Episode 113: Allison Moorer emerged around the year 2000 as one of the most profound and beautiful voices in true country music. As she grew in stature and acclaim, it emerged that she's suffered an extraordinary loss as a 14-year-old when her troubled, alcoholic father murdered her mother and then took his own life. The time emerged for Moorer to grapple with the trauma in public, and she worked in prose and song. This fall, she released a book and song-cycle album, both called Blood. We talk a...
Dec 16, 2019•1 hr
Episode 112: Michaela Anne went to New York City to study jazz vocals and emerged a full on convert to country music. She built a career in Brooklyn then moved to Nashville to see it through. She's recently released her fourth album and a label debut with Yep Roc. There's a serenity in her voice and a sensitivity in her lyrics. She talks about her background and the courage it takes to live, as one of her songs says, by her "own design." Also in the hour, the game changing country-grass duo of R...
Dec 10, 2019•59 min
Episode 111: This week, one last round of visits with great artists visiting Nashville to showcase during AmericanaFest 2019. My guests include two songwriter artists from the United Kingdom who’ve made American music their own - veteran New Orleans piano man Jon Cleary and Northern Ireland’s soul-singing dynamo Foy Vance. Up first, an absolutely amazing songwriter from Portland, OR, Anna Tivel. Her album The Question is widely seen as one of the finest of the year.
Nov 25, 2019•59 min
Episode 110: Ideal Man, the fourth full-length album from Nashville songwriter Andrew Combs has been praised by major outlets including Rolling Stone Country. Is it a country album? Is Combs a country artist? Well he undoubtedly was when his first records emerged. His debut album Worried Man had steel guitar and a snapping rhythm section and songs that got right to the point about loss and love. With 2017’s Canyons of My MInd, a swooning lush atmosphere wafts in, and Combs voice - always full of...
Nov 19, 2019•59 min
As I browsed World of Bluegrass in Raleigh last September, I caught up with four artists who make for a pretty good cross section of the genre circa 2019: Tim Stafford of Blue Highway, an iconic band celebrating its 25th anniversary, Irene Kelley, a veteran songwriter who's on top of the charts as an artist, Appalachian Road Show, a new super-group with a cultural mission and The Dead South, a young band of Canadian folk rockers who represent the adventuresome edge of bluegrass music. Notes and ...
Nov 06, 2019•59 min
Episode 108: The album Steady On in 1989 marked the pivot in Shawn Colvin's life between playing bars to make the rent and being a leader in the singer songwriter movement. Through a string of albums, including the hit-producing A Few Small Repairs, she became a multi Grammy winner and an Americana Lifetime Achievement Award winner. This year, she's revisited Steady On, recording and performing it in her signature solo acoustic guitar style. Stripped to its essence, the songs speak as clearly no...
Oct 29, 2019•59 min
Episode 107 features three conversations held on the run during AmericanaFest 2019 in Nashville, Sept. 10-14. Billy Strings represents the cutting edge of bluegrass and improvisational acoustic music. He's a breakout bandleader and a guitar player's guitar player. His second album is recently out, called Home. Jontavious Willis is another guitar-playing youngster, but his thing is traditional country blues. He's been mentored by Taj Mahal and Keb Mo. Kevin Russell is the songwriter and band lead...
Oct 21, 2019•59 min
Episode 106: Ketch Secor is the fiddler and front man of the uncanny success story Old Crow Medicine Show. As they enter their third decade as a band, they can claim to have revived and re-imagined old-time string band and blues music for new generations. They've added at least one hit song to the country music repertoire in "Wagon Wheel" and reached millions with a show full of passion and classic country music values. Their latest, Live At The Ryman, is a collection of hand-picked tracks from ...
Oct 14, 2019•59 min
In her new song "1988," Kelsey Waldon tells the story of the year she was born in Western Kentucky and what happened after that. What music fans know is that she brought her songs to Nashville and found community among the top emerging figure in East Nashville, including Margo Price and Erin Rae. She's just released her third album and it's special because White Noise/White Lines is a debut for John Prine's Oh Boy Records, part of a renewal of that decades old indie label. He's her songwriting h...
Oct 08, 2019•1 hr 1 min
Del McCoury is a bluegrass hall of famer and repeat host of the International Bluegrass Music Association Awards. Jim Lauderdale is a beloved Nashville songwriter whose wide range of projects and songs includes Grammy Awards in bluegrass. Their personalities are as big as their resumes, so they'll make memorable co-hosts of the 2019 IBMA Awards in Raleigh. In a joint interview in front of a live audience, Jim and Del talk about the World of Bluegrass and their past and potential future as banjo ...
Sep 22, 2019•1 hr
Episode 103 features two artists who are showcasing at AmericanaFest 2019 with new albums ready for early next year. Brian Wright has lived and made music in Texas, Los Angeles and Nashville, where he's been a guitar-slinging sideman and the co-founder of Cafe Rooster Records. His next opus is the sonically experimental Lapse of Luxury. Aubrie Sellers grew up around the country music business in Nashville but took her time finding her own vision as an artist and writer. We talk about the run-up ...
Sep 09, 2019•59 min
Episode 102: Kendell Marvel, native of rural southern Illinois, is a veteran professional Music Row songwriter whose work has been recorded by Gary Allan, George Strait, Lee Ann Womack, Chris Stapleton and others. He’s fought for country music values inside the system, even as it’s often let him down. He also put his performing and band-leading dreams on hold for years while raising a family. Now he's back, leading a periodic pop-up honky tonk at the Exit/In and writing new albums. Coming in Oct...
Sep 02, 2019•1 hr 1 min
Episode 101: Songwriter Amy Speace was entirely absorbed in theater, studying to be a Shakespearian actress in NYC. Then some fates and muses intervened and she began leaning into folk music. Before long she was recruited and mentored by the great Judy Collins, cultivating a voice that stands out even in the crowded songwriter scene of today. Now in Nashville, her story took another turn recently when she had her first child, a son, at age 50. Her complex observations about the world and herself...
Aug 28, 2019•59 min
The String turns 100 Episodes old with a focus on one of the most celebrated and dynamic young artists in Americana music, a singer/songwriter who has negotiated the bridge from bluegrass to mainstream popular music with amazing grace. Molly Tuttle is a two-time IBMA Guitar Player of the Year as well as a winner of prizes at Folk Alliance and Americana. But more significantly, her debut album When You're Ready has launched her to appearances at the Grand Ole Opry, Telluride Bluegrass Festival an...
Aug 19, 2019•59 min
Charley Crockett has a story that's difficult to imagine playing out in the 21st century - he's hoboed around the country, lost loved ones, scuffled with the law, played on the streets for a decade. And recently he endured open-heart surgery. At 35, he's lived several of our lifetimes. And the thing is, he's poured it all into his remarkable country blues, and he's finally getting the renown he deserves. It's what roots music is all about. Get ready for his 9.20 release of The Valley with this c...
Aug 12, 2019•59 min
The lineage of Nashville's Fairfield Four thrives and resonates in Odessa Settles, this week’s guest on The String. The daughter of singer Walter J. Settles (1928-1999), Odessa is an in-demand singer who values the full spectrum of sacred to secular music, especially the roots/Americana world where she’s amassed a long resume. She’s been a guest vocalist on projects by Darrell Scott, Kathy Mattea, Tim O’Brien and last year’s Rifles & Rosary Beads by Mary Gauthier. She works solo and in combi...
Jul 29, 2019•59 min
The decade-plus since the conclusion of his era-shifting band BR549 have been a case study in creative evolution for Chuck Mead. He's still a stalwart of classic country music and an original songwriter, but he's found new ways to express his expertise. Most significantly has been supervising the music for the Tony Award-winning musical The Million Dollar Quartet and the CMT series Sun Records. Those deep dives into Memphis music culture led to his most recent album Close To Home , which was mad...
Jul 22, 2019•1 hr
Episode #96. Launching a career in the blues in the mid 1990s seems in retrospect a bit audacious and foolhardy, but when LA songwriter and studio musician Kevin Moore became Keb' Mo', his blend of reverence for tradition and his contemporary flair proved hugely successful. For 25 years he's been a beacon of consistency, delivering strong songs that feel fresh and timeless. He's followed up his Grammy winning 2017 duo with Taj Mahal with the album Oklahoma . And since that title track was co-wri...
Jul 15, 2019•59 min
Episode #95. Caroline Spence moved to Nashville eight years ago fresh out of college with a "vague dream" of writing songs, probably she thought for other artists. But as her network and her confidence grew, it became clear she needed to be out front. She released two solo indie albums and a duo project with Robby Hecht. She won a Kerville New Folk award and captured a lot of people's attention with her coursing country melodies and incisive observations. Now she's been signed to Rounder Records...
Jul 08, 2019•59 min
Episode 94: They've each had distinguished careers as songwriters and musicians in American roots music, but together they're especially sublime. Buddy and Julie Miller met in Austin in the 70s and pursued careers in New York and Los Angeles before moving to Nashville almost 30 years ago. Both of their prior duo albums were deemed best of the by the Americana Music Association. Now, following a remarkably busy period for Buddy, the two found their way back to working together, and the result is ...
Jun 17, 2019•59 min
Episode 93: In the 1970s Nick Lowe carved out a place on the thoughtful side of punk and pop in England, landing "Cruel To Be Kind" on the charts with his band Rockpile but doing so much more besides. He produced Elvis Costello's first five albums and wrote the anthem "What's So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding?" In the late 90s, he reinvented himself, with a new focus on his mellifluous voice, starting a run of songwriting that's up there with anybody's. And it was all rooted in a passi...
Jun 10, 2019•1 hr 1 min
Episode 92: This week's show is split between two string instrument masters who have little in common save for a lifelong commitment to nurturing traditional music while allowing it to grow and adapt to the times. Byron Berline is an Oklahoma based fiddler who's a hero in bluegrass music but who also led the way in the country rock movement out of Los Angeles for 25 years. He's recently had a setback when his famous and beloved Double Stop Fiddle Shop in Guthrie, OK burned down, with a huge loss...
Jun 04, 2019•59 min
Only five artists or acts have been inducted into both the Country Music and Bluegrass Music halls of fame, and only one is actively touring and shaping the dialogue around roots music generally. And that's 64-year-old Ricky Skaggs. As a fiddler, mandolinist, singer and band leader he's bridged the country/bluegrass divide more deftly than any artist alive, and he still does it with sets that split the difference as his band can shift gears on a dime. In a full-hour feature interview, Skaggs ref...
May 20, 2019•59 min
No. 90 - Honky tonk maestro Dale Watson grew up in Pasadena, TX, just on the Galveston Bay side of Houston. With a father and brother who played country music, he was playing professionally by his early teens. In 1988, alt-country pioneer Rosie Flores convinced him to move to Los Angeles, where he became integral to the scene at the Palomino Club. Then it was on to Austin, a debut album on Hightone Records and a long run of critical and popular acclaim as one of the proudest, silkiest voices car...
May 13, 2019•59 min
Will Kimbrough, 30-year veteran of Nashville TN is up to so many musical projects, it took a whole segment to cover them all. He's in three bands and an acoustic duo. He writes with and for Jimmy Buffett. He's been on the road over recent years with Rodney Crowell and Emmylou Harris, two of his heroes. He produces great records. And, lest we forget, he's a dynamic performing songwriter and guitarist, steaming ahead with a busy year of touring and a new album, the grooving and highly thought prov...
May 07, 2019•59 min
Tulsa, OK has an important musical past but also a dynamic present built on the legacies and impact of Bob Wills, Leon Russell, J.J. Cale, Woody Guthrie and more. This special field trip edition of The String tours the exciting music scene in Tulsa with visits to Cain's Ballroom, Russell's Church Studio, currently under renovation, the Woody Guthrie Center, the Bob Dylan Archive and iconic honky tonk The Colony. We meet locals who are championing the next wave of Tulsa music, including singer/so...
Apr 28, 2019•59 min
In this special hour, a roundtable talk with two outstanding managers from the world of roots and Americana music. Denise Stiff went from college event booking to working for agencies and through that world took on management - first of Irish singer Maura O’Connell and then Alison Krauss, Gillian Welch and Sarah Jarosz - among others - a kind of defining list of magnificent talent to emerge from bluegrass and roots. Michelle Concesion came from advertising but eventually her love of music drew h...
Apr 09, 2019•59 min
Two gentlemen of Americana who share a soulful feel and a chill vibe while writing songs that cut to the bone. Seth Walker talks about his years in Austin, New Orleans and Nashville and some of the new approaches to recording that made his new album Are You Open so special. Louisiana native Steve Conn shares his story as a keyboardist, accordion player and songwriter, culminating in the candid, funky and wonderful Flesh And Bone, out now....
Apr 01, 2019•1 hr 1 min
Episode 85 offers two remarkable stories from the always-dynamic world of bluegrass music. Michael Cleveland is the record-setting, 11-time winner of the IBMA Fiddle Player of the Year award. He's a traditionally grounded player who's reaching into new terrain as a 38-year-old phenomenon. He's also been blind since birth and he's overcome a lot, a story told in the new documentary Flamekeeper. Rounding out the hour, the married duo bandleaders Eric and Doni of Nefesh Mountain, a New York-based b...
Mar 18, 2019•59 min
The British singer songwriter known as Yola made her first significant stateside impression at the 2016 AmericanaFest in Nashville. She returned the following year and won the Artist of the Year honor at the AMA's UK counterpart awards. Her charisma, her intelligent update of country soul and her astonishing voice made her an instant favorite of music fans and critics. Soon offers to record began flowing in, but the one that seemed to have the greatest potential for reaching a new level was Dan ...
Mar 11, 2019•59 min
