News that Styx member Tommy Shaw is working on a bluegrass album is like hearing that Willie Nelson is recording a cover of Renegade, or that Alison Krauss is a Styx fan.  Turns out, she is!  A post on Shaw's Facebook page says his next-door neighbor introduced him to the music of Krauss and Union Station.  That led to Shaw catching Krauss in concert at the Wiltern Theater in LA - a concert he said rose to the musical level of an acoustic Mahavishnu Orchestra - and meeting her back stage. After Krauss fessed-up to being a fan of Styx music, Shaw asked her to sing on his 7 Deadly Sins solo album. Her vocal, which Shaw describes as spellbinding, is on the song Half A Mind.
Robert Plant's decision to form Band Of Joy rather than record a follow-up to Raising Sand, his highly acclaimed collaboration with Krauss, gave her the time to take Shaw up on his proposal that the two of them work together to complete an album he had started years earlier.  The sessions for The Great Divide were done in Nashville and resulted in music Shaw seems confident is strong enough that fans of both Styx and Union Station will find a lot to like about it.  The album is slated for a March release, and a February session of Austin City Limits is in the works.

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