Clay Collins is a Northern California singer, songwriter and storyteller whose acoustic guitar-oriented songs explore life’s deep questions, all with the charitable grace and sensibility that come from recognizing the broken humanity in all of us—and often with a wry sense of humor.
He released three rock and roll albums back in the late eighties and early nineties, one with The Clay Collins Band.
For the next 25 years, Clay played at coffeehouses, clubs, churches and camps, produced other artists and bands from his home studio, and did session work as a multi-instrumentalist. Along the way he shared the stage with artists Ashley Cleveland, Randy Stonehill, Bob Bennett, Darrell Mansfield and Rob Frazier, and played at the Spirit West Coast Festival.
After taking a year-long sabbatical, his non-fiction book, Tethered: Technology, Faith, & the Illusion of Self-Sufficiency, was published in 2018, and he began giving talks about our culture’s troubled spiritual relationship with technology.
In 2024, he went into the studio and did an entire re-mix, re-mastering, and re-imagining of his band’s 1992 album, re-releasing it with the new title of Descending an Uphill Climb. He also met and began working with singer-songwriter Anna Seitz, producing her first EP, Indigo and White. Little by little, he will be releasing his large backlog of recorded material, starting with an EP of acoustic hymns in the spring of 2026.
Clay and his wife Martha live in the East Bay, and have two grown children.
"Clay Collins’s compelling brand of music is marked by a palpable authenticity in its prophetic poetic lyricism and in a song craft that combines skilled guitar artistry and smartly textured arrangements. He is a versatile singer/songwriter with roots in bluesy rock and roll who can deliver a high-energy jam or the tenderest of ballads. Clay is a master storyteller, able to weave a live show spell that is literate, humorous, and filled with great music.”