Author: Chris Jones

After my recent column about bar gigs, I suggested that, though we all enjoy complaining about them, they’re still worthwhile venues for certain kinds of bands. But are there other kinds of gigs that bluegrass bands sometimes play that they really

I wasn’t really expecting this, but last week’s column about playing in bars prompted an unusual amount of emails and questions on the subject. I don’t pretend to be an expert, but having done my share of bar gigs in

When road musicians get together, reminiscing about gigs past is a pretty typical sort of conversation. There can be fond memories of the festival with the extraordinary scenery, the theatre with the great sound and near-perfect acoustics, or maybe the

The road can be dreary. This fact struck a deep and resonant chord with me again recently while driving between West Memphis, Arkansas and Cape Girardeau, Missouri en route to a show in southern Illinois. The following description has many slight variations,

We’ve spent some time here discussing altered and erroneous song titles and lyrics, mostly blaming the mistakes on good old human error. Human error, though, can at times be matched by the computer, the “smart” phone, and yes, the satellite radio

I’m pleased to announce that not only did I find it a very satisfying IBMA World of Bluegrass this year, I’m actually feeling pretty good, both physically, mentally, and spiritually, in the aftermath of the event. This is all thanks

From the IBMA World of Bluegrass: I realized this morning, in between a workshop on murder ballads in the key of F and running to a mentor session on how to get gigs in Lithuania, that there was no way I

Last week, as I recall, I promised to move from incorrect lyrics to botched song titles, but I’m afraid to report that I’m not going to deliver on that this week. This being an election year, you should be used

After the series of comments I received here and elsewhere about misheard lyrics, I’m wishing I’d brought this subject up a long time ago. This week I had wanted to discuss bluegrass song titles (that is to say, wrong ones),

The world of rock and roll is renowned for its misunderstood lyrics. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s line “There’s a bad moon on the rise” being heard as: “There’s a bathroom on the right” is one of the more infamous lines that