Bob Coate | "Sasha"

There’s a bit of mystery surrounding multi-instrumentalist Bob Coate. You won’t find his picture on his single covers or on his website. When you try to pin him down to name his primary instrumental voice, he declines to name just one. While he presents clear marketing and branding challenges, Coate’s perspective – which he himself admits is naïve as a new artist who emerged on the instrumental pop-jazz scene last year – is free from limitations, restrictions and expectations. He enjoys and exercises his freedom to explore his artistic muse while maintaining an air of mystery on the newly released single, “Sasha,” which he wrote and produced with SONIX (David Bowie, Lauryn Hill, Sean “Diddy” Combs). 

On the midtempo R&B groove, Coate plays haunting and lyrical flugelhorn verses before yielding to SONIX’s vibrant melodic keyboards and Fender Rhodes choruses. Johnny "JTwo" Johnson added guitar while bassist Jordan "Jo Peezy" Yussef anchors the rhythm.

“‘Sasha’ is based on a tune that was floating around in my head for many months. Every time I sat down at the keyboard, I would experiment with it some more. You wouldn’t believe how many preliminary versions I recorded and then discarded. Teaming up with SONIX helped push the tune to completion. I think we were able to give the track a dreamy, surreal feel to it,” said Coate.

“Sasha” has instantly been embraced by fans who made it a top ten single on the Smooth Global Listener Countdown. Beyond U.S. airplay, the single is garnering spins internationally, including London Soul Radio and on radio stations in Spain, Australia, Poland and Panama.

On Coate’s previous nine single releases dating back to his 2021 debut, “Super Smooth,” he did everything himself: writing, producing, performing, recording, mixing, mastering and even designing the cover art. “Sasha” is the first of two singles that he recorded with SONIX.

“I am very grateful to have had the privilege of working with world-class producer and musical powerhouse SONIX. This was my first time working with a producer or guest artist,” said Coate, a Boston-area native who is now based just outside of Washington, DC.

“Writing and producing ‘Sasha’ with Bob was a great compromise of who we are as creatives. I enjoyed his input and blunt honesty. We paid great respect to the composition, which blends a color palette of yesterday and today to paint a beautiful picture of ‘Sasha,’ a lady of beauty that lets the listener define her,” said SONIX, who also collaborated with Coate on a high-energy Latin jazz single called “Mamba Rosalita” that is slated to drop in May.  

While SONIX infers that the inspiration for “Sasha” is a woman, Coate says not so fast.

“Most people assume ‘Sasha’ is named after my wife, or girlfriend, or daughter – but no,” he said with a Cheshire grin.  

“I’ll let the listener come up with their own interpretation. That’s part of the magic of music, especially instrumental jazz. Each listener can hear something and use their imagination to come up with their own imagery. For all anyone knows, it could be a song about a family member’s cat, but I’ll never tell!”