As he celebrates a big career milestone — the formation 30 years ago of his band, the Night Drivers — Chris Jones has turned once again to the country flavor that has served him so well through those decades. “How Small of Me,” his latest release from Mountain Home Music Company, wraps a characteristically complex meditation in the mid-tempo lilt of a mid-60s classic from the likes of George Jones.
Indeed, to accentuate the feel, the bluegrass singer/songwriter reached out to an old pal who has portrayed Jones on the stage — and has his own distinctive voice, too. “Jim Lauderdale and I have been friends for decades now,” Chris notes, “but this is the first time we have ever sung together on a recording, so I’m really happy about this.”
“Meanwhile,” he adds, “I co-wrote the song with John McCutcheon, somebody I first met when I was a teenager, and though more recently, he’s somebody who the band and I have performed with a few times at the Walnut Valley Festival in Kansas, we had never written a song together until last year, and ‘How Small of Me’ is one of our first results.”
Still, even as Chris Scruggs (Marty Stuart’s Fabulous Superlatives) contributes plenty of swooning steel guitar, “How Small of Me” keeps a largely acoustic tone, kicking off with elegant mandolin from Night Driver Mark Stoffel, and underpinned by Jones’ acoustic guitar, touches of baritone ukulele by Night Driver Grace van’t Hof and upright bass from former Night Driver Jon Weisberger. It’s a fitting framework for a lyric that Jones and McCutcheon have worked to convey emotional nuance, especially in the memorable chorus that starts and ends the song:
How small of me to think the least of you
How blind was I, I never tried to see the longer view
Wounded by a mere mistake I almost set you free
How small of me
As for Lauderdale, he’s on the record as saying, “When I first heard Chris Jones over 25 years ago he became one of my favorite singers, and he continues to have one of the most distinctive and best voices in music, period. It’s like fine wine for the ears.”
"How Small of Me" is streaming in Dolby Atmos spatial audio on Apple Music, Amazon Music and TIDAL. Listen to it HERE.
