journey, a testament to the fact that when you’re sinking in the night, there’s a light that doesn’t care how lost you are.

Production Credits

• Produced and Performed by: John Lee Sanders

• Executive Producer: Michael Cobb

• Engineered by: Danny Hull

• Background Vocals: Jeanie Tracy, LZ Love, Emma Jean Foster

• Label/Publishing: Swampmeister Music, ASCAP

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They tell you that a stroke changes everything. And in a way, it does. Four years ago, the fire in my right hand went quiet. I’m still deep in the trenches of recovery from it today—a physical detour that inside my head I trace back to a likely malfunction from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, though in this crazy world, who really knows? But the mysteries of the medical world don’t interest me nearly as much as the mysteries of the musical mind.

Because let me tell you straight: the stroke might have touched my hand, but it couldn’t touch my faculties. It couldn’t dim the map of the music inside my brain.

Every single day, the real work happens right here at home with my beautiful wife, Maria. She has been an absolute angel, doing an amazing job working with me through the grueling therapy, getting my fingers active and alive again. It is a steep mountain to climb, a heavy and difficult task remapping those pathways from the brain down to the fingertips. But I am willing, I am able, and I am completely determined to overcome.

A few days ago, my phone lit up here in Spain. It was Bruce Tambling calling from the Bay Area. Bruce is a giant—an award-winning engineer and producer who has worked with everyone from Motown to BMG, and did precision audio for masters like Quincy Jones. Today, he’s passing that torch as a master educator to the next generation of talent at Foothill College and the university right there in the Bay Area.

But to me, Bruce is the cat I’ve been in the trenches with for nearly forty years. We’ve cut movie scores, documentaries, and wild karaoke tracks for Vietnamese producers back in San Francisco. We have a psychic connection.

Bruce had a massive, high-profile recording session coming up in a week for his students, and he needed a masterpiece. He asked if I could produce a definitive, groundbreaking arrangement of “Amazing Grace.”

Now, that’s a melody I’ve known since before I could speak. I’ve lived with it, cut versions of it, and felt its holy weight for 74 years. But I didn’t want to just look back; I wanted to look forward. I sat in my studio, closed my eyes, and let the parts come to me. It happens automatically now—a beautiful, heavy stream of melody that feels like it was passed down directly from my mother’s bloodline.

Working past the hurdles, my left hand held down the fort on the keyboards while my mind built an architectural marvel. I channeled the brilliant, multi-dimensional harmonic world of Jacob Collier, laying down the tracks and stacking an intense, 8-part harmony, singing every single vocal part myself. I built a whole choir out of my own voice, moving like a massive wave of pure light.

I was working against a tight deadline to get it to Bruce’s kids in time for their big session, and I’m proud to say I finished every part. The compensation was beautiful—and Lord knows the bread is nice when you’re working through a physical recovery—but the real reward was knowing that a new generation of music students right in my old Bay Area stomping grounds are going to dissect these charts. Every breakthrough in my hands, every ounce of progress Maria and I fight for daily, poured straight into those tracks.

At this stage of the game, you realize the ultimate truth of this crazy, beautiful life: the money is a blessing, but the hustle is always for the absolute love of the music.

The vessel might alter its shape, my friends, but the grace remains amazing.

The new tracks are up on my Bandcamp right now. Head over, take a listen, and let me know how those eight-part harmonies strike your soul in the comments below.

With love, rhythm, and resilience,

When I look back at my life in music—the late nights, the marathon studio sessions, the sweat-soaked stages from across Canada and all throughout Europe—her voice is the red…

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Back in the day—I’m talking thirty, forty years ago—that spark was a raging fire. I’d be gigging five, six, seven nights a week, living inside the groove. You’d look out from behind the piano or through the bell of your saxophone, and the room would be jam-packed. People were pressed right up against the edge of the stage, sweating, breathing, drinking in the music like it was water in a desert. They weren’t watching life through a pane of glass; they were in it. We were locked in a holy dance, the band and the crowd, completely present.

But the world turned upside down, and we traded that sacred presence for plastic and pixels.

Don’t get me wrong—I’ve always been a tech junkie. I remember getting my very first cell phone back around 1992 or ‘93, when the bill ran about $500 a month. I love technology. But we didn’t know back then that this convenience would turn into a total digital takeover. Today, you walk down any street, and it’s a town of walking zombies. Everybody’s got their head down, staring into the palm of their hand, chasing ghosts on a screen while the beautiful, symphonic reality of the world passes them right by. It’s a kind of spiritual poverty, so bad that countries are now moving to ban smartphones and social media for kids under fifteen just to save their minds.

I felt the sting of this cultural shift clear as a bell one night when I was playing down at the Perdido Beach Resort. I’m up there on the bandstand, pouring my heart into the keys, trying to lift the room. I look out and see this beautiful, sharp young woman. You could tell she had all the schooling, all the advantages—the kind of brilliant mind that ought to be wide open to the world. But she was paralyzed, completely hypnotized by the tiny, glowing screen of her phone.

Sitting right next to her was her man. He was feeling the rhythm. He wanted to live, wanted to move, wanted to take her hand and glide out onto the hardwood. But she couldn’t pull herself away from the digital matrix. Finally, the man had enough. He literally had to drag her out onto the dance floor, her eyes still glued to that device while her feet were trying to keep time.

It broke my heart, but it also lit a fire under me. Right then and there, the muse hit, and I wrote a song about it: “Put Down Your Phone and Talk to Me.”

Inside the Track, which was nominated for a first round Grammy award in 2024

When you listen to the track, it starts with a little cinematic trick. You’ll hear a sound like an Apple phone starting to ring. But look closer—that’s not a sample. I actually composed an original piece of music that mimics that cold, digital chime, twisting it into my own creation to set the stage. It’s a wake-up call. We got to get back to airplane mode.

When it came time to cut the rest of the record, I wanted it to be a testament to the old-school craft. I went into the studio and laid down almost every single layer myself. I played the tenor and alto saxophones, tracked the bass part, the guitar part, and the keyboards. To top it all off, my beautiful wife, Maria, came in and graced the track with her gorgeous background vocals.

It’s an amazing track, if I do say so myself. Life throws its punches—God knows I’ve had my own physical battles, adjusting my hustle and learning to create magic chiefly with my left hand after my stroke—but the music doesn’t stop. It can’t stop.

The tech world wants to take the soul out of the art now, using AI programs like Suno to automate the groove and manufacture the blues with algorithms instead of blood, sweat, and tears. But a machine can’t replicate the grease, the grit, and the glory of real people playing real instruments.

The Lyrics

She got a 6.7 inch Toy Her Fix of a heavenly joy Instagram camera posing more pretty Every swingin hot spot in the city

She need a thousand more likes to fit in A hundred more when she show some skin Fingers start scrollin, nasty girls trollin Baby I just can’t win

A slave to your social media Every rabbit hole it leads ya And you crave pretty little lies they feed ya Baby I’m the one who needs ya.

Put down your phone and talk to me Put down your phone and dance with me Put down your phone and make love with me I need you in the here and now.

She’ll never find her Don Juan Quixote Sending Red valentine emojis Maybe a Sugar daddy, just a trophy She on the prowl like a wild Coyote.

Algorithms done cracked the code Information superhighway overload Before that dopamine drug explode I got to get back to airplane mode

To a simpler time, When we met the moment at hand Wish we could rewind, Before my love went to La La Land.

How to Listen and Support

The corporate streaming machines have figured out how to turn our art into pennies on the dollar while the big platforms get rich off the data. If you want to support independent music and keep this live spirit alive, the frontline is Bandcamp. It’s where the connection stays clean—direct from my soul straight to you.

The song is available on all major streaming platforms, but I ask you from the heart: please buy it on Bandcamp. Your support is what allows me to survive, keep writing, keep arranging, and keep hiring the baddest, most soulful live musicians to bring real music to the world.

Look up. Breathe the air. Feel the bass in your chest. Put down your phone, baby, and let’s talk.

In 1995, my life was a beautifully chaotic, high-adrenaline blur. If you looked at my calendar, I was practically living out of a suitcase and a gig bag, running on pure creative adrenaline. I had just come off the road from a grueling, massive run in 1992 and 1993 with Starship Reincarnated.

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