Former Dillards bass player Mitch Jayne has just released his latest book of fiction.

Fiddler’s Ghost is the story of a young couple who move to a small Ozark town where the locals folks live by customs that seem generations out of date. As they learn about the people and their ways, they encounter Hiram, a musical ghost who haunts the old home where they had settled.

Jayne has long been recognized as a clever humorist, and a master of the dialects and ways of the Ozark Mountain people. Anyone who had the chance to see the Dillards live in the 1960s will recall the dead pan, pipe smoking Jayne telling tales and spinning yarns between songs.

Since leaving the band, he has focused on writing, and has three novels published, one of which (Old Fish Hawk) has been made into a motion picture.

I asked Mitch about how he came to write Fiddler’s Ghost.

“Ghosts have a different schedule, and before I followed Hiram, I had to follow a musical life myself for several years, and write a book (Home Grown Stories and Home Fried Lies) about that and other Ozark happenings. My ghost didn’t care. Having already wisped around the universe for a hundred and thirty-odd years, he wasn’t a bit jealous of time, and for all I know spent some of it watching Andy Griffith re-runs, and expecting Dan Randant, my publisher, to remind me that Hiram still waited in the wings of an unexplored stage for me to finish what I began so long ago.”

Fiddler’s Ghost is published by Wildstone Media, and is available from them directly, and from Amazon.com.