Crowder‘s latest Milk & Cookies: A Merry Crowder Christmas includes a very special guest: Ricky Skaggs. The Country Music Hall of Fame member joins Crowder for a unique take on the holiday classic, “Go Tell It On The Mountain,” earning high praise from Crowder as a result.

“He is a wonderful human. He’s a gem of a human,” Crowder boasts to Everything Nash. “First of all, he sounds amazing. I mean, when he comes in on the second verse vocally … I’m like, ‘Ricky, you just need to sing this. I’ll be quiet and let you take it.’ That dude is just amazing. And then obviously his playing — the guys that play with me, when they heard the track, they’re like, ‘So I’ve gotta learn this?’ He’s a beast. He is a beast of a player. And my favorite part about the whole experience though is, he’s so attentive to detail. He was the last person still giving mix comments. Everyone else was done. We’re like, ‘This sounds great.’ And Ricky’s still at the last minute giving little tweaks here and there. He’s so attentive to the details, and so invested in the song.”

Crowder admits he was deeply inspired by watching Skaggs, especially on a song that was for Crowder’s album.

“I’m like, ‘Oh man, your work ethic is extremely high,'”  Crowder says. “That’s a bar to live up to. So he’s a gift to Planet Earth for sure. I’ve been wanting to do something with him for a long time, and it finally worked out, and especially on this Christmas album, it was just too good.”

Crowder’s Milk & Cookies album might have never happened, if a Marvel producer hadn’t wanted to use his home to film a TV special, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special.

“Everybody’s gotta do a Christmas album, and I’ve been putting off the Christmas album,” Crowder says “I was like, ‘Do we need another Christmas album? We don’t need another Christmas album. It’s the same songs. Everybody sings the same songs. And do we .need another version with me singing them?’ Well, here’s what happened: I got a knock on the door, and it was Marvel Studios, who make the Marvel movies.

“They said, ‘Hey man, we want to shoot a Christmas special, Guardians the Galaxy.’ … That’s what happened,” he continues. “We got a knock on the door. And a superhero movie came by and I’m like, ‘This is the year of Christmas. This is the year we do the Christmas album. It’s a no-brainer.’ And they told us a plot. And it’s that the Guardians are gonna come and give the best Christmas gifts ever given, which is Kevin Bacon.”

Find Milk & Cookies: A Merry Crowder Christmas and all of Crowder’s music at CrowderMusic.com.