Episode 232: Willi Carlisle is a folk singer in the populist tradition of Utah Phillips and Woody Guthrie, a boisterous, tender, funny performer who is impossible to forget. After years pursuing various outlets in old-time, poetry and theater, he emerged in 2022 as one of the finest songwriters in traditional folk music. The vehicle was his album Peculiar, Missouri, a varied collection of ruminations and character studies from Free Dirt Records. Willi is a remarkable raconteur and rhetorician, s...
Jan 24, 2023•59 min
To kick off the new year during my three week book leave, here's a special edition of The String in which I read my own in-depth analysis of how two great and sweeping genres - jazz and Americana - can have such different audiences and narratives in contemporary life despite their common origins in the blues. Reviewed are two releases - the 10th anniversary vinyl edition of Esperanza Spalding's Grammy Award-winning Radio Music Society and sax player JD Allen's new and provocatively titled Americ...
Jan 19, 2023•28 min
Episode 231: Sam Bush was the first guest on The String way back in September of 2016, because he's a hero of mine and an exemplar of the Americana ideal, traditional American music with a contemporary outlook. He returns to talk about one of his heroes, the late great John Hartford. They were friends, picking buddies and sometime tour mates. And while there are many sides to Hartford, Sam wanted to celebrate his remarkable songwriting, which he does on the new album Radio John.
Dec 20, 2022•1 hr
Episode 230: With an instantly recognizable voice and uncommon skill for balancing melancholy with radiance, Courtney Marie Andrews has released a string of four acclaimed album since her 2016 breakout Honest Life. She's a Tucson, AZ native who hit the road on her own at the tender age of 16 and gave her life over to writing and sharing her soul with others. Her newest follows the arc of a new love affair, from ambivalent beginnings to a rapturous consummation in the final song. Its airy, sculpt...
Dec 13, 2022•58 min
Episode 229: Todd Snider walked out alone on the stage of the Ryman Auditorium in late September looking radiant. He was bolstered and beloved by the loyalist lifer fans that hang on his every word, spoken or sung. He told the one about his first open mic and the one about East Nashville character Skip Litz who loved Train Songs. Todd’s mother was on hand and it was her birthday, so we all sang for her. Two days later we sat down for a delightful, rambling conversation inspired by the release of...
Dec 09, 2022•59 min
Episode 228: One day during AmericanaFest 2022 I visited the headquarters of leading label New West Records to catch up with their two newest band signings - bands that fit on the label and in an episode with each other. 49 Winchester, school friends from tiny Castlewood, VA, had a breakout year while releasing Fortune Favors The Bold. Town Mountain began 15 years ago as a trad bluegrass band that writes its own fine songs. Recently they've added a drummer and let their sound find new levels of ...
Nov 22, 2022•1 hr
Episode 227: This week dwells on origins and growth with two artists who've had very different journeys but who had to get resourceful in their own way. Amy Ray put the Indigo Girls on the map with her partner Emily Saliers in part through a relentless focus on activism and support of causes they cherished. They were given the Americana Lifetime Award for Free Speech in September. Tami Neilson grew up in a family band playing gospel and country in and around Canada, but she had to start over fro...
Nov 15, 2022•59 min
Episode 226: The 5 Spot is a nightclub at the heart of East Nashville's music community, and for 12 years, Derek Hoke was at the heart of the 5 Spot. His showcase series Two Dollar Tuesdays offered newcomers a chance to play and music lovers 4-5 artists to sample in a cozy scene, many of whom would become the next wave of Americana stars. Hoke came from South Carolina with a ton of humility and eagerness to learn the ropes of Nashville, and he's created a fine body of work as a songwriter/artist...
Nov 08, 2022•59 min
Episode 225: When you serve a community on a good radio station, you get a feel for the soul of that place, and for me over these many years, that place is Nashville. So I thought it would be fun to join forces for a week with a friend of mine who has a similar gig in western North Carolina who has developed expertise and perspective on the amazing music scene around Asheville. He's Joe Kendrick, host of Southern Songs And Stories. We met up at the Earl Scruggs Music Festival over Labor Day week...
Oct 31, 2022•53 min
Episode 224: It's a double Dan special as I visit with two movers and shakers who've contributed perhaps more behind the scenes than most musicians of their stature. Daniel Tashian is a Nashville lifer who's worn all the hats - songwriter, artist, band-leader and producer. He won a Grammy for Kacey Musgraves's Golden Hour and collaborated with Burt Bacharach. Now he's co-written the classic country rock album Night After Night with Paul Kennerly. Then it's Dan Knobler, recently in-demand America...
Oct 25, 2022•59 min
Episode 223: Americanafest 2022 is in the books, and as usual, I took advantage of all the visiting talent to collect a bunch of interviews with artists from stars to newcomers. Here, I speak with three fascinating emerging artists who will be shaping the scene for years to come. Tray Wellington is a new voice on the banjo from rural Appalachia, but his take on Scruggs style is modern and devoted to jazz as much as bluegrass. Nora Brown is a new phenom in old-time music based out of Brooklyn. He...
Oct 20, 2022•59 min
Episode 222: Kentucky natives Linda Jean Stokley and Montana Hobbs have been musical partners for about a decade. They met as college students at Morehead State University, where they both more or less wandered into the school’s distinguished traditional music program. They formed the duo The Local Honeys and have gradually built a following and a sound that rides the line between old-time traditional folk and the new electric Americana sound on their superb 2022 self-titled album on La Honda Re...
Oct 20, 2022•59 min
Episode 221: Cristina Vane discovered American roots music from a greater distance than most converts. She grew up in capitals of Europe, identifying as a "third culture kid" and struggling with her identity. The slide blues guitar and Appalachian banjo became important icons of her journey to America and her burgeoning career as a singer songwriter who doesn't imitate the blues but who takes inspiration from it for her own personal style. We talk about her experience at Princeton, her solo trav...
Sep 14, 2022•58 min
Episode 220: Early James pushed himself to find a singing voice and songwriting style all his own, and it certainly got the attention of Nashville's Dan Auerbach. The Birmingham, AL artist was invited into Dan's Easy Eye Sound studio to write and produce his debut album Singing For My Supper in 2020. That release was acclaimed by stymied by the pandemic. Not so the new one, Strange Time To Be Alive , with its surreal, suggestive language and fevered country noir soundscape. I sit with the 29-yea...
Sep 01, 2022•57 min
Episode 219: This time I catch up with two dynamic women from Nashville with albums that are journalistic in nature, chronicling change and life passages. Nicki Bluhm is a national jam roots star thanks to hear years leading The Gramblers and numerous collaborations with the likes of Phil Lesh and Little Feat. On her new Avondale Drive album she ruminates on the end of her marriage and building a new self in Nashville. Lera Lynn, a veteran of the show, returns with Something More Than Love, larg...
Aug 24, 2022•59 min
Episode 218: Of all the 1960s California folk rockers, Richie Furay had a quieter but most interesting career. He co-founded two iconic bands in Buffalo Springfield and Poco. He wrote and sang a landmark country rocker in "Kind Woman," the track that brought steel guitar man and eventual frontman Rusty Young into the Poco fold. And then in midlife Furay moved to Colorado to become a pastor, leading a church for decades, while touring and recording as the Richie Furay Band. Now he's released a Na...
Aug 17, 2022•59 min
Episode 217: Nashville master songwriter Mary Gauthier returns to The String to talk about her new album Dark Enough To See The Stars and her remarkable 2021 memoir Saved By A Song. Mary's entree into songwriting was unusual to say the least, a lifeline for a woman in her 30s recovering from substance abuse and putting together a full self after a traumatic childhood. She handles the prose and her song poetry with similar attention to detail and economy of language, and she weaves it all into a ...
Aug 10, 2022•57 min
Episode 216: In a casual, expansive conversation, Craig visits with his old friend Eric Brace, founder of alt-country band Last Train Home. Brace was a music journalist for the Washington Post when he formed the DC based group in the mid 1990s. Then in the early 2000s, he and the rhythm section moved to Nashville, where LTH found a new life and Brace branched out as a label owner with Red Beet Records, which documented the rising East Nashville music scene. Brace has continued to tour with small...
Aug 01, 2022•59 min
Episode 215: Since moving to Nashville at age 21 in 1978, Kenny Greenberg has built a reputation as a guitarist who could bring rock and roll punch and jangle to commercial country records as well as a standout behind the glass. Besides his seminal work with Allison Moorer, Kenny has produced albums by the Mavericks, Josh Turner, Joan Baez, Toby Keith and just recently Hayes Carll. And his studio resume is extensive and diverse, including work with Etta James, Chris Knight, Lee Ann Womack, Amy G...
Jul 27, 2022•59 min
Episode 214: Will The Circle Be Unbroken , released 50 years ago, revolutionized how country and bluegrass music were perceived by mainstream and youth culture in America. The 3-LP set of 37 songs came about when west coast country-rockers The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band persuaded a cast of venerated elders of Nashville to collaborate with them over a week at Woodland Studio in East Nashville. Craig spoke with founder Jeff Hanna, distinguished alumnus John McEuen and new generation member Ross Holmes...
Jul 14, 2022•59 min
Episode 213: Rarely do artists retire in their prime, but that’s what Texas songwriter Robert Earl Keen is doing. In January, he announced to the surprise of his many fans that he’d play 2022 into September and then wrap up his road career with a final show in Helotes TX, a favorite venue. He’s 66 years old and very much in fighting shape. But he’s got other things he wants to do. He’s planning to write songs, get more focused on his excellent podcast and pursue what he feels like. He’s not ruli...
Jun 28, 2022•59 min
Episode 212: Decades after it came out in 1979, you still regularly hear “Romeo’s Tune” by Steve Forbert over PAs in the grocery store or on oldies radio if that’s what you’re into. But don’t let that early hit define Forbert’s long, distinguished career. He’s an excellent and widely admired songwriter with more than 20 albums to his credit. He came by Craig’s home studio to talk about his mindset moving from his hometown Meridian, MS to New York in the 1970s, on up to his latest record, Moving ...
Jun 23, 2022•59 min
Episode 211: Not many instrumentalists have invented and spread a new technique, but Darol Anger has, and now the percussive bow and string practice called "the chop" is almost mandatory for rising bluegrass and even some classical players. This happened over a 40+ year career that's seen Anger contribute to the historic David Grisman Quintet, co-found the Turtle Island String Quartet, pursue a long-running duo with Mike Marshall and now lead a youthful quartet called Mr. Sun, which has a new al...
Jun 14, 2022•59 min
Episode 210: Over the past ten years, Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors have become one of the most successful and beloved bands in Nashville, a kind of nice guy finishes first story in Music City. Thing is, the band is also huge in Knoxville, where he went to college and Memphis, where he grew up. And around the nation too. It's just hard to remember that local dude Drew is a roots and folk rock star, and as evidence of that, he's playing a two-night stand at the Ryman Auditorium to celebrate his ...
May 31, 2022•59 min
Episode 209: The Po' Ramblin' Boys, probably the hottest young band in bluegrass, started as a house band at a distillery in East Tennessee, where they were able to hone their sound over years of daily performing. Balancing that polish with the raw and earthy sound of traditional bluegrass music has become a signature of the band, says founder C.J. Lewandowski in this wide-ranging conversation. Also here, the newest member, fiddler and powerful singer Laura Orshaw. Their celebrated new album Nev...
May 25, 2022•59 min
Episode 208: Western North Carolina has a long history in roots music, but Amanda Anne Platt and the Honeycutters have been one of the defining sounds of the scene for the last decade or more, a no-frills, highly musical country band fronted by an exceptional singer and songwriter. On my recent trip to Asheville, I caught a Honeycutters show and then sat down with Amanda at her century-old home in Black Mountain, NC to talk about her guitar-building days, the evolution of her band and the new do...
May 18, 2022•59 min
Episode 207: Monoflora, the fourth album from Asheville, NC quartet River Whyless speaks to the musical values that have made them cult favorites since 2012 - complex harmonies, layered textures and worldly grooves. This conversation reveals an especially deep bond of friendship that's produced creative tensions and ultimately exceptionally enthralling music. Also in this NC field trip episode, part one of a chat with folk artists Valorie Miller.
May 10, 2022•59 min
Episode 206: Growing up in Florida, Joshua Hedley got his heart set on playing the fiddle at age 3 and on moving to Nashville to play in honky tonks in his teens. For years he was a sideman whose obligations ended at the end of the night or the tour. Eventually, he was moved to write and sing his own music, and as soon as he did, some heavy supporters noticed, including Margo Price and the team at Third Man Records, which released his debut Mr. Jukebox in 2018. Now he's followed with the grand s...
Apr 26, 2022•59 min
Episode 205: An influx of superb roots artists from Michigan to Nashville has been good for Music City, with Billy Strings, Lindsay Lou, even Jack White. Rather new to the city are The Accidentals, the highly-skilled and daring roots pop trio from Traverse City. Since emerging five years ago, they've toured like crazy and built a large and loyal fan base. They got on a pandemic co-writing tear with some of the greats, including Mary Gauthier and Tom Paxton. And they made their most ambitious and...
Apr 20, 2022•56 min
Episode 204: In a great year for bluegrass, two projects stand out. One, from our featured guest, because he's the living patriarch of traditional bluegrass music. Del McCoury has earned every honor and award one can win in his field, and he's built historic bridges from American folk and roots to the realms of jam band rock and roll, thanks to his open heart and a blazing band that for more than 25 years has included his sons Ron and Rob. I sat with Del backstage at the Grand Ole Opry to talk a...
Apr 12, 2022•59 min
