Jaynes Bio

Mike Jaynes has been playing guitar for 28 years, 15 of them professionally. With "Oz and Jaynes," "G2," "Galaxy Class," Archer and Tucker: A Space Odyssey," "Room," and other outfits including solo shows, he has performed live over 1,000 times. He specializes in Bluegrass flat picking, and experimental sampling is a feature of his live show. He exclusively plays Seagull guitars and has been sponsored by Seagull guitars for eight years. Vyvyan (his now retired and long-suffering S-6) has been a feature of Oz and Jaynes shows over the last ten years (mostly so fans could chart the progress of destruction to the beloved instrument, which they seemed to love to do). His new guitar, Lailoken, is showing heavy signs of abuse which grow weekly.

He has degrees on the graduate level in English. He teaches writing, western humanities, adolescent literature, 20th century American literature, and women's studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and his academic and creative publications have been published in the U.S., Canada, and England. He is also a noted animal advocate who writes and speaks across the country on the plight of captive and performing elephants and sharks. He is obsessed with his dog Brutumnus, believes in extra-terrestrial intelligence, and spends his ample free time eating tangerines and avoiding press interviews involving Oz and Jaynes. He lives alone with animals and uncounted books on an island fortress near Chattanooga, Tennessee."