Blue Moon Rising will be releasing their latest album, One Lonely Shadow (Lonesome Day Records), on July 29.

The East Tennessee based band, whose name is derived from the title of a newspaper article commemorating the life of the Father of Bluegrass Music, Bill Monroe, has three previous albums and One Lonely Shadow is the second for the Lonesome Day Records label.

The CD consists of 13 songs and was engineered by Mike Latterell and jointly produced by Latterell, Cody Kilby, Randall Deaton, and Blue Moon Rising. Guitarist Chris West contributed five songs; the evil murder song, The Hanging Tree; I Grew Up Today; Five More Days of Rain; the Gospel song, Revival [co-written with Steve Gulley] and Good Time for Going Home. Mandolin player Keith Garrett wrote the love song, Angeline.

The remaining songs are from a diverse group of writers; the eloquent Bruce Springsteen (contributing Youngstown), the late Townes Van Zandt (Marie), Canadian Fred Eaglesmith (Freight Train), Bill Castle (Stone Cold Loneliness), Ronnie Bowman (Blue Moon Rising), Verlin Thompson (I Will Come Back Again) and Robbie Fulks (Where There’s a Road).

A couple of the songs have already enjoyed some radio play around the nation from a special pre-release sampler sent out by Lonesome Day Records and Where There’s a Road has reached No. 4 on the Sirius Bluegrass countdown.

West can’t wait for the release date …….

“In my humble opinion, this is the best recording by Blue Moon Rising to date. There’s a lot of songs on there that fans of ours would immediately recognize as our style of song, but there’s also several songs that were outside our normal realm of music that will hopefully endear some new fans and help to build a much broader fan base. The production is high with guest musicianship and vocals provided by Randy Kohrs, Tim Crouch, Mike Bub, Cody Kilby, Steve Gulley, Ron Stewart and Dale Ann Bradley.”

The current members of Blue Moon Rising are Chris West (vocals and guitar), Keith Garrett (vocals and mandolin), Justin Jenkins (vocals and banjo) and recent recruit Harold Nixon, formerly with J.D. Crowe & the New South, (bass).