DISCOVER: JAY BUCHANAN
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Known for his towering vocals, preacher-like presence, and razor sharp songwriting, Jay Buchanan stands tall among the breakthrough vocalists of the last two decades.
He is just as comfortable singing with Jason Isbell or The Bee Gees, Miranda Lambert, Massive Attack, The Bloody Beetroots, or Brandi Carlile as with the arena rock band he is usually known for. His voice remains his signature instrument: powerful, earthen, and impossibly expressive, a gritty echo of the California mountains themselves.
A frequent collaborator with longtime friend and nine-time GRAMMY-winning producer Dave Cobb, Buchanan has written for film soundtracks and other projects, equally at home co-creating as he is fronting one of America’s foremost rock bands, Rival Sons. His swaggering style and humble approach have earned him fans worldwide, yet anyone who has met him knows there’s far more to this singer-songwriter than the archetypal rock-star image.
Born July 6 1975 in San Bernardino, California, Jay Bartholomew Buchanan is the son of working class parents, a steel-mill worker and waitress mother. His early childhood unfolded in Fontana, California before moving to the small mountain town of Wrightwood where he spent his formative years surrounded by forests and high-desert skies that would inform a strong connection to outside living, backpacking and the wilderness. As a young child, Jay had a speech impediment so severe that people could not understand him, until at age 5 when he had his tonsils out, then years of speech therapy to try and remedy his communication. This had never stopped him singing. Music consumed him from an early age, he sang all the time. All the time. Before he could communicate verbally he sang. As he got older he was more and more consumed with the music. He was in the school choir from eight years on. Music was vital to him but he had to wait until his hands were large enough to play guitar. Around age twelve when he could play his first few chords, he started writing music immediately. He spent every spare moment and all his pocket money on music. Then as a teenager he busked and played coffee-house gigs.
I remember the first time I earned $100 in tips,” he recalls. “I went home, ironed every bill, stacked them up and just stared at them. I remember thinking, This came from my imagination—I can write my future.”
At sixteen, after having played in punk bands at house parties Buchanan realised that wasn’t for him. Picking up the acoustic guitar by himself, he began his serious journey as a songwriter. Buchanan met a music producer who gave Jay his first brief introduction to the music business. “I’d never been to Los Angeles before,” he says, “but I went and recorded my original songs in a real studio. It absolutely blew my mind.” Although the opportunity eventually fizzled out, the experience was pivotal; he combined those recordings with his own demos to sell cassette tapes at school and book more gigs. “Those early experiences left a deep impression that anything was possible as long as I could get my head around it.”
Disillusioned at twenty, Buchanan sold his belongings, bought backpacking gear, and travelled to Alaska. After hitchhiking to the Kenai Peninsula and working the summer there, he returned lean and focused, settling in Orange County to begin writing what later became his debut -Violence. In 1997, at twenty-two, Buchanan married and became a father the following year. Working days at a mortuary, he self-recorded and produced Violence while performing at open-mics and busking intensely, regionally plugging his amp in wherever he could find power. He aggressively played wherever he could find people, with his little amp and mic turned up high, building an audience across Southern California. Within a year he had management, legal representation, and major-label offers. “It was a head-spinning time,” he says. He ultimately signed with independent label Ultimatum Music, touring nationally from 2002–2005 and releasing The Buchanan Band All Understood (2003) followed by the True Love EP (2006).
By 2007 suddenly everything changed, Buchanan could no longer relate to the music he’d been writing. “It was both cathartic and completely disorientating, to have the clarity of mind that I couldn't take one more step in that direction, the suit just no longer fit me.” In a move for artistic growth, he experienced this realization about his previous work and disbanded the group, its mailing list, fanbase, and all its professional assets. “I torched it all”
By 2008 Buchanan had completely reinvented his writing style with “Locust and Wild Honey,” a pivotal record that is still unreleased. “I had never felt so creatively focused in my life.” That same year, guitarist Scott Holiday approached him and the immediate meteoric rise of Rival Sons began, putting Jay’s solo efforts on hold.
A scrappy, hard-working band from Long Beach, they took Buchanan’s soulful voice to audiences who hadn’t realised how much they needed it—until they heard it.
“Who doesn’t love Rock ‘N’ Roll? But at the time, nothing could have been further from my artistic goals. I think I spent most of those first years as a singer-songwriter in a rock band trying to squeeze in ballads amongst the high-octane frenzy that is Rival Sons. It took a while for me to take root, and understand that I don't need to wear a leather jacket, because I am the leather jacket.”
Seventeen years later, Buchanan remains the powerhouse vocalist and lyricist of the GRAMMY-nominated group, known for albums such as Pressure & Time (2011), Great Western Valkyrie (2014), and Feral Roots (2019), the latter earning two GRAMMY nominations for Best Rock Album and Best Rock Performance (“Too Bad”). Rival Sons’ rock-radio #1 hit Do Your Worst has surpassed 70 million streams, and the band has shared stages with Black Sabbath, The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, Queens Of The Stone Age, Metallica, Lenny Kravitz and basically everyone, while also appearing on The Late Late Show with James Corden, Le Grand Journal, Jools Holland, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!
As of 2025 Jay has recorded ten records with Dave Cobb, soon to be eleven. From the getgo Cobb was very supportive of Jay’s talents. “We’re as different as can be but we’re also like twin brothers in so many ways. He would probably say I'm the evil one, but I beg to differ. It's a family affair.”
Dave Cobb first met Jay Buchanan on the recording of Before The Fire in LA. Over the past seventeen years the two have developed a strong collaborative relationship including Buchanan uprooting from California and moving to Nashville to work more with Cobb in 2016.
“He’s pulled me into all kinds of different things and had me working with people I never thought I would. In my professional life I can't think of anyone else who has been so crucial and supportive of my growth and career.”
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