TOMMY SHAW, guitarist of legendary rock band STYX, released his debut Bluegrass album, The Great Divide, on March 22nd through Pazzo Music/Fontana Distribution. Shaw offers a look behind the making of the album, Part 1 is available below:

"In 2003, my friend Brad Davis asked me to sing a high harmony on a bluegrass song he’d written and was recording for a solo album. I had fun cutting that track and when he realized this was right in my wheelhouse he suggested we get together and try our hand at writing some bluegrass. Having grown up in Alabama in I’d been exposed to all kinds of popular music, including Saturday night radio broadcasts of The Grand Ole Opry, which came in clearly because of WSM’s 50,000 watt signal up the road in Nashville. Songs like THE CARTER FAMILY's 'Wildwood Flower' were standards in my hometown no matter what type of band you were playing in because sooner or later you’d get a request for it, so you needed to know how to play it.

Brad and I got together every few months to write and record demos of new bluegrass songs. When we had three songs completed and recorded I said, 'We have a story now and can start playing these for people.' We were thrilled but nobody else knew about it for months other than our closest friends. Their feedback was very positive.

But it was now 2005 and we realized by then this was going to be a was a slow process because we were both incredibly busy in our individual careers and it was tough finding a time when we were both available to get together, but we loved what we were creating and knew the day would come when we’d get it done.

In late 2009 we saw an opening and committed to begin writing the rest of the songs we needed to make an album. After the new year Brad began spending three, four and five days at a time at my studio in Los Angeles and over the next several months we amassed a list of 19 songs in various stages of completion.

The first song Brad and I wrote and demo’d for The Great Divide was called 'I’ll Be Comin' Home'.

It was one that just came out of the dobro resonator as soon as I sat down and put my hands on it. The etherial simple melody. Brad heard this and began writing the first verse. There it was. This song’s water had broken and it was being born.

I picked up my pencil too and within minutes the words were pretty much written and it was ready to get arranged. But again, this song knew where and how it wanted to go so we just kept nursing it along and soon we were laying down tracks. With Brad's experience in the bluegrass domain, I was getting great guidance on how to flesh out our song. At the same time I felt right at home in this world.

We’d called SIR (Studio Instrument Rentals) to bring us a double bass and when Brad laid that down it really rounded out the track sonically. We would later take this recording with us to the Nashville sessions where Sam Bush and Byron House would bring their soulful touches to it; Sam on mandolin and fiddle, Byron on bass and bowed bass. With the exception of one word in the last verse that I fixed later because I’d garbled it a bit first time around, the vocal you hear on the album is the demo vocal we recorded there on day one of what would eventually become the closing track on The Great Divide album.

Our fate was sealed. We had begun!"

The Great Divide features the following 11 songs:

'The Next Right Thing'

'Back In Your Kitchen'

'Sawmill'

'The Great Divide'

'Shadows In The Moonlight'

'Get On The One'

'Umpteen Miles'

'Cavalry'

'Afraid To Love'

'Give `Em Hell Harry'

'I'll Be Comin' Home'

The Great Divide features an impressive roster of guest musicians, including: Alison Krauss, Dwight Yoakam, Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush, Rob Ickes, Stuart Duncan, Byron House, Gary Burr and many more.

With this album, Shaw, a Montgomery, Alabama native, establishes himself as an authentic addition to the Bluegrass community. Born with a unique gift for music, a passion quickly recognized by his parents, he picked up his first guitar at the age of ten. From what his brothers remember, after Tommy's introduction to the guitar; "We never saw him again...", as he would stay in his room for hours practicing day and night. His tenacity and intrinsic passion for Bluegrass at an early age implies that this new release isn't a casual endeavor, but a return to the music on which he was raised. Shaw wrote or co-wrote every song on the album in addition to playing acoustic guitar, dobro/resonator and mandolin.

A perennial part of the rock scene since the mid-70s as a member of Styx, DAMN YANKEES and SHAW/BLADES, Bluegrass may at first seem like a stretch for Shaw, but his transition to Bluegrass is seamless. Having been raised on the genre, Shaw has always been deeply enamored with Bluegrass' ability to connect to the listener through storytelling. "These are story songs," says Shaw, an Alabama Music Hall of Fame Inductee. "I think songs that take you on a little journey are the best ones."

This is the story of a Southern boy who made it "big," but always held tight to his roots. "The Great Divide is a story of love and life; of happiness and hope; of loss and discovery," says Shaw. "It's the story of a journey that spans generations and is ultimately about trying to find your way home. And I'm as proud of this story as any I've ever told."

Coinciding with the March 22nd release of the album, Shaw made his Grand Ole Opry debut in Nashville, TN on March 26th to promote the record. Behind-the-scenes footage from the day and a performance of the song 'I'll Be Coming Home' is available below: