January 17, 2025 — After a years-long, uninterrupted stretch of chart-topping original songs, Chris Jones & The Night Drivers are shaking things up with their first single of 2025 — yet even as they offer a momentary departure from the path of recent years, the quartet’s take on Country Music Hall of Famer Tom T. Hall’s“Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken)” stays true to Jones’ distinctive sensibility and personal history.
“This is an old and lesser-known Vietnam War-era song of Tom T.’s,” says Jones, whose friendship with Hall and his songwriting partner and wife, Miss Dixie, ran long and deep enough that he and members of the Night Drivers were chosen to accompany Tom T. at his last public concert. “And it’s the first song of his I’ve recorded since his passing a few years ago. I think I didn’t feel ready to until now. He had a unique ability to incorporate bits of humor into a sad story, and this is definitely one of those. This song is vivid and poignant in a way that is vintage Tom T. Hall. I was going to record this several years ago, but when I brought it up to Tom T. and Dixie, they wrote ‘Hero in Harlan’ that very day to give me something new to do instead.”
Offering the same keen ability to blend key elements of the original recording with his own creative touches that Jones has always shown his covers, “Mama Bake a Pie”fastens on the easy, syncopated rhythm and prominent guitar of Hall’s recording while bringing forward the acoustic tones of Mark Stoffel’s mandolin and guest Carley Arrowood’s fiddle. Meanwhile, even as Jones recaps Hall’s laconic delivery in his own resonant voice, new harmonies from Stoffel and Grace van’t Hof take the song’s wry portrait of a newly disabled war veteran’s journey home to a new level:
The bottle hidden underneath the blanket, over my two battered legs
I can see the stewardess make over me and ask “Were you afraid?”
I’ll say, “Why, no, I’m Superman, and couldn’t find the phone booth quite in time.”
A GI gets a lot of laughs
If he remembers all the funny lines
Mama bake a pie, Daddy kill a chicken
Your son is coming home, 11:35 Wednesday night
Arriving just as the world enters a new era riven with echoes of older times, Chris Jones & The Night Drivers’ “Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken)” is a compelling reminder of the price of war that’s at once timely and timeless.
“Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken)” is streaming in Dolby Atmos spatial audio on Apple Music, Amazon Music and TIDAL. Listen to it HERE.
About Chris Jones & The Night Drivers
Whether it’s in the studio or on stage, Chris Jones & The Night Drivers are making some of the most distinctively elegant yet driving music to be heard anywhere today, and they’re delivering it with a unique blend of dry wit, emotional authenticity and broad humor that’s won the loyalty of a growing number of fans across the country, from MerleFest in North Carolina to California’s Huck Finn Jubilee, and around the world.
Steve Martin referred to the Night Drivers as “. . . some of the best players in bluegrass! Chris Jones’ voice is there with the great masters.” Americana artist Jim Lauderdale said of Chris, “He continues to have one of the most distinctive and best voices in music, period.”
The band — which is Mark Stoffel on mandolin, Grace van’t Hof on banjo and ukelele and Marshall Wilborn on bass — is led by Chris’ soulful lead-singing, songwriting, and solid rhythm and lead guitar. Chris boasts extensive performance credits as a sideman with artists like Lynn Morris, Vassar Clements, Special Consensus, Dave Evans, Earl Scruggs, and the acclaimed Irish band The Chieftains.
Altogether, members of Chris Jones & The Night Drivers have won more than a dozen IBMA awards and have recorded more than ten #1 songs. The Night Drivers also bring name recognition in related fields, as bluegrass fans are well-familiar with Jones for his award-winning work as a SiriusXM DJ, on both Bluegrass Junction and Willie’s Roadhouse.