Chris Jones

Last week, we took a general, possibly oversimplified look at recording contracts as they relate to bluegrass artists today. This week, I thought we'd take a look at two hypothetical contracts, one drafted exactly how some record labels wish contracts would

Recording contracts can be problematic for all parties involved, especially now when people have stopped, you know, actually paying for music. It's been a longtime complaint of recording artists that the rules of contracts inevitably favor the record labels and not

Last week we gave some examples of how bluegrass bands' promotional material might read if we took out all the usual flowery and exciting adjectives and replaced them with one-sentence, blunt, "just the facts, ma'am" descriptions, e.g. "Five old guys

When playing a show in Chicago recently, I stopped to eat at a Greek restaurant on the northwest side of the city and I ordered something pretty standard: the gyro plate, and it was an excellent choice. When it arrived,

I've noticed within the entertainment industry a growing interest in the back stories of the villains of some of our legends, fairy tales, and classic superhero stories. Having milked most of the superhero and Grimm's fairy tale-based franchises dry, all

I don't know if you've noticed this, but bluegrass songs about bluegrass are more popular than ever. They seem to get airplay and the charts continue to be full of them. What's not to like? It's the music we love

I was flying out of the Nashville airport recently, and I passed by a large, prominently displayed electronic sign, which said the following: "Plane Truth #1: BNA stands for Best National Airport. For real" (BNA is Nashville's airport code). Then

Esquire magazine recently published a list of the top 30 conspiracy theories prevalent in the United States. They ranged from the faked moon landing and flat earth theories to the one about Disney making Frozen as a distraction from the

Since it has been established in the advertising world that if you can identify a niche, you can target it, it was probably inevitable that we would one day see the rise of bluegrass men's cologne.  Bluegrass women's fragrances had already

The smartphone, especially the smartphone with video camera, has changed a lot of things in our society. Just ask any politician who has had video of something he or she said posted to social media that directly contradicted yesterday's statement,