Josh Shilling, lead singer and multi-instrumentalist for bluegrass bad boys Mountain Heart, is launching a new blog series for D’Addario.

The blog will be a behind-the-scene look at life on the road with Mountain Heart. This is a fun-loving bunch of guys, so you can expect a measure of zaniness in his reports.

Here’s Josh’s first entry. Subsequent blogs will be will be posted on both the MH and D’Addario sites.

It’s Sunday morning, January 10th and I think I can speak for all the guys in Mountain Heart when I say we had an AMAZING weekend on the road!

Although Sundays are usually spent licking wounds for most musicians after traveling, today we’re all celebrating yet another sell-out show at The Ark in Ann Arbor, Michigan Friday night. From what I was told, this was the 6th straight sell-out at this intimate room which is also where we recorded our live record, The Road That Never Ends in 2007. We had a line downtown that went on forever to get in and see our show.

We stuffed ourselves at our favorite Mongolian Grill just a few blocks away, and hit up a Starbucks, or as we like to call it “Fivebucks,” and we suited up for showtime. The show kicked off with an sold-out, wall to wall electric crowd that actually seemed louder than the band at times!

After multiple encores and an interesting encounter with two fans who wanted to duet on stage (we can talk about that later), we ended up on stage for over three hours, playing every single request from the crowd. We ended up spending another hour at the record table signing and schmoozing before finally loading up the Prevost and heading South. Michigan has become one of our favorite states when it comes to fan support, and Ann Arbor in particular, seems to be addicted to live music!

After such a ridiculously good night in MI, we headed to Clay City, KY to play to another die-hard crowd that also fought several inches of snow on country roads to party with us. It seems like our rock edge us rubbing off on even the traditionalists in eastern Kentucky. I noticed a lot of young faces and requests for Allman Brothers covers . . . CRAZY!

After the great show last night, we packed up the bus and scooted back down to Nashville for some recording sessions this week. Outside of touring, our main focus right now us writing new material and recording a new record. The only thing I can share about the project thus far is that it’s going to the most creative and original sound I’ve ever heard!

The bus trip was crazy as usual, with Aaron doing his monkey impressions and the rest of us trying to keep from wetting ourselves over the stories, crazy song lyrics and general mayhem that is a trip with MH.

As always, we are all so blessed to be using great gear in the studio and on tour, so I wanna say “thanks D’Addario for their products and never ending support.” With as many strings as we go thru on tour, (Jones!!!) we couldn’t live without them!

Until next time …………….

Josh Shilling