Bryan Sutton reached out to the Fretboard Journal with a simple, but brilliant idea: What if we asked all the great musicians passing through our office to give us their take on the exact same tune?

So, for the bulk of 2018, we’ve been doing just that, capturing the likes of Bill Frisell, Noam Pikelny, David Grisman and others doing their own interpretations of “You Are My Sunshine.” We’ll be sharing our favorites over the next few months.

To start things off, we figured we’d go to the source of the concept: Sutton himself. We recorded this clip behind-the-scenes at the 2018 IBMA World of Bluegrass. Sutton is playing a custom Bourgeois D-45 with Brazilian back and sides and an Aged Tone Adirondack top.

Look for a new take on “Sunshine” every week on this site.