The latest entry in Mountain Home Music Company and Organic Records' groundbreaking set of collaborations under the Bluegrass at the Crossroads banner drives home once again the project’s essential characteristic: bring together some of the best musicians in the genre over fresh material for recordings that blend individual mastery with the excitement of new musical conversations.

Co-written and sung by mandolinist Darren Nicholson of Mountain Home’s award-winning Balsam Range quintet, “Lonesome is the Price I Pay” is an archetypal bit of bluegrass — a happy-sounding song with miserable lyrics, as many observers have put it. In this case, the lyric’s narrative is built around a “get out of town” theme, punctuated with plenty of opportunities for the group to showcase the energetic, inventive playing that’s earned its participants acclaim from every corner of the bluegrass tent. In addition to Nicholson, they include Steve Martin Banjo Award recipient Kristin Scott Benson (The Grascals); Skip Cherryholmes of the award-winning sextet, Sideline; Organic Records’ artist and member of the GRAMMY®-winning Infamous Stringdusters, Jeremy Garrett (fiddle, harmony vocals), and Kevin Kehrberg, bassist for Organic Records’ Zoe & Cloyd, with Garrett’s Stringdusters bandmate Travis Book contributing a harmony vocal, too.

"Sometimes lonesome is the price you pay when you give your heart away,” notes Nicholson, who wrote the song with frequent collaborator, Charles Humphrey III (Songs From The Road Band). “It’s a bluegrass frolic about starting over. It hurts when we fall on the ground, but we also use the ground to get back up — that's the sentiment.”

From its muscular, banjo-driven kick-off to the final statement of the song’s title by the vocal trio, “Lonesome Is The Price I Pay” is an undeniable illustration of the way that Bluegrass at the Crossroads’ collaborations add up to more than the sum of their parts.  

Listen to "Lonesome Is The Price I Pay" HERE.