Lisa Sanders is a long time member of the San Diego music community. She is a singer-songwriter who has been compared to Joan Armatrading in her writing and musical stylings.

Born in North Philadelphia, Lisa lived with her brother and single mother. Her larger extended family also lived on the same street. She recalls that when she was about seven her mother brought home a HiFi that she purchased on payments. Her mother would play all the Motown songs on 45rpm records. Lisa and her brother fought over what to listen to among The Four Tops, The Supremes, and The Temptations.

The tambourine was Lisa’s first instrument that she would play to “Veronica and The Archies” and then on the corner with the other kids in the neighborhood. “Music was always around us.” Her mother always had music in the house.

In 1967 Lisa and her family moved to Canada and her brother brought along his first guitar. The rec center at her new home had a jukebox and she listened to The BeeGees and The Rolling Stones for the first time. At home her father listened to Nat King Cole, Perry Como, Dean Martin, and Johnny Cash. Those were her earliest musical influences along with her brother who was always writing songs.

Her brother moved to northern California where he became quite famous on the West Coast in Jazz Fusion and Reggae music before he passed away. He played on Lisa’s first album and was a huge part of her musical history. By the time she was fourteen, they had relocated to Escondido, CA. At that time she was listening to Cat Stevens, Neil Young and John Denver and with a borrowed antique Gibson guitar, she started to teach herself how to play. Lisa didn’t enjoy playing other people’s songs, so she purchased a book on how to write songs and started to write her own songs.

Today, her music is influenced by her peers such as Eve Selis, Veronica May, Randi Driscoll, Jeff Berkley. The Birds Of Chicago, Lucinda Williams and Steve Poltz give her a lot of inspiration in the way they craft their songs. Steve Poltz has become a mentor for Lisa and they play frequent shows together and talk to each other from the road.

Lisa takes empowerment from the audience because “I know exactly who I am and when the audience feels the music it empowers everyone. Music lifts us up to a higher place.” Lisa believes that her music helps her transcend all the negativity in daily life and live in a higher place.

One of the highlights of her long career came when she was able to play five shows with the great B.B. King. She spent years in a friendship with Lucinda Williams who showed her what it takes for someone who has made it. Getting her first record and publishing deal was a huge accomplishment as Burt Bacharach was also published at that publishing house. Lisa spends a lot of time meeting with her fans and audience members after her shows. She feels it is important to meet these people and find out what is happening in their lives as well.

The message in her music is love. “It took me 25 years of playing music to realize that is all we have and we have to keep it alive. Love is all that will keep us alive.” Over the years her music has evolved from something more complex, to a more stripped down and simpler style, although she said her next album will be more complex. This will be an album of re-imagining Lisa Sanders, taking some of her previous work and expanding upon it.

Lisa plans on touring the world and is making plans for that as well as working on her next album. “I want to reach as many people as I possibly can.”

Her tour will start in February 2019 and you can find out tour dates and her local show dates by following Lisa Sanders on facebook, and you can purchase her music on iTunes and listen on Spotify.