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 3 is available below:

"One of the things I love most about Bluegrass is the story telling. Life stories—happy ones, tales of love gone wrong, tragedies, bad behavior, stories about drinking too much, not enough, spiritual stories and all kinds of evil, often resolved in simple refrains. No analysis necessary, the music does the talking and if you’ve made it to the chorus then you are hooked. For those of you who listen on a regular basis you already know this, but if you are just looking on, wondering if Bluegrass is for you maybe the stories are what will keep you herelong enough to set that hook.

My father used to tell this story about when he was very young, and his father, 'Papaw' as we knew him, and as best as I can recall, took young Dalton Shaw with him to work in the woods up in northern Alabama, following the teams of men in their traveling logging camps, cutting down the trees for the lumber yards. Daddy was brought in as the water boy, and it was his job to keep the water bucket full so the men could quench their thirst in those sweltering humid pine forests. It was a hard life, sleeping in tents and working all day cutting down the big evergreen trees and preparing them to be loaded onto trucks to be taken to the mills. I can picture him as a little boy hauling this bucket around with a big ladle for dipping. I don’t recall much more from the story except for the part where one day he saw a man accidentally walk into the path of one of the big swing saws and get cut straight up the middle, almost in two, taking a step or two and falling over dead right in front of him. A sight this young boy who’d someday grow up to be my father never forgot. That story still gives me the Willies. t never occurred to me to write a song about it until I began working on this album, but suddenly I couldn’t imagine not writing 'Sawmill'. Although the word never appears in the song, that’s how I referred to it as we went about fleshing out all the songs and though I would normally name a song from a line that occurs a few times, 'Sawmill' stuck and nobody ever questioned it.

I’d planned on finding someone with a great baritone voice to sing the tag line at the end of the chorus but as it came time to do the final mixes, that person never materialized so I ended up singing the line 'Never let the jug run dry…' myself.

The song remained in its rough form for most of the duration of the writing and recording process, including the trip to Nashville where Rob Ikes, Stuart Duncan, Scott Vestal and other highly skilled players joined in to breath life into this album. It wasn’t until we got to crunch time that it came together when one day I was listening to it and remembered that all through his life my father kept a water cooler of some kind whenever he was on the job with the Alabama Gas Company, also known as Alagasco. And whenever we went fishing he’d bring the water cooler which was like a two gallon thermos with a little spout that could be opened by pressing a little button just above it. 'Suddenly the story had an epilogue. 'I did a little editing here and there and suddenly this little sleeper made sense. 'This all helped to guide the lead vocal I needed to cut and this in turn led to the background vocal parts.

Once it was finished, I started to wonder, had I gotten so into telling this story that I took liberties with the facts? So I called my mother in Alabama and ran it by her and she sad that's the way she recalled it too. 'This was one story that needed no embellishment!

One of the things I enjoy most about creating an album’s worth of songs is to have a big batch of songs in various stages of completion, and let them tell you what’s next. Sometimes it’s right away, and other times there are those like 'Sawmill' who wait to the very end to pop up with the road map in hand, presenting them to you just as you are about to write them off.

I’d almost accepted as fact that this song was not gonna make the cut, then suddenly there is was, kicking other songs off the album and taking it’s place up near the front of the line!"

TS

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: