I’ve been playing with a new band, The Best Westerns, for the past few months. It’s a Bob Wills-style band covering a lot of repertoire from that period. The driving force behind the band is Mark Hembree, a very classy bass player with a fine pedigree: five years as the bass player for Bill Monroe and a founding member of the Nashville Bluegrass Band. Last weekend we got together to record a few songs for an informal demo. It was decidedly “old-school,” with the guys set up in a circle around two mics. It has an honest sound to it, like the old, pre-multitrack recordings do.

I added my version of the standard tune, Milk Cow Blues (even Elvis recorded this) to my “listen” page. For the sake of brevity (and ego!), this is a truncated version of the track focused on my playing and singing. You should check out the full demo to see what these guys (and gal) can do. Better yet, come see us live.