Episode 295: Stephanie Lambring’s new album - her second - is called Hypocrisy, and it blew me away on first listen because of the way its crafty, understated production set up some mind-jarring and elegantly sculpted lyrics. She’s a rural Indiana native whose writing talents in her early Nashville days led to a major publishing deal at 23. The Music Row machine didn’t work for her ultimately, and after a hiatus she leaned into telling her own story, leading to an acclaimed debut in 2020. Now on...
Sep 16, 2024•59 min
Episode 294: Formed in Dallas in 1992, Old 97’s became one of the seminal bands of the alternative country movement, alongside Whiskeytown, Son Volt, the Bottle Rockets and BR549. At its heart was the longtime friendship of bass player Murry Hammond and guitarist/songwriter Rhett Miller. Remarkably, across 13 albums and millions of miles, Old 97’s remains the same quartet that broke out on Bloodshot Records three decades ago. They’re still having fun and keeping company with their large base of ...
Sep 12, 2024•58 min
Episode 293: The conversation about Black influence on and presence in country music has been intense and restorative over the past decade, and nobody has a more authoritative or informed take on the subject than writer and scholar Alice Randall. She became the first Black woman to launch a career as a professional Music Row songwriter and publisher in the 1980s. She’s shared her incredible journey in her new memoir My Black Country, while a multi-artist collection of the same title features a d...
Sep 04, 2024•59 min
Episode 292: When singer Madeleine Peyroux released her breakout album Careless Love in 2004, her voice and phrasing, with echoes of Billie Holiday and Joni Mitchell, had more verve than the newly famous Norah Jones and more blues than Diana Krall. Her story was more remarkable than either. She’d basically run away from school as an American teenager living in Paris and joined a touring/busking ensemble the Lost and Wandering Jazz and Blues Band. After 2004 she became a vital, critically acclaim...
Aug 20, 2024•59 min
Episode 291: Thirty years into her late-blooming music career, Kim Richey feels like Americana music’s favorite aunt. She’s hip, youthful, incredibly kind and brimming with ideas and good words, many of which make it into fresh songs. She’s been co-writing a good bit lately, with the likes of Don Henry, Ashley Campbell and Aaron Lee Tasjan. New work, mingled with unrecorded catalog, hand-picked with producer Doug Lancio, led to her first new LP in six years, Every New Beginning. Also in this hou...
Aug 17, 2024•59 min
Episode 290: In a bit over a decade in Nashville, Kyshona has become a figure respected for her wisdom and valued as a songwriter/artist. Her 2020 album Listen, released just before the Covid shutdown, captured the zeitgeist of that troubled and strangely inspiring year, in part because a key part of the artist’s background and calling is music therapy. Her ethos of continuity and community continues on the magnificent album Legacy, where her research into her family history blossoms into songs ...
Jul 30, 2024•59 min
Episode 289: Ellen Angelico has emerged in the past few years as a go-to stringed instrument musician in the Americana and indie sectors of Nashville. Raised in Chicago, she was gigging in her teens, attended Berklee College of Music and came to Music City in 2010 with a full-time indie rock band spot. As she grew into more of a freelance life, Ellen carved out a niche and earned a ton of admiration earning an Americana Instrumentalist of the Year nomination in 2020. Her recent credits include s...
Jul 02, 2024•59 min
Episode 288: In this special edition of The String, I present an audio postcard from Athens GA, a city of about 125,000 people just east of Atlanta that for forty years has been punching above its weight as a music city. As a teenager in the mid 1980s, I loved the B-52s and I about worshiped REM, and ever since, I’ve wondered what kind of place could produce those wildly different, highly progressive bands. My curiosity only grew as Athens continued to be a hotbed of art-forward rock and roll an...
Jun 27, 2024•59 min
Episode 287: Cris Jacobs has been tagged the “King of Baltimore rock and roll” by a leading local publication, but a quick look at his catalog and certainly his newest album suggests that and more. He made his name as a guitarist, songwriter and singer with The Bridge, a soulful jam band that toured the nation and overseas between 2000 and 2010. His solo projects have been well regarded, but he’s not been a force in Americana until recently. After a bit of a mid-life crisis, he turned to his fir...
Jun 21, 2024•59 min
Episode 285: As I say in the opening of this week’s show, it’s one thing to get applause for your songs, and it’s another to get laughs. John Craigie of Portland, OR has quietly built a robust touring career because he’s an excellent songwriter who also keeps his audiences in stitches between songs. His newest album is a collaboration called Pagan Church with TK and the Holy Know-Nothings, the Portland band fronted by admired songwriter Taylor Kingman. We talk about how Craigie developed his sta...
Jun 06, 2024•59 min
Episode 284: Maggie Rose returns to the String for a full hour this time, because her new album No One Gets Out Alive marks yet another leap for this magnificent singer and songwriter from Nashville. As we heard back in Episode 180, the Maryland native was scouted by major labels while still in college, leading to a country deal in the early 2010s. She fell through the cracks in that restrictive format but regrouped as a fully indie artist working as a business team with her husband. She’s built...
May 31, 2024•57 min
Episode 283: It’s a split episode this week featuring a renaissance man of roots music from a “famous” background and a duo from Alabama who’ve been on a wild career ride since they were first discovered by producers T Bone Burnett and Dave Cobb. We start with Rev. Shawn Amos, who grew up in Los Angeles with his dad Wally, founder of Famous Amos cookies. Since launching in music, Shawn’s been a shape shifting songwriter and performer, a historic A&R executive, an entrepreneur and more. His l...
May 22, 2024•59 min
Episode 282: For twenty years, Duluth, MN troubadour Charlie Parr has been touring every corner of the nation, sleeping in his van and living lean, to bring his unique take on the country blues to the people. Reserved, cerebral and devoted entirely to his own vision, he’s one of our finest folk artists and a lyricist well worthy of a certain other Minnesota songwriter who so famously blended poetry and the blues. He took a new tack with his latest album on Smithsonian Folkways, tapping producer ...
May 14, 2024•59 min
Episode 281: There are countless reasons to pay homage to the legacy of country music and almost as many different ways to do so. Both of my guests this week - the Canadian artist Bahamas and Nashville’s Kelsey Waldon - are doing just that in their own ways with recent projects. At a time when country traditions are strong across the Americana landscape, Bootcut by Bahamas and There’s Always A Song by Waldon demonstrate the power of devotion to a craft on one hand and celebration of heroes on th...
May 14, 2024•59 min
Episode 280: It's taken decades for the nature and impact of Jerry Garcia’s formative years as a musician and band leader to emerge and become semi-common knowledge, because for many, his devotion to old-time string band and bluegrass music between 1961 and 1964 doesn’t square with the quantum jams he’d be leading just a few years later. But because of the Dead, and Garcia's side projects like Old And In The Way, we have jamgrass, a popular branch of the family tree where instrumental interplay ...
Apr 23, 2024•59 min
Episode 278: Suzy Bogguss started playing and performing on a hand-me-down guitar from her sister in small-town Illinois. After a few years making a living out west playing at ski lodges, she moved to Nashville, where she carved out a special place in 1990s country music. Amid a time of diversity and vibrancy in the format, her sweet, folky voice took flight when she found the right songs, including the career-makers “Someday Soon” and “Outbound Plane.” She’s toured steadily ever since, though r...
Mar 27, 2024•59 min
Episode 277: Few pickers have toured harder or traveled farther than jamgrass veteran Vince Herman, who co-founded the iconic Leftover Salmon 34 years ago in Colorado. Yet there are always new things to try, so he’s added the band The High Hawks to his list of collaborations. Our sit-down visit was sparked by that band’s album Mother Nature’s Show doing so well on the Americana chart and by his own recent move from Colorado to Nashville, where he’s become a hub of the picking scene and an avid c...
Mar 19, 2024•59 min
Episode 276: John Leventhal is one of the quiet achievers of American roots music going back more than 30 years. Early on as a guitar player in his native New York City, he connected with Jim Lauderdale and Shawn Colvin, co-writing and producing their debut albums. He met his wife Rosanne Cash as they worked on the pivotal album The Wheel (see Episode 269). He’s produced some epic albums since then for William Bell, Sarah Jarosz, and others, winning numerous Grammy and Americana awards in the pr...
Mar 14, 2024•58 min
Episode 275: This week's show begins with an ode to the studio and stage musicians who come up with parts and make the singers and stars sound great, while being relegated to the sexist, ungenerous title of “sidemen.” Recently, I got to thinking about a musician - a bass player - who’s been on more big sessions and done time with more impactful artists than most in roots/Americana music over the past 35 years, including the Chicks, Robert Plant, Nickel Creek and Kathy Mattea. So I invited Byron ...
Mar 01, 2024•59 min
Episode 274: Beyond his skills as a guitarist and singer, Clay Ross is what I like to call a Musical Instigator. Since heading to his current base in New York 20 years ago from his home town of Charleston, SC, he’s conceived and organized three brilliant groups that bring a new global consciousness to American roots music. First it was Matuto with its infusion of Brazilian melodies and rhythms. Then with old college-era friends from South Carolina he launched Ranky Tanky, a Grammy-winning outfit...
Feb 20, 2024•59 min
Episode 273: Thirty years ago, legendary R&B singer Delbert McClinton proved he was ahead of his time by launching his Sandy Beaches Cruise, a January festival at sea that featured his friends and associated artists from the bluesy side of Americana. Since then, the music cruise business has flourished across many genres. A company called Star Vista Live bought Sandy Beaches from Delbert a few years ago and now does the management while Delbert himself acts as host. I got a fortunate invitat...
Feb 13, 2024•59 min
Episode 272: Lola Kirke got on America’s cultural radar as an actress - starring in the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle, along with roles in Gone Girl and Mistress America alongside Greta Gerwig. But during those years, she was also quietly nurturing her passion for songwriting and music - specifically country music. The pandemic brought her to Nashville where her album Lady for Sale was released by Third Man Records to great acclaim. Now she’s about to release the new EP Country Curious and ...
Feb 09, 2024•59 min
Episode 271: In just five years, including the pandemic shut-down, Nashville native Gabe Lee has grown from an unknown “hometown kid,” as one of his titles proclaims, to a debut last year on the Grand Ole Opry. Working independently with the boutique Torrez Music Group, Lee has released four albums, earning the admiration of critics and a grassroots fan base that’s adding up to something special and sustainable. The most recent opus is Drink The River , which Lee took in a more acoustic and nuan...
Jan 31, 2024•59 min
Episode 270: In an episode that revisits the netherworld between Americana and jazz, I speak with two extraordinary female drummer/composers who are at the peak of their creative powers. My featured guest is Allison Miller, a renowned New York artist who's led her own band Boom Tic Boom and joined in with the supergroup Artemis. For her newest album Rivers In Our Veins, she studied rivers and their ecosystems to inspire a 12-song cycle for jazz ensemble and tap dancers. It's utterly original and...
Jan 22, 2024•59 min
Episode 269: Rosanne Cash says she’s a forward-looking artist and thinker, not prone to looking back. But when she regained control over the master recording of her 1993 album The Wheel, it prompted an idea. She’s launched the new label Rumble Strip Records with John Leventhal, the producer and guitarist she fell in love with while working on it with him. Cash, one of the most fascinating and sophisticated roots musicians and a founding figure of the Americana movement, calls The Wheel a “waters...
Jan 09, 2024•59 min
Episode 268: The late John Prine’s team at Oh Boy Records in Nashville put the little-known west coast songwriter Tré Burt on the national Americana/folk radar by signing him to a deal and re-releasing his debut album Caught It From The Rye in 2019. He grew up between the Bay Area and Sacramento, where, after being exposed to the guitar by an older brother, music became a focal point. He grew as a songwriter through the open mic scene and self-booked tours and some adventurous travel around the ...
Dec 20, 2023•59 min
Episode 267: When Ben Wright, then 28 years old, saw a banjo for sale in the window at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music, he had no idea how far it would take him. Not just to gigs at the country’s best bluegrass festivals but to an improbable life of sharing American music with audiences young and old in more than 25 countries. Not only does Ben’s band, the Henhouse Prowlers , have a new record deal and a fine new album, the quartet has a track record of sharing bluegrass and good vibes w...
Dec 13, 2023•59 min
Episode 266: Lindsay Lou grew up surrounded by community folk music in Michigan, and when she connected with a scene and a band in East Lansing where she completed college, she set her plans for a career in medicine aside to hit the road and connect with her original dreams. But it’s pretty clear from her ravishing voice that she was born to sing, and she made quite an impression, especially in western newgrass circles, as the lead singer and songwriter of Lindsay Lou and the Flatbellys. Living ...
Dec 04, 2023•59 min
Episode 265: Two great male voices in new Americana. Cruz Contreras has been a key player in the East Tennessee music scene for twenty years, steering accomplished roots projects Robinella and the CCstringband and the Black Lillies. In 2019 he wrote and recorded his first solo album only to see the pandemic upend his plans for its big rollout. He made good use of the lost years, getting married, having a son and moving to a new place. But at last he thought it was time to release Cosmico. And I ...
Nov 22, 2023•59 min
Episode 264: One might imagine that after 17 years singing country music and releasing ten albums, an artist would have shared all of her secrets with her audience, but Eilen Jewell says only in the aftermath of 2020 and a bunch of disruptive change and loss well beyond the reach of the pandemic, that she was ready to get real in ways she never had before. The result is Get Behind The Wheel, a cracking country blues album that extends the winning streak of this veteran artist, who made her way f...
Nov 17, 2023•59 min
