Rock has always had a fascination with supergroups. Whether it was the folk-rock harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the swagger of Velvet Revolver, or the unlikely chemistry of the Traveling Wilburys, these collaborations gave audiences the chance to hear accomplished musicians challenge one another in ways their primary bands often couldn't. Some lasted only a single album, others much longer, but the best succeeded because they became more than the sum of their individual players’ résumés.
One Tribe Nation follows that tradition while carving out an identity of its own. Built around guitarist Michael Sanders and Living Colour vocalist Corey Glover, the largely West Coast collective brings together musicians whose credits include Santana, Prince, Whitesnake, Alicia Keys, Sheila E., the English Beat, and more. Their music draws from rock, funk, soul, Afro-Latin rhythms, jazz, and world music, but rather than treating those styles as separate influences, the band blends them into a sound that feels remarkably cohesive.
That approach is on full display in the group's new live recording of Black Sabbath's "The Wizard." Captured during JAMM Night, the annual benefit concert presented by the David Z Foundation and pro audio manufacturer RCF, the performance was recorded before more than 5,000 fans as part of an evening honoring artists lost in 2025, including Ozzy Osbourne. Rather than reproducing the original note for note, One Tribe Nation reshapes the song through its own musical vocabulary, preserving Sabbath's swagger while adding layers of groove, improvisation, and rhythmic complexity.
"The Wizard" also serves as an early preview of the band's forthcoming third album, Estado Dorado, which will feature original material alongside reimagined versions of Rare Earth's “I Just Want to Celebrate” and the Sabbath classic.
Ahead of the release, Copper spoke with Sanders and Glover about the origins of One Tribe Nation, the challenge of building a true collective rather than just another all-star project, and how a group of seasoned musicians continues to find new musical ground together.
Ray Chelstowski: What is the music scene like these days in Los Angeles?
Michael Sanders: I don't Really, you know, it's, what's interesting to me is there are little scenes and little cliques, but it seems like it's [gone] back underground in a way. Like the place we're playing at The Den Studios, they have a whole scene happening there, the core of it seems to be these amazing Brazilian blues guitar players. I've been in a room with like three or four of these guys. Amazing players, completely different spin on the sort of a blues-rock, psychedelic kind of vibe. I think they're [like] little pop-ups.
What other musicians always say to me, and what I say to other musicians, is that it's really weird that all the best musicians are here, but in some ways it's a very unfriendly place for musicians to play. In terms of venues and the ability to be able to make money playing here, it’s pretty tough. It's certainly not the heyday of the ’80s and some of the ’90s where, you know, rock was king in LA. The Sunset Strip is really turning into condos and high-priced real estate and boutiques. But I've seen this city change many times over the last 26 years. Maybe it’ll change to something else in the next 10 years. Who knows?
RC: How did this whole thing come about?
MS: One of my oldest friends, Lisa Balfour, who was a stylist for Prince and Michael Jackson and almost everyone you can think of, is Living Colour's stylist. I was working on this project, kinda chipping away at it, building it in my own home studio, and I asked Lisa one day, “You know, it would be really cool if Corey sang on this record. Can you maybe send him some of this music and see what he thinks of it?” And he responded right away. I got on the phone with him, and we started talking about ideas. Maybe a little under a year later we actually went into the studio and we started writing. So far we've written three songs together. I think we just click writing-wise. We've also done these two covers, “I Just Want to Celebrate” and “The Wizard”.
RC: When you started writing and you start looking at the music, how does the band begin to take shape? Is it tied to the music or is it about people you have worked with or want to work with?
Corey Glover: It's a mixed bag. It's, it's usually all the above. You're looking for the baddest cats. That's the great thing about this particular band, is that they're all players who've played on several different kinds of gigs. And because they play on different kinds of gigs, they can adapt very easily. And that's what you're looking for in a really good band; the ability, if a curveball gets thrown at them, they know to pitch to that, how to hit to that, how to make it work. You know, “The Wizard” is a, is, you know, weird kind of tune.
One Tribe Nation in the studio. Courtesy of Will Cook.
RC: The name of the album translates to “Golden State.” Is this project intended to be a California thing?
MS: Yes. Well, it's, it's morphed into much more, because Corey is about as Brooklyn as you can get. So we're, we're kind of the whole thing. One Tribe Nation means [the] human race, and we're just trying to represent a bunch of diverse viewpoints every step of the way. It is kind of a tribute to the fact that half of the band is in San Francisco and the other half the band is in Los Angeles. Now we've got Corey in New York. But originally we didn't have Corey and we kinda came up with that, that idea. The idea of the song is to sort of shine light on the style of Chicano rock that was happening in the early ’70s mixed with Afro-Cuban, mixed with rock, mixed with heavy metal. There's a sound I think that happened in California in the early ’70s that we're influenced by at the very least. So that's probably why it’s called Golden State.
RC: Is there anything sonically that is off limits to you? I sense that the answer is “no,” because the Sabbath cover is such a departure from the other material that's on your website.
CG: Well, not Sabbath, I mean, there's all these Northerners and the singer's from Southern England. There's a sort of cultural difference there that's going on. They all met on the platform of the blues, and it was like, “yeah, we can meet here.”. That's the thing that's really sort of the overlying thing about this. And, you know, the real innovation comes when you take certain things as an alchemy. You take certain ideas from one place and another idea from another place, and you throw in some congas, some timbales, a funky guitar and all kinds of different stuff, and you come up with a whole new thing. That's how music really is made.
MS: I have this idea about even Black Sabbath and British heavy metal and all these guys, probably because of the situation in post-world, post-war UK, [where the musicians] could relate to the blues more than, at the time, white Americans could, and they reflected it back to America. And that's when white America kind of accepted it, right?
But really they understood where the blues was coming from, because they were going through their own blues. I mean, how many bios do you read about people in that era walking by burned out buildings or living in poverty, or not being able to work their way out of a dirty, smoky, soot-filled factory in Birmingham?
That's the story of Black Sabbath too, right? I see Tony Iommi [of Black Sabbath], who is my absolute favorite guitar player, as a blues guitar player, and even they didn't consider themselves heavy metal. They didn't even know what that was when people started calling them that. They started off as a blues band. Often, Black blues artists had to tour over there [to earn a living], and that's where they were able to really connect with people, you know? I think now people understand the history a little more, but even when Living Colour was starting, I mean, Corey could speak to this obviously more than me, [but] people were like, “What are Black people doing playing rock and roll?”
CG: You know, it's so ahistorical to even think that. We sort of did that [defy peoples’ stereotypes of who “should” be playing rock music] on purpose. And I think that's what One Tribe Nation is trying to be. It’s in the name. We're trying really hard to make what's not seen and what's not heard.
RC: I feel like we're seeing guitar-driven music reemerge in interesting ways, and I think it's because people are, are evolving the sound.
CG: You need to have a particular voice that is unique to the genre, and unique to the idea of how it's heard. You know, you can go from Django Reinhardt to Stanley Jordan, and those are two completely different people playing the same instrument, and you'll hear two completely different things. You'll hear so much.
[Take Carlos] Santana. His instrument is his voice. Literally. It's ’cause when you hear it, you know, “Oh, that's Santana or something that's trying to sound like Santana." Tower of Power [for example] is unique to itself. One Tribe Nation is trying to do the same thing.
MS: When you hear Jeff Beck or Carlos Santana, you hear two notes and you know it's them. Right? To me, that's the point. When somebody can hear me and hear a couple notes and go, “That's Mike Sanders playing,” that's what I'm going for. So when I started off as a young man playing progressive metal and things like that, I think it was an outlet for my frustration and anger and ego and all of those other things, whereas now I'm really just trying to go to another state of consciousness. That's kind of where I'm trying to be, and I think that's how we're all connecting as band members. If we do that and we can be sincere about everything we write, whether people relate to it or not, the idea is to be in the groove as much as possible.
RC: Corey, how much did your experience with [funk band] Galactic informs this sonic direction?
CG: Well, you gotta learn how to live in the groove. What Galactic taught me is you start on the one and you live in the two and the four. That's where you come in. So I had to find my way through that [rhythmic] maze. Fortunately, it worked. But, you know, every band has its thing, and you have to find your place in it. And every music has its thing, and whatever it is that you're singing or whatever it is that you are trying to convey, it has to complement or distract from that.
Header image courtesy of Will Cook.
0 comments