The Daily Times

On the surface, it appears Chris West is the last man standing.

Ask him about his status as the only remaining original member of East Tennessee bluegrass band Blue Moon Rising, and he’ll say the same thing. But the new lineup has taught him nothing if not this — as long as he soldiers on, holding true to the original vision of the group and surrounding himself with players loyal to it as well, then the Blue Moon Rising name need never die.

“I could have just started a new band, given it a new name, whatever,” West told The Daily Times this week. “But Blue Moon Rising has been a name and a brand now for close to 10 years. It’s recognizable from the radio play we’ve gotten around the world on satellite radio, and I thought I’d be crazy to give that name recognition up. On top of that, there’s the fact that I wrote so many of the songs. Even though I wasn’t always singing lead on them, I wrote them for Blue Moon Rising, and I thought that was another reason to keep it going.”

For local bluegrass fans, most of whom regard Blue Moon Rising as a fixture locally (the band will perform Saturday at the Rocky Branch Community Center and on Saturday, Dec. 11, on the WDVX “Blue Plate Special”), that’s welcome news. For newcomers to the group, it’s no big deal — because the new lineup’s most recent album, “Strange New World,” is as solid as anything the band has done in the past, and that’s saying a lot.

The band formed in 2000, recording its debut album, “Raised on Pain,” that same year. The boys followed it up with “Where Wood Meets Steel” in late 2002, and in late 2005, the band broke nationally with the album “On the Rise.” The CD debuted at No. 14 on Billboard’s Bluegrass Chart and stayed there for almost two years, receiving recognition across the board — http://CMT.com named it one of the “Top 10 Bluegrass Albums” of 2005, as did Gritz Magazine; it spent 10 months on Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine’s Top 15 Albums Chart (the single “This Old Martin Box” was in the Top 30 of that publication’s singles chart for all of calendar year 2006); and the International Bluegrass Music Association nominated the group for Best Emerging Artist in 2006.

Two years ago, the guys attempted to stretch their legs and broaden their fanbase on the album “One Lonely Shadow,” covering songs by Bruce Springsteen, Townes Van Zandt and Fred Eaglesmith, among others. By all accounts, it was a success — until, not long after its release, West’s co-founder, Keith Garrett, and newcomer Harold Nixon were given the chance to move on to bigger things.

“They had a good opportunity fall in their lap when they got asked to join The Boxcars, Adam Steffey’s new band,” West said. “Those guys, most of them were coming from the Dan Tyminski Band and are career musicians. Even though Blue Moon Rising has been a very serious band for a long time, we still work day jobs. I think, long-term, Keith just saw it as a good opportunity.”

He wished his old friend well, but he struggled with what to do with Blue Moon Rising, he said.

“I was depressed as hell for a day, to say the least,” he said with a chuckle. “I didn’t know if I wanted to keep going with it or not. I thought on it and dwelled on it and thought, yeah — I do want to keep it together.”

He called Brandon Bostic, whom he knew from Bostic’s work with Valerie Smith and Liberty Pike, and asked him to try out for the mandolin slot. Tony Mowell, the band’s current bass player, was already in place — he’d been hired before Garrett left — and agreed to stay. And Bostic brought with him Owen Piatt to become the band’s banjo picker.

“It just happened over one night,” West said. “I had a whole new band after one audition. These guys are so great and so fun to play with. They’re all young guys — they range in age from 19 to 27, so that makes me the old man of the bunch — but they’re just on fire to play. They’re excited to be a part of Blue Moon Rising, and the name means something to them as well.”

In the studio, the guys prodded West out of his comfort zone on the new record. He calls “Strange New World” the “most diverse” Blue Moon Rising CD ever recorded, with everything from traditional bluegrass to a song that channels straight-up Mississippi Delta blues. It’s not so wildly different as to alienate long-time fans, but it does push some boundaries, he said.

“We don’t do a lot of that, because primarily, we play traditional acoustic bluegrass music,” he said. “But we have the ability and the love of many different kinds of music that we can draw from. It’s good music, and a lot of people like it, but there’s also an entertain aspect to what we do now.

“Keith Garrett remains one of my very best friends to this day, and he was very excited that I was going to keep the band, because he cared about Blue Moon Rising and loved the band as much as I do. And while it did hurt to lose band members, we’re probably better now than we’ve ever been. These days, we’re entertaining a crowd and not just playing to the musicians in the crowd.”

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