Ashby Frank’s last single of 2024, a blazing version of long-time bluegrass staple, “Blue Night,” is still popping up on the airplay charts, but Nashville’s favorite mandolinist-about-town is already back with a left-of-center selection that takes a rock song made into a country hit and gives it a bluegrass twist. 

Appearing on the final Dire Straits album in 1991, “The Bug” was a Top 20 country hit two years later. “I grew up listening to the great country music of the 90s,” recalls Frank, “and first heard this song when it was recorded by one of my favorite singer songwriters, the great Mary Chapin Carpenter. I wasn’t aware that it was a cover until several years later, when I heard the original recording by Dire Straits and discovered that it was written by Mark Knopfler. That band had such a deep groove on that original cut that I really got into, and I immediately started thinking about how a Bluegrass arrangement might work.” 

“I brought the song up in the studio when we started recording my new album,” he adds. “And we bounced it around until we came up with a groovy traditional-meets-jam band version that I’m super proud of. Seth Taylor (guitar) and Matt Menefee (banjo) added some wicked solos, and my friend and label mate Jaelee Roberts added some killer harmonies.”

With Travis Anderson on bass and master session drummer Tony Creasman on hand, Frank and his colleagues tackle the song’s country-rock with even more energy than the earlier versions, adopting Carpenter’s chicken-picking instrumental section as a vehicle for Taylor’s virtuosic flat-picking, then tacking on an extended outro that features out-of-the-box banjo and mandolin pyrotechnics before fading away like the whine of a passing truck’s wheels. In between, over the ensemble’s own variation of the original’s “deep groove,” Frank’s rockabilly-tinged vocal serves up the song’s wry lyric:

Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug
Sometimes it all comes together, sometimes you're a fool in love
Sometimes you're the Louisville slugger,sometimes you're the ball
Sometimes it all comes together, sometimes you're gonna lose it all

“I even threw in a couple of yodels, which is a career first for me,” Frank notes with a laugh. “I can’t wait for everyone to hear it!”

"The Bug" is streaming in Dolby Atmos spatial audio on Apple Music, Amazon Music and TIDAL. Listen to it HERE.