Did you think that bluegrass music would somehow escape curling-mania?

Chris Jones, Sirius-XM radio host and fearless leader of Chris Jones & The Night Drivers, contacted us with the news that his latest CD, Cloud of Dust, is now available on iTunes. He also shared that while he is busy preparing for the band’s busiest festival season ever, they have all been glued to the Winter Olympics on television, especially the curling.

They feel a personal connection to the US curling teams because they performed last year at the Olympic curling trials in Colorado, where they saw both the US teams qualify. Chris opened the event singing the Star Spangled Banner. Chris and his wife Sally (who was a featured performer at the trials as well) are also known to participate in the sport themselves.

There is a nice “Curling For Dummies” overview on Chris’ web site for those a bit foggy on the rules, and he explained how he became a proponent of the stone and the broom.

“Sally is from northern Alberta, where curling is very popular, and it runs in the family. Her sister Marcy is a past Canadian champion in the sport and two of her brothers are competitive curlers who have both played against the current Canadian Olympic team at different times.

I took up the sport about 5 years ago. All I can say is it’s way harder than it looks. Learning to play in Alberta for me is a little like taking up the banjo in your 40s and trying to keep up on Dear Old Dixie with a bunch of people who have been playing their whole lives!”

You can find the Chris Jones & The Night Drivers’ tour schedule online. The band features Ned Luberecki on banjo, Jon Weisberger on bass, and Jones on guitar and lead vocals.

When you catch them live, be sure to get Chris to tell you how he injured himself on the ice. Hint: it wasn’t a curling-related accident.

I heartily second John’s comment about being too busy to post showcase reviews in a timely manner. But even if this is late, these bands are still very worthy of mention. As it happens, each of the groups I watched also has a newly-released CD.

I caught Sirius/XM deejay Chris Jones and his band the Nightdrivers in the 1:30 slot on Tuesday night. Their show is always entertaining and almost always includes one of banjo-player Ned Luberecki’s signature pieces. Tonight it was his “classic” bluegrass song, Cabin of Death, which we all sang along with merrily. Their new release, Cloud of Dust, has been mentioned here in a previous entry. We sat around so long talking after the show that the security guards asked us to move along so they could close up, which made us feel a little rebellious.

John has already mentioned the Jeff and Vida Band’s excellent showcase, so I’ll just add the picture below. They have a new CD titled Selma Chalk. I’d also like to give them a big thumbs up for being the only showcase room I saw that was actually decorated. With a little thought and effort on their part they created a very pleasant atmosphere in which to listen to music. Their decor wasn’t elaborate, but it was a welcome change from the zero atmosphere of the other showcase rooms. (Showcase presenters take note!) The paintings of instruments on the wall behind them are by Lori Davis.

New York Monroe-style mandolinist Buddy Merriam and his band Backroads delivered an excellent performance featuring material from their new album Back Roads Mandolin. Singer/guitarist Kathy DeVine and bass player Ernie Sykes sang a particularly stunning duet on an old George Jones and Melba Montgomery song. They ended with a tune Buddy wrote in honor of Butch Baldassari titled simply Baldassari, showing once again how great an influence Butch had within the mandolin community.

Finally I caught almost a whole set of Dede Wyland. She may be best known around the Washington D.C. area, but years ago she played with the nationally-known band Tony Trischka and Skyline. Her first new album in a long time is called Keep the Light On. She gathered some D.C.-area all-stars to back her up: Mike Munford on banjo, Ira Gitlin on bass, and Frank Sollivan on mandolin. (I didn’t catch the name of the fiddler.) Her voice is high and pure and her music has just a bit of a progressive edge to it.

Ira came up with one of the niftiest terms I’ve heard in a while. When a fiddle kicks off a fiddle tune, it generally starts with a shuffle bow lick called “potatoes.” You usually have either four or eight sets of potatoes. When the fiddler started to kick into a tune at the showcase Ira said, “Give us the old quadraspud!”

Regular Sirius-XM host Chris Jones will be in an unfamiliar position tomorrow when he is interviewed tomorrow on Bluegrass Junction (Sirius 65, XM 14).

Chris is a regular host for their bluegrass music programming, but on Wednesday (8/26) he’ll be in the artist chair, being interviewed by fellow Bluegrass Junction personality Kyle Cantrell. He’ll be on at 11:00 a.m. for the World Premiere of his new CD, Cloud Of Dust.

Immediately following the premiere, the CD will be available for download from Chris’ web site, and pre-release copies are available there for immediate delivery as well. The official release date is set for September 29.

Replays of this show will be aired during the regular Track-By-Track time slot on Bluegrass Junction: Thursday (8/27) at 9:00 p.m. and Sunday (8/30) at 11:00 a.m. All times eastern.

Find out more about Cloud of Dust – and hear a sneak preview audio track – in our earlier post.

The first single from Cloud Of Dust, the upcoming CD from Chris Jones & The Night Drivers, has been released online.

This will be his first band project in quite a few years, with Ned Luberecki on banjo, Mark Stoffel on mandolin, and Jon Weisberger on bass.

It’s a song Chris wrote, The Love She Left Behind, recorded with his road band, and featuring harmony vocals from Darrin Vincent and Chris’ charming and talented wife, Sally Jones.

Chris agreed to let us stream the single here, and shared a few words about the song.

The Love She Left Behind -  Listen now:   

“Probably the most common question of any songwriting workshop (and usually the first question) is: ‘Do you write the words or the music first?’ I think people keep asking this question because songwriters, myself included, never give a very satisfying answer to it, usually saying that it depends, or that it’s usually never one or the other.

Well, in the case of this song, I can actually say that I had only a rough concept of what the song was about, then wrote all the music and added the words later. There. Thanks for coming to the workshop. Be sure to catch our show on the main stage at 8:30.

Darrin Vincent and my wife Sally did a wonderful job on the harmony vocals, and Mike Witcher played great dobro on this. Mike played a European tour with us a couple of years ago, and he also doubled as the photographer for the project (he does great work by the way, which you  can check out on his web site.”

Download purchase of The Love She Left Behind is available now online, and an airplay-quality version for radio stations can be obtained through AirPlay Direct.

The full CD is scheduled for a late September releases, but download purchases for all the tracks should be enabled by September 1.