Chris Thile launches his solo tour of the UK and Ireland with a concert at Borderline in London tonight. The tour will feature songs from Thile's duo album with guitarist Michael Daves, Sleep with One Eye Open, released earlier this year on Nonesuch Records. Following tonight's tour launch, Thile will make stops in Dublin and Cork, Ireland, and Liverpool and Sheffield, England. (Daves, who was due to join Thile on tour, is unable to do so due to an illness in the family.) Amidst the solo tour, Thile makes a return trip to London to perform with label mate Brad Mehldau at Wigmore Hall this Friday.

Ahead of his performance at Whelan's in Dublin tomorrow night, Chris Thile will stop by Tower Records on Wicklow Street at 1 PM for a special one-off in-store performance. For more on this and other Thile tour dates, go to nonesuch.com/on-tour.

In addition to being the start of Chris Thile's solo tour, today also marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of legendary bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe, whose songs are among those featured on Sleep with One Eye Open, along with those of The Louvin Brothers, Jimmy Martin, and Flatt & Scruggs. Fittingly enough, Thile tweets: "There may be rather a lot of Bill Monroe songs in my set tonight."

Thile spoke with NPR's All Things Considered for a piece celebrating Monroe's life and music that aired yesterday. He and Daves spoke further with NPR Music for a web-exclusive interview available at NPR.org, in which the two discuss the bluegrass tradition of pairing of mandolin and guitar set by Monroe and his brother Charlie. NPR counts Thile and Daves "among the hot young pickers" carrying on that tradition today. Listen to the All Things Considered piece Bill Monroe: Celebrating the Father of Bluegrass at 100, and the additional online interviews at npr.org.

To pick up a copy of Sleep with One Eye Open, head to the Nonesuch Store, where orders include high-quality, 320 kbps MP3s of the album at checkout.