Merry Christmas, all! This one is going to be short; I’m surrounded by people wearing festive sweaters, and someone just handed me a cup of egg nog. Note: for anyone concerned that I’m drinking at this hour (it’s 6:00 a.m.
Chris Jones
-
-
Molly and Tenbrooks… or Mary and Joseph?
Bluegrass bands face an annual challenge at this festive time of the year. And no, I don’t mean the challenge of coming up with money to buy gifts when your band isn’t working at all. Though it is a traditional time
-
Bluegrass Christmas movie plot ideas
Are you a fan of Christmas movies produced by that company we usually associate with greeting cards? I’ll admit up front that while they may not suit my own taste in movies exactly, I have to admire how prolific the
-
Bluegrass alternatives to Black Friday
We’ve just made it through Thanksgiving, and I chose the phrase “made it through” deliberately. Let’s be honest, for all people’s happy and thankful social media posts (“I’m so thankful for my kitty Snooky-wookums, and the humans in my family
-
Fun With Song Titles or The Alternate Titles column
I have often suggested that you can name an instrumental anything. You’re not restricted by lyrical content, and in our music we only occasionally choose titles that reflect a feeling evoked by the melody. So yes, anything goes. I usually
-
Bluegrass Rules – and don’t you dare break them!
“I like the rules. I think you know how I feel about that.” – Fake Santa in Santa Clause 2 In the 1970s, once bluegrass music had evolved into its own genre, with its own festival circuit, its own record labels,
-
Do you know how to get to Carnegie Hall?
We live in an era of almost constant self-promotion across multiple platforms. We also live in an era of hackers, fat-free cheesecake, and the use of the word “platform.” In short, it may not be the best of times, but
-
The least interesting bluegrass stories of 2019
Usually at the end of the year, or sometimes at the beginning of the year, or now and then in the middle somewhere, I provide a summary of the year’s least interesting stories in the world of bluegrass music. It
-
Your Remarkable Return drops for Chris Jones
Here's another new single from Mountain Home Music. It's the latest from Chris Jones & The Night Drivers, the fifth single from his current album, The Choosing Road. This time we have one Chris wrote with his former bass player, Jon
-
Bluegrass vocabulary checklist
A longtime friend of mine in Austin, TX, mandolinist Paul Glasse, recently posted in social media about his professor dad having fostered in him the habit of looking up words he didn’t know or wasn’t sure of, in order to