Author: Chris Jones

I realize this probably dates me, but I’m not a very good texter. I do have what is, technically speaking, a “smartphone”, but it’s a tiny secret agent-sized job that has no keyboard, therefore I rely on  the “predictive text”

International touring is something that most professional musicians will have an opportunity to do at some point in their careers, and last week I introduced you to some of the joys and hazards of this kind of work. I saved

I’m writing this from an airplane heading west back to North America after a short European tour. Since the flight is 9 hours long, I finished watching a mediocre movie over an hour ago, the seatbelt sign has been on

Last week, based on comments I received here and elsewhere, it seems that I suddenly became the best friend of sound engineers, simply by making an attempt to tell their side of the story. Now, could I get just a

There are plenty of tense and troubled relationships in professional bluegrass music. Minor scraps to major feuds can often develop between label and artist, artist and event producer, side musician and band leader, musician and landlord, but one of the

The world of music is strewn with the decaying corpses of marketing ideas gone wrong, or ones that were just wrong to begin with. Many of them linger in our consciousness decades later, and not in a good way, providing

People that are new to bluegrass music sometimes need some help in translating our jargon. Hearing that someone is “tearing it up on the five” may sound like ordinary and recognizable information to us, but to the uninitiated, it’s not

If you will recall, last week I discussed the holding of a parallel World of Bluegrass purely for the purpose of arguing about various aspects of bluegrass music. Below, I have outlined a proposed schedule of events for the Argumentative

If there’s one thing I love, it’s arguing about bluegrass music. Oh, it’s fun to play it, and it’s great to listen to it, as far as that goes, but it’s just much more rewarding to treat it as a

Before I proceed, I’d like to brace you for the fact that I’ll be telling stories this week that are actually true. I hate to deviate so far from the usual pattern, but in the case of this week’s subject,