Jay Sanders, Jason Krekel, and Andy Pond arrived in the mid-1990s from Nashville and Boone, carrying the progressive acoustic fire that Béla Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Edgar Meyer, Sam Bush, and Strength in Numbers had lit, and immediately began building the infrastructure of a scene. The three were the backbone of the early Snake Oil Medicine Show, writing music together that would become the foundation of AVAS' original compositions and showcasing them on legendary stages such as Be Here Now.
Sanders joined Acoustic Syndicate in 1997, spending a quarter century with one of the foundational bands in progressive acoustic music. Krekel went on to co-found the Firecracker Jazz Band and The Krektones, the surf-rock trio that channels Link Wray through the mountains, and fronts Krekel & Whoa. Andy Pond continued to spread the message of universal peace and music with Snake Oil, and his compositional prowess carried him all the way to Carnegie Hall.
Born when Green Acres was still the mythical incubator for progressive acoustic music, AVAS became a vehicle for the question Earl Scruggs first posed when he started bending the rules. Sanders, Pond, and Krekel manifested what had been an informal musical society into a recording and touring act, releasing their self-titled debut on Steve Metcalf's Little King Records in 2000.
Instrumental, improvisational, through-composed, steeped in bluegrass vocabulary but reaching toward Bill Frisell, Scandinavian folk, Raymond Scott, and the cosmic fusion of Sun Ra and John McLaughlin — AVAS was the sound of Asheville's early progressive acoustic scene, and remains one of its most adventurous. The Mahavishnu influence ran deep enough that AVAS was cited in Walter Kolosky's Power, Passion and Beauty.
Tradition isn't a boundary, it's a launchpad.
Where the fundamental vibrations are older than any genre, and fiddle, banjo and guitar can still open doorways nobody knew were there.
Twenty-five years later, AVAS has reconvened with a lineup that expands the original vision with polyrhythms and voices the trio gathered through a quarter century of musical evolution.
