Spring Creek in the studio

Spring Creek - Alex Johnstone, Chris Elliot, Taylor Sims, Jessica SmithSpring Creek, who signed to the Rebel Records label in September, has begun recording their as yet unnamed third album at Notably Fine Audio in Denver, Colorado.

The Lyons, Colorado-based quartet, Alex Johnstone (mandolin, fiddle and vocals), Jessica Smith (bass and vocals), Taylor Sims (guitar and vocals) and Chris Elliott (banjo and vocals), have Michael Cleveland (IBMA six-time Fiddle Player of the Year) and Grammy-award winner Sally Van Meter among the guest artists.

Nashville songwriter and sideman Jeff White (Vince Gill, Alison Krauss) is producing this first album for Rebel.

The band has understandably been both nervous and excited by this step into the unknown …

“We’ve been more nervous going into this session than with our two previous records,” says bassist Jessica Smith. “But we’re confident that Jeff [White] will help us create an outstanding CD for Rebel.”

“We’ve been going through our song list with a fine-toothed comb,” agrees banjo player Chris Elliott. “This is going to be a national release and every single song needs to reflect that.”

The album will feature 12 songs, evenly split between originals and covers. The band is especially keen on In Despair, made popular by Bill Monroe in the 1950s, and Lonesome Town, a Ricky Nelson song they discovered on a  mid-1980s recording by Spectrum, which featured B?©la Fleck and Jimmie Gaudreau.

Spring Creek has prepared a brief video from the studio where they introduce themselves and their music, and jam on the aforementioned In Despair.

They are also interviewed at some length in Daily Camera, a newspaper in Boulder, CO which can be read online.

Share this:

About the Author

Richard Thompson

Richard F. Thompson is a long-standing free-lance writer specialising in bluegrass music topics. A two-time Editor of British Bluegrass News, he has been seriously interested in bluegrass music since about 1970. As well as contributing to that magazine, he has, in the past 30 plus years, had articles published by Country Music World, International Country Music News, Country Music People, Bluegrass Unlimited, MoonShiner (the Japanese bluegrass music journal) and Bluegrass Europe. He wrote the annotated series I'm On My Way Back To Old Kentucky, a daily memorial to Bill Monroe that culminated with an acknowledgement of what would have been his 100th birthday, on September 13, 2011.