Chosen Road is celebrating the season with their Appalachian Christmas album, out now. The group, made up of founding member Jonathan Buckner, along with Zachary Alvis, Tyler Robertson and Josh Hicks, enlisted the help of a few guest artists, including Guy Penrod, Jimmy Fortune, Point of Grace and Selah‘s Allan Hall to make the project come to life.

The idea for the album was years in the making, thanks to the bluegrass group’s popular Appalachian Christmas Tour.

“Over the past seven years, it’s just really grown in popularity,” Buckner tells Everything Nash of the tour. “Those dates are usually some of the first ones that go; we usually book those dates a year and a half, two years out. And so we knew that, at some point in time, we had to do a Christmas album. But I think the tough thing for us was, we just didn’t want to put out a Christmas album that had the exact same songs, and that had been done over and over and over again. And so, what ended up on the album was songs that over the past seven years, we said, ‘This one worked out live on tour.This one didn’t work, so let’s get rid of it. Let’s replace it with this.'”

Chosen Road admits they feel a release at having Appalachian Christmas out, after thinking about it for so many years.

“It was a long time coming,” Buckner says of the album. “We knew that we had to do one at some point in time, and we wanted to, but it was just finding the songs that worked. We’re pretty excited about the collection that’s on there.”

Perhaps surprisingly, Chosen Road didn’t initially intend to make Appalachian Christmas an album with several guest artists. But after one artist agreed to join them on “Who Do You Think,” the guys realized they had the opportunity to feature more artists as well.

“When we started on the album, we did not have any plans at all to do any collaborations,” Buckner reveals. “I think the first one that came to mind was, we were in the studio cutting ‘Who Do You Think’ that Jimmy Fortune joined us on.  And I remember sitting there listening to Tyler cut his vocals, and I thought, ‘Man, it would be awesome if we could get Jimmy to do this.’ And so I sent a text message out and Jimmy said he would do it. It just was really, really cool.”

Penrod joins Chosen Road on “Noel,” a popular Christmas song written by Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman and Ed Cash. The song came to life with Penrod, even though Penrod had, perhaps surprisingly, never sung “Noel” before.

“We had worked with Guy at an event that we were doing, and he was on the date as well,” Buckner recounts. “We had never met Guy before, but really enjoyed talking with him and hanging out with him that night. And it was shortly after that that we reached out and asked if he would be willing to do a song with us. He said, ‘Yeah, whatever I can do to help.’ He had never sung the song ‘Noel’ before … He was familiar with it but had never sung it.  But we all knew Guy could sing the phone book. He’s got such a monster voice.”

Chosen Road is spending most of the holiday season on the road, as part of their Appalachian Christmas Tour. Although their December is busy, they agree they wouldn’t want it any other way.

“You spend so much time working on this Christmas music,” Alvis says. “And you only get to do it for a month. And then, you have to wait until next Christmas. So it’s like, let’s go ahead and just knock some dates out while we’ve got it, and it’s fresh on our minds.”

Appalachian Christmas and all of Chosen Road’s music, as well as a list of their upcoming shows, can be found at ChosenRoadMusic.com.