Chris Jones

Do you give holiday gifts to the bluegrass people in your life, like your band members, your agent, your manager, your sound engineer? It’s not usually expected, which is good in a way: you’re off the hook if you don’t

Last week’s millennial bluegrass songs generated a lot of suggestions for additions. Many were good ones, and I’ll include some here. One reader pointed out what I already knew: my list is incomplete without a song title that makes some reference

We love to make fun of millennials; you know, with their selfies of their own wedding proposals, their own baptisms, and their own gas station fill-ups; their inability to perform labor-intensive  tasks like coal mining or voting. But of course

I’m neck deep in studio work in North Carolina this week, so here’s one that first ran right before Thanksgiving two years ago, and right after the 2016 election. As you’ve noticed, the political climate may actually be more tense

Let’s face it: it’s difficult to be married to a musician, but it may be most difficult of all to be married to a songwriter. As the spouse, you end up hearing songs about bad relationships, break-ups, leaving on the

Perhaps it was the recent passing of Halloween, or perhaps the post-music-camp mental fatigue (I just returned from the wonderful Walker Creek Music Camp in California), but my mind has suddenly turned to the macabre.  More specifically I’ve begun thinking about

There’s been an exciting new development at Bluegrass Today. I think it’s even bigger than the recent breaking of the personnel change story that rocked the industry: “Brian Hampton to Kryspy Rydge.” It may even be bigger than the installation

In today’s competitive environment it’s hard to break through the barriers when it comes to airplay and sales. Some choose the aggressive marketing approach to overcome this: frequent calls to program directors, in-person confrontation, and in extreme cases, kidnapping of DJs

Greetings from the studio! When recording a record, CD, or long play album (a term we need to revive), it’s pretty intense, and I rarely have time to come up with anything funny for this weekly column. Or even anything

Things are very busy this week as the Night Drivers and I prepare to head back into the studio. I’m working on charts and trying to come up with a rhyme for “carrageenan” to finish up a song. This reminded