Chris Jones & the Night Drivers (USA) in Ireland, Sept. 2019

Last year Chris Jones & the Night Drivers toured Ireland with a well established personnel: Chris (guitar, lead vocals), Jon Weisberger (bass), Mark Stoffel (mandolin), and Gina Clowes (banjo). Recently, changes to this lineup have been announced; so, looking forward to their arrival a month from now, we're delighted to have the straight tip from Chris himself (photo):

We will have a somewhat different lineup for this tour (and I think a really good one), partly due to band changes and partly just due to other scheduling circumstances.

Marshall Wilborn, who is replacing Jon Weisberger on bass, will start his tenure as a Night Driver with this tour. Mark Stoffel is unable to do this tour due to circumstances with his other job (he’s the only of us with a decent day job!). He is being replaced, just for this tour, by the very talented Tristan Scroggins, who has toured Ireland in the past with his father Jeff. Gina, though she is leaving the band, will still be on this tour. In fact our last show on the tour will be her final show as a band member, so that makes this tour a really notable transition time for us: Marshall’s first show at the beginning, Gina’s last show at the end.

Personnel changes are never easy, and I’ve been blessed for a number of years with having very few of them, but they can also breathe new life into the music, and Mark Stoffel and I are very excited about the new lineup, much as we appreciate Jon and Gina, both musically and personally. Jon had played with me for seventeen years, so that’s a very big change, but Marshall and I have played music together in different forms going all the way back to 1985, so getting to play with him will feel like a musical homecoming.