CHICAGO’S REVERED BLUEGRASS OUTFIT CELEBRATES 50 YEAR ANNIVERSARY 

CD will be signed by Special Consensus (while supplies last and offer is present).

No band has done more to elevate bluegrass music over the past 50 years than the Chicago-based Special Consensus. The two-time GRAMMY-nominees and multiple IBMA-Award winners are celebrating their golden anniversary with the release of Been All Around This World, a stellar set of contemporary bluegrass featuring special guest appearances from former members over the band’s 50 year history: Robbie Fulks, Rick Faris, Josh Williams, Chris Jones, Ashby Frank and Dallas Wayne.
 
Working again with producer Alison Brown, the band builds on their legacy of blending classic sounds with contemporary influences. Bluegrass classics including John Hartford’s “I Wish We Had Our Time Again” and Tony Rice’s “Like a Train” sit alongside reworkings of The Marvelettes’ “Please Mr. Postman” and Roger Miller’s “King of the Road”. All but two of the album’s tracks are collaborations between the current and former band members and the spirit of musical camaraderie that informed the recording sessions shines through the music.
 
The new albums kicks off “What Am I Doing Hangin’ ‘Round?,” a song made popular by the Monkees, featuring Chris Jones on lead vocals and a climactic final chorus that includes harmonies from Rick Faris and Dallas Wayne. Faris’s high tenor vocals are featured on “Please Mr. Postman” and Dallas Wayne delivers a stunning version of “I’m Always On A Mountain When I Fall” which was recorded by Merle Haggard in the late 1970s. The album’s first single “I’ve Been All Around This World” winds through three modulations, with each section featuring a different lead singer starting with Josh Williams, segueing into Greg Blake with Ashby Frank and ending with Robbie Fulks. Everyone joins in on an epic, and poignant, version of the John Hartford-penned “I Wish We Had Our Time Again” with all of the guests trading vocal lines and solos with current band members Greg Cahill (banjo), Greg Blake (guitar), Brian McCarty (mandolin) and Dan Eubanks (bass).