Roberts sings of "Small Town America"

This is the first single from a forthcoming solo album.

With long-time colleague Tony Wray playing both guitar and banjo, and Grascals bandmate Adam Haynes on fiddle, Roberts wrote the song. He his helped with harmonies from daughter — and Mountain Home Music Company label mate — Jaelee Roberts and wife Andrea Roberts, whose supports on bass.

Lyrics include:
"A man's good word is all he needs down at the corner store
And old men at the courthouse are greeting all the folks they know
Little kids stare through the window of the dime store on the square
And the ice cream at the drugstore, it's the best anywhere
Small town America, a way of life being left behind "

"A few years ago," said Roberts, "I was driving back to Nashville from East Tennessee and decided to take the backroads instead of interstates. This drive brought me through several small towns, and it seemed that every square — what was once the heart and soul of the town — was now pretty much closed down, with boarded up windows, vacant buildings and no people around."

"As I drove on, it occurred to me that at the edge of every town with a shut-down town square there was a Walmart store with a full parking lot and bustling with people. That made me start thinking of the small town that I grew up in and how busy the courthouse square was when I was a kid — but after the Walmart moved in, pretty much everything on the square shut down. 'They say progress has to make a way, but when's enough enough?'"

Born and raised in Leitchfield, Ky., Roberts was a founding member of New Tradition, a prominent bluegrass gospel group that toured widely throughout the 1990s, released eight albums. At the beginning of the century, Roberts began working for Gibson Musical Instruments, eventually becoming head of its Mandolin Division and Nashville Plant and Repair Supervisor before starting his own repair service, Just Off The Bench.

While still at Gibson, he helped to found The Grascals, the award-winning bluegrass sextet that quickly rose to the music's top ranks when they earned the International Bluegrass Music Association's Song and Emerging Artist of the Year awards in 2005 and its top Entertainer of the Year honors in 2006 and 2007.Robers released his first solo album in 2004, and made his Mountain Home Music Company debut as a solo artist with 2014's Nighthawk.