Chris Jones

Last week here, we discussed what careers might be appropriate for a professional bluegrass musician who has taken the daring and rare step of actually retiring. It should be noted that the few bluegrass musicians who do quit the business tend

Is there possible gainful employment after being a professional bluegrass musician most of your life? I realize it’s a question that very few full time bluegrass pros ever ask, because they almost never retire. Sometimes they stop working, but that’s not

Even if I’ve seemed dazed and/or confused by the origins of some of the songs we sing, I was nonetheless thrilled to recently discover a whole set of prequels to some of these traditional standards. They were collected by the

Though I respect people who chose this profession, I’m glad I never became an ethnomusicologist. For one thing, it’s a non-German word with seven syllables (one more than “paleontologist” or “mandolin-playing-guy”), and that requires a permit to use, which I’ve

It seems like so long ago now, back before the time change, even, that I wrote a little article here on bluegrass haiku. Some loved it, others hated it, but almost everyone had some kind of reaction to the hyper-condensed

Last week we reran a column of mine about aggressive song-pitching, and I got this email: Hi Chris, I’m a songwriter who just moved to Nashville, and so far I can’t complain. I’ve gotten a song recorded by the bluegrass band Melon

I’m deep in recording studio land in North Carolina this week,. That’s a good thing, but it has left me little time for blogging, jogging, or even seeing daylight. For that reason, I offer up this column from last April

I had promised to bring up the thorny issue of the “CD trade” this week, but I’m sorry to say that I’ve chickened out, so I’m going to fall back on yet another article on band names. Just kidding; I’ll go

Last week in this space I discussed various counterintuitive business ideas, both good and bad, from giving music away, to touring exclusively in northern climates in the winter. The subject generated both interesting comments and some spirited emails and social media

The word “counterintuitive” has definitely earned its place among the most overused words and phrases of the last 10 years, like “frankly” (the favorite of politicians, and that may cover the last 20 years), “twerk,” “going forward,” “at the end