Chris Thile was early acted as a child prodigy of the mandolin playing. No wonder, since he grabbed the mandolin at the tender age of five and perfected his mandolin playing in childhood within a few years to a level that allowed him to produce his first album at the age of thirteen, having launched together with his father five years earlier the bluegrass band Nickel Creek. This was followed by other successful albums, together with the classic stars Yo-Yo Ma, cello and Edgar Meyer, double bass and by numerous Grammy Awards, such as for his folk album "The Goat Rodeo Sessions" with Ma and Meyer. In addition to bluegrass and folk albums, Chris Thile also released an album of sonatas and partitas by Johann Sebastian Bach. At the latest because of his solo tour of Europe in March 2017, on which he performed at the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, among others, Chris Thile is a household name also on this side of the Atlantic for bluegrass and folk fans.

The radio show A Prairie Home Companion enjoys a very special reputation in the United States among its many folk fans. Chris Thile has been hosting the show, which has just been renamed Live from Here, since fall 2016. As a distinctive feature of the first season, Chris Thile has weekly written songs exclusively for the show and performed live. The Thanks for Listening album features ten of these songs that were later produced in the studio, some of which reflecting the trauma that the regime's opponents of today’s White House crew are suffering. For example, Chris Thile describes in the song "Falsetto" underlined by oblique chords and presented in some shrill voice his imaginary meeting with the President, who does not want anything to do with an artist of his special style. In general, Thanks for Listening turns out to be a singer-songwriter album with the voices of Sarah Jarosz, Gaby Moreno, and Aoife O'Donovan optimally selected for the genre folk and bluegrass alongside the voice of Chris Thile as lead singer and thanks to impressively idiomatic instrumentalists, whom Chris Thiele joins as a mandolin virtuoso, who on this album is also active on other string instruments, except bass and viola.

The album's life-affirming, uplifting songs include "Douglas Fir" and "Balboa," both dominate by the mandolin. They also This include "Thank you New York", a bow to the lifestyle and special beauty of the East Coast metropolis. Among the socially critical songs is "Feedback Loop" as a cynical commentary on the social media bubbles and "Stanley Ann", as swan song of Barack Obama on his past time in the White House. The title song finally proves to be a bridge between the two faces, the happy one and the sorrowful face of this album, starting in an uncomfortable airport atmosphere but ending in a jubilant finale, embracing the entire world.

Thanks for Listening impresses with its diverse mood, excellent musicians and singers and with a very excellent recording technique, which can be enjoyed without compromise in the format of the high-resolution download.

Chris Thile, mandoline
Sarah Jarosz, vocals (on tracks 7, 10)
Gaby Moreno, vocals (on tracks 2, 5)
Aoife O'Donovan, vocals (on tracks 3, 4, 8, 10)
Alan Hampton, bass
Ted Poor, drums
Nadia Sirota, viola