The String

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.

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 sounding Neon Blue, inspired by the vibes of 1990s country. This is a classic modern-day Nashville story.

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 exceptional album yet with 2021's Vessel. I talk with multi-instrumentalists Sav Buist and Katie Larson about the journey from school orchestra as teens to this run of acclaimed, edgy folk music.

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 about being in Bill Monroe's band in the 60s and his new recording Almost Proud. The other project covered here is a collection of lost instrumentals written by Bill Monroe himself but revived and recorded for the first time by mandolinist Mike Compton. The former founder of the Nashville Bluegrass Band tells us how he produced the unique project Rare & Fine: Uncommon Tunes of Bill Monroe.

Episode 203: In another conversation with a prominent musical couple, Craig visits the home of Rachael and Dominic John Davis, artists who work together and apart, always enhancing the Nashville ideal with their attention to detail and timeless musicianship. He's most famous for years playing bass in various projects with his boyhood friend Jack White, but he's also been an in-demand sideman and record producer. Rachael is a singer's singer, raised on folk and roots music in small town Michigan. She's released several fine albums on her own and collaborated with numerous other artists, notably her recent trio called the Sweet Water Warblers. This is a delightful and casual conversation.

Episode 202: The String's look at the improv-heavy jamgrass community continues with a band at the heart of it all, Yonder Mountain String Band. Bass player Ben Kauffman and guitarist Adam Aijala talk about how Colorado became their laboratory for a new, dance-friendly, freewheeling take on bluegrass music in the 1990s and beyond. We discuss how they negotiated the departure of founding member Jeff Austin and how two new members in recent years contributed to the varied material on the new album Get Yourself Outside. Also in the hour, a chat with Craig Ferguson, longtime director of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, where Yonder have been kingpins for 20 years and where the jamgrass sound has been celebrated.

Episode 201: Friendly and funny, enthusiastic and energetic, Steve Poltz has released his tenth album Stardust & Satellites as he embarks on another year of intense touring. In a conversation at his home in East Nashville, Poltz speaks with Craig about his surprise embrace of Nashville co-writing, his wild experience writing one of the 90s big hits and the pot brownies that showed him the way to performing solo, which he does so well.

Episode 200: Joan Osborne became a star on the strength of a controversial song and a Grammy-nominated major label debut album in 1995, but when you scan her catalog, it becomes quickly clear that she has one of the most powerful and nuanced voices in popular music. Her range and intimacy is quite clear on her new release Radio Waves, which compiles radio station performances and demos she found in her closets during the pandemic. It becomes a great vehicle to talk about her rich and varied vocal pursuits. Also, a Mardis Gras season visit with Louis Michot, founder and fiddler in the Lost Bayou Ramblers, a powerfully inventive progressive Cajun band near Lafayette, LA.

Episode 199: Guitarist and songwriter Luther Dickinson, founder of the North Mississippi All-Stars, returns to the String to talk about two albums, each with its own story to tell about blues and roots music. Up And Rolling from 2019 was a deluxe CD package with extensive memoir liner notes by Luther and photographs of he and his brother Cody in 1996 just before the band formed. It's a celebration of the hill country blues tradition they inherited. Now they're out with Set Sail, a pandemic-created album with more orchestration and complexity than anything they've done, plus the contributions of singer Lamar Williams Jr. Also, an excerpt from my recent visit with bluegrass songwriting stars turned recording duo Tammy Rogers and Thomm Jutz.

Episode 198: It's a double shot of blues from Alligator Records this week. Christone "Kingfish" Ingram is the most exciting prodigy to hit the electric blues scene in decades. It helps his narrative that the 23-year-old hails from the cradle of the blues, Clarksdale, MS, where the Delta Blues Museum's education programs gave him his start. Now he's nominated for his second Grammy Award with his 2021 album 662. Carolyn Wonderland is more of a veteran (already in the Austin Music Awards Hall of Fame) but a new artist on Alligator at 48 years old. She's a gentle presence off stage and a blistering singer and electric guitarist on stage, and she's recently spent a few years touring the world in the band of English icon John Mayall. We talk about all that and her current disc Tempting Fate, produced with Dave Alvin.

Episode 197: Bay Area rock and jam hero Tim Bluhm founded The Mother Hips with Greg Loiacono 30 years ago while still students at Chico State in California. Signed right away, they made a mark with their quirky power pop and new-world psychedelia. They've had quieter phases over the decades, but now's not one of them. The team is writing a lot and working on recordings for an indie Nashville label form their Bay Area base. The latest, Glowing Lantern, helps illuminate a fascinating conversation about one of the nation's excellent cult bands.

Episode 196: The String's spotlight on the contemporary jamgrass scene continues with a career-spanning conversation with Paul Hoffman (mandolin) and Mike Devol (bass) of Greensky Bluegrass. The band formed at local bars and breweries in Kalamazoo, MI just over 20 years ago, and they've found a groove and a rapport with their instruments and audience that most bands dream of. After winning the Telluride Bluegrass Festival band contest in 2006, they've had national reach and a huge fan base. Their brand new album is Stress Dreams.

Episode 195: Aoife O'Donovan has one of the most beautiful and nuanced voices in popular music and she's deployed it in a lot of collaborative directions. She was the voice of Crooked Still for ten years. She's joined projects by Dave Douglas, the elite Goat Rodeo Sessions ensemble, the award-winning trio I'm With Her and more. Now she's back with her first solo album in six years, Age of Apathy. Also in the hour, a radio report from Citizen Vinyl, a synergistic, community-focused business in Asheville, NC that mingles record pressing, a vinyl and art store, food and drink and a recording studio - all inside the historic home of the city's newspaper.

Episode 194: Formed in the mid 2000s in Nashville, the Infamous Stringdusters executed one of roots music's most successful pivots. Their foundation was and remains traditional bluegrass music, and they have the chops to execute the real deal at any moment. But when that audience and scene proved confining, they looked west to Colorado and the broader, wider values of the jamgrass world. After touring with the leaders in that arena, they became headliners themselves, while turning out Grammy winning recordings as well. I spoke with banjo player Chris Pandolfi, dobro player Andy Hall and guitarist Andy Falco about the odyssey of the Dusters on the eve of the band's tenth album Toward The Fray, due Feb. 18.

Episode 193: From where we sit at WMOT, Allison Russell was the artist of 2021. Her album Outside Child, our most played disc, emerged in the summer to massive acclaim and it has now been nominated for three Grammy Awards. And she was tapped to curate the Sunday closing set at Newport Folk Festival, which she used to shine a light on a dozen extraordinary African American women who've found their footing in roots music and lit up the genre with deeply individual work. That said, she's been in folk music for 20 years. So to close out 2021, Allison joined me to talk about it all. Also, Cajun music star and caretaker Joel Savoy speaks about his father Marc Savoy's new book tracing his career and contributions to the Acadian accordion.

Episode 192: Nashville-raised songwriter Aubrey Sellers returns to The String as half of the new duo Jackson & Sellers. She and Jade Jackson became Instagram friends after the 2019 AmericanaFest where they realized they liked each other's music. Then a co-writing date sparked a close friendship and a hot duo that's attracted a ton of attention and praise. Their self-titled album has country in its bones, but it rocks hard and takes advantage of the dazzling guitars of Ethan Ballinger.

Episode 191: The Charleston, SC collective SUSTO has been a vehicle for the fertile mind of songwriter Justin Osborne since 2014. The music and his lyrics have both a grandeur and an intimacy, tackling nothing less than existence. On his newest Time In The Sun, Osborne wrote epic tracks that among other things tackled the near simultaneous passing of his father and the birth of his first child. We also talk about the influence of a pivotal trip to Cuba and discovering psychedelics while a student at the Citadel military academy. Also, a tour through the fine 2021 album Ten Thousand Roses with its creator, Galax, VA songwriter Dori Freeman.

Episode 190: Veteran songwriter Bruce Robison set the pace for the alt-country/Americana format in the 1990s and wrote hit songs for George Strait, the Dixie Chicks and others. Five years ago, he widened his scope and formed The Next Waltz, a studio sessions oriented video channel and nascent record label. Now TNW has released its first full album by a solo songwriter, and that's Tony Kamel, ten-year founding member of string band Wood & Wire. In a split hour, I speak with Tony about his life around the Gulf Coast and his work with Bruce on the album Back Down Home. Then it's a catch up with Robison about his vision for The Next Waltz.

Episode 189: Phoebe Hunt established herself on a national stage playing for years with her former band the Bellville Outfit out of Austin. Since pursuing a solo career in New York and now Nashville, she's come into her own as an artist with a highly developed global and spiritual perspective, expressed on the recent albums Shanti's Shadow and Neither One Of Us Is Wrong. She's also advocated for music as therapy and self-actualization through TED talks and a non-profit. This is an enriching talk about music's role and about some great new sounds. Also, I interview Dr. Ted Olson of ETSU about his liner notes for a new career-spanning Doc Watson anthology.

Episode 188: Doyle Lawson has been mingling the holy and the down home in his blistering traditional bluegrass over a career on the road stretching back just shy of 60 years. Now at 77 he's stepping away from touring and the album cycle, leaving us with the swan song album Roundtable. In a career-spanning conversation we talk about getting hired by Jimmy Martin at age 18, about the supergroup Bluegrass Album Band, about forming and leading his band Quicksilver, and about his observations, as a conservative Christian, of efforts to diversify bluegrass music.

Episode 187: John Sebastian is most famous as the founder of and songwriter for the Lovin' Spoonful, which produced a fresh crop of folk rock hits in the late 60s. But there's much more to his story. In a full hour conversation, Sebastian talks about learning music in Washington Square in the 50s, about the great song "Nashville Cats," about Woodstock and his time with NRBQ. His most recent project was to team up with guitarist Arlen Roth to reinterpret great songs from the Spoonful catalog. John is a great storyteller and I loved this encounter a lot.

Episode 186: Formed as a showcase for women in string band music in 2009, Della Mae has seen lineup changes but no drift in its mission to create a new bluegrass and neo-folk sound full of ideas and heart. This episode, founding member Kimber Ludiker and decade-long vocalist Celia Woodsmith tell the story of how the band worked together at a distance during 2020 and then came together in a cathartic run of sessions that became the new Family Reunion. Also, Boston's imaginative, daring Twisted Pine speaks to me at the World of Bluegrass.

Episode 185: Tim Easton is one of the most interesting guys in the Americana troubadour game. He grew up split between Akron, OH and Tokyo, Japan. He busked all over Europe for years as he formed his identity as a performer and songwriter. His albums on New West in the early 2000s are classics of folk rock, and he's also powerful as a solo artist, as you can hear on the one-take direct-to-analog tracks of Paco And The Melodic Polaroids. His newest, You Don't Really Know Me, takes us inside his story and his heart more directly than most of his prior work. This is a fun, wide-ranging talk from his new home in Madison, TN with plenty of music from the new album.

Episode 184: AmericanaFest returned to the clubs and yards of Nashville with a slimmer but spirited 2021 edition. Those able to come found community, diversity and great performances. I caught up with five showcasing artists to check in on their new projects and their take on today's roots scene. Included: blues veteran Sue Foley, LA protest folk artist Chris Pierce, Colorado songwriter Emily Scott Robinson, new Austinite roots rocker Suzanne Santo and folk duo Golden Shoals.

Episode 183: He's the most gifted and innovative banjo player of all time and one of the architects of an American string band jazz tradition that's influenced generations of bluegrass musicians. And now after two decades of varied explorations in classical, world and fusion music, Bela Fleck has circled back to the music that captivated him as a teenager. My Bluegrass Heart is an epic 19-track double album featuring the finest acoustic pickers of our time and the completion of a trilogy of albums that began in 1987. Also in the hour, a report from the 20th anniversary Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion.

Episode 182: To spotlight the 2021 AmericanaFest, returning after a year off, I reached out to two of the most interesting artists showcasing during the week. Sierra Ferrell is a rambling free spirit from West Virginia who found her way to Nashville and its new era honky tonk scene way off of Broadway. Rounder Records heard her arresting old-world voice and feel for songs and signed her to a deal, and her debut is remarkable. Live, she's a brilliantly energetic and unusual singer songwriter. From the other end of the country music spectrum comes newcomer Brittney Spencer, who deftly rides the line between the commercial mainstream and roots. From the Opry stage to the ACM Honors live broadcast, she's knocking Nashville out.

Episode 181: It's a jangle pop special with two bands of brothers who are back on record after two-decade breaks. The Delevantes, Bob and Mike, are pioneers of Americana, chart toppers when the format was born thanks to their Everly Brothers harmony and country twang. Their enchanting new album will be called A Thousand Turns. Also in the hour, also with a brother named Mike, Raleigh, NC band The Connells on their work with REM producer Mitch Easter then and now. They take me back to turning 19 in Chapel Hill when my world was defined by southern college radio rock and roll.

Episode 180: When Maggie Rose held her album release party in late August for her third album Have A Seat, she filled one of the city's largest music halls with wildly enthusiastic fans, testimony to her 13 years of work and resilience and acclaim. She's a bold and emotive singer who has forged a unique fusion of roots, soul and pop, and her recording sessions at FAME Studio in Muscle Shoals picked up just the right amount of vintage vibe. We get to know an artist who will surely be on ever bigger stages as the coming years unfold. Also, a legendary voice from country music, as I catch up with Opry star Connie Smith on the release of her new project, The Cry of the Heart.

Episode 179: He goes by "Ferg" and he's one of the most interesting and influential creative forces in Nashville, whether you've heard of him or not. David Ferguson grew up in town, connected as a teenager with the great producer Cowboy Jack Clement and learned the mystic arts of recording and producing records. He engineered Johnny Cash's iconic comeback albums with Rick Rubin. He's worked the board or produced for John Prine, Sturgill Simpson, Margo Price and recently become a creative partner at Dan Auerbach's Easy Eye Records. Now he's made an album of his own, featuring easy country arrangements of classic and favorite songs. He's the most interesting man in Music City.

Episode 178: East Nashville's J.P. Harris has been a train-hopper, a logger, a shepherd, a honky tonker and a historic home carpenter. Indeed he was getting up from this early morning interview to work on an old home. It's a mix that makes him the most interesting man in roots music. And now, he's turned his attention back to the music that first drew him into country, old-time fiddle and banjo ballads. His new album Don't You Marry No Railroad Man brings a fresh reading to some ancient songs and a vivid partnership with album producer and fiddler Chance McCoy. This was a remarkable conversation.

Episode 177: This year marks the 30th anniversary of Jim Lauderdale's solo debut album Planet Of Love, but he was a veteran even then of the burgeoning alternative country music scenes in New York and Los Angeles. In his Nashville decades, he's been cherished as a leader and spokesperson for Americana music, a very successful hit songwriter, a collaborator with giants and an artist who just kicks out incredible album after album. In this laid back conversation, Jim talks about how his first album came to be, how he pursued a long-running writing relationship with the legendary Robert Hunter and his new album Hope.

Episode 176: Parker Millsap burst on to the folk and roots scene in 2014 out of Oklahoma with a voice beyond his years and a bold way with drawing characters from the American heartland. Raised in the Pentecostal church, he's a rare Americana singer comfortable with celebrating and critiquing the faith community that shaped his picture of humanity. On his newest Be Here Instead, Parker turns his lens more inward and in a season of socially conscious music, delivers a musically ambitious set of songs about more conventional terrain - life and love. Also, a visit with Leah Ross, director of the Birthplace of Country Music Museum and the Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion, one of the major festivals taking place in crowded, historic return to live music in America this fall.

Episode 175: Tim O'Brien is one of several roots music icons who've circled back for a second visit to The String in recent weeks, and that's a great thing. His band Hot Rize dominated bluegrass in the 1980s and since the 90s he's been a dynamo of songwriting, ensemble playing, recording and collaborating. The latest project He Walked On finds Tim reflecting on the accelerated, unnerving world unfolding out his window during the pandemic with his signature mix of old-time tradition and contemporary songwriter sensibility. Also, an introduction to Nashville bass player Geoff Saunders, an academy trained jazz artist and composer out with his debut as a band leader.

Episode 174: Amythyst Kiah grew up in East TN and discovered traditional folk music at college there. Drawn to its heritage and its sound, she launched her career as a solo singer of original and traditional songs on guitar and banjo. Her low-timbred voice reminded me in her growth years of Odetta. Frustrated with her trajectory, she nearly quit but was revived by the support of folk star Rhiannon Giddens and included in the acclaimed project Our Native Daughters. Now, on her label debut Wary & Strange, Amythyst forges a personal sound that is earthy and epic at the same time. And through songs like "Black Myself," she's changed the conversation about African American voices in contemporary folk and country. Also, a visit with Jody White about his role in the posthumous album Smoke From The Chimney by his late father Tony Joe White.

Episode 173: It takes a bold woman to cover "Only Daddy That'll Walk The Line," but Shannon McNally has been fearlessly facing down naysayers in the music business for 20 years. Nashville based after turns in LA, New Orleans and Mississippi, she's one of the most underrated roots singer songwriters in roots music, with a deep catalog and numerous distinguished collaborations to her name. Her lifelong love of Waylon Jennings inspired her at last to round up a band and cut songs by him or inspired by him, and the collection is getting raves. Also I speak with Oliver Wood, the guitar playing, songwriting half of the Wood Brothers, about his first-ever solo release.

Episode 172: A sense of place pervades this split show featuring two of the most fascinating and accomplished voices in Americana music. Amy Helm is a veteran singer but a relatively new solo recording artist having released her third LP 'What The Flood Leaves Behind.' We talk about the aura and sound of her late father Levon Helm's Barn and how she keeps discovering new things there. Rachel Baiman came to Nashville from Chicago for college and made a name as a fiddler in the duo 10 String Symphony. Her solo albums are crystalizing a new indie roots sound with great songwriting. We talk at her home, a charming cabin thrust over the Cumberland River in Madison TN. Her new album is 'Cycles.'

Episode 171: Founded by an irrepressible enthusiast in his very early twenties, Alligator Records grew into the most authoritative and wide-ranging label chronicling urban blues in the US. That man, Bruce Iglauer, owns and runs the label to this day, having released hundreds of albums on artists such as Albert Collins, Koko Taylor, Roy Buchanan, Lonnie Brooks, Edgar Winter, James Cotten, Curtis Salgado, Marcia Ball, The Holmes Brothers and newest star Shemekia Copeland. The hour features Iglauer in conversation, guest appearances by Copeland and artist Selwyn Birchwood, and selections from the new anthology '50 Years Of Genuine House Rockin' Music.'

Episode 170: They're both Nashville icons but they'd rarely worked together until now. John Hiatt is a songwriter's songwriter with a voice that's made him a roots music star. Jerry Douglas is the most in-demand dobro player in the world. Both are recipients of Americana Lifetime Achievement Awards. When the idea to record together was hatched, Jerry brought his ace band to RCA Studio B where he and John crafted a gorgeous set of songs under the title Leftover Feelings. When the chance came up to sit down around a table with these amazing artists (and former String guests by the way), it was a no-brainer.

Episode 169: He's known worldwide as a consummate virtuoso on the fiddle and the violin, but Mark O'Connor's first instrument was actually the guitar. After starting his music life with classical and flamenco style lessons, the Seattle teen branched into traditional fiddle and acoustic guitar. After making the groundbreaking Markology when he was 16, O'Connor realized he had bursitis in his elbow and he gave up the guitar to save his fiddling. After more than 40 years winning Grammy Awards and making waves in country, bluegrass, jazz and classical music, O'Connor picked up the guitar again and made a series of recordings that became the new Markology II. We talk about the long journey back. Also, mandolinist Joe K. Walsh, one of the many alums of O'Connor's famed, scene-making fiddle camps, talks about the new acoustic scene today and his new quartet album.

Episode 168: By the time 2020's pandemic shroud covered the land and stilled its musicians, Oklahoma songwriter Samantha Crain knew all too well about incapacitation. In 2017, touring behind her album You Had Me At Goodbye, she was involved in three car accidents in three months, leaving her hands nerve damaged and debilitated, threatening her career. So the brisk and bright tone of her new EP is reassuring. Her shapely, idiosyncratic voice is still very much with us. "I'm feeling good," she says. "I feel like I catalogued a lot of tricks of survival, due to dealing with the various physical and mental health struggles that I had gone through in 2018."

Episode 167: I met Casey Driessen almost 20 years ago when he was new to Nashville, fresh off a music degree from Berklee in Boston and full of new ideas about bluegrass and American fiddling. He became a key sideman for folks like Tim O'Brien and Darrell Scott. As a composer and arranger he made several solo albums and then refined a truly solo approach with looping pedals. He's become a cutting-edge authority on the innovative bow "chopping" technique that all up and coming fiddlers have to learn now. His latest record documents nearly a year of global travel with his family, meeting other musicians and cooking up tunes and sessions captured in the album and multi-media work "Otherlands."

Episode 166: Still waters run deep with Nashville's Mando Saenz. He's cool and contemplative in conversation, while songwriters tell you he's a fountain of ideas in the writing studio, where he spends most of his time. The Texas native got his start in Houston and early tours with Hayes Carll. Fate brought him to Nashville where he's written and recorded since the mid 2000s for the innovative Carnival Music. He's especially close to Jim Lauderdale and Kim Richey and his songs have been recorded by Miranda Lambert and Lee Ann Womack, Midland and many more. His fourth album for the label and his most musically adventurous is All My Shame. Also a fun chat with Andrew Nelson and Blount Floyd, founders and co-leaders of the roots rock band Great Peacock.

Episode 165: Growing up in the Pacific Northwest in the 1960s, Curtis Salgado fell down the rabbit hole of Deep South blues, jazz, soul and R&B and knew it would be his life's work. Now in his mid 60s, he looks back at a life full of happy accidents, earned admiration, survival and awards, including the BB King Entertainer of the Year prize. His new album on Alligator Records is Damage Control, a study in existential poise. Also in the hour, a key Nashville musician who led some of the sessions on that album, piano and organ player Kevin McKendree. He's toured the world with Brian Setzer, Delbert McClinton and more, while writing and producing soul/blues in Music City.

Singer-songwriter Garrison Starr grew up in Mississippi, made rock and roll out of Memphis and got signed in her late teens to a major label deal where her song "Superhero" took her to the charts and major tours. Heady success, except it was upset by the traumas and betrayals of being outed as gay in college and a conservative culture that exiled her. Now, with a dozen albums to her credit and a successful songwriting career in Los Angeles, she revels in her growth and forgiveness on the new album Girl I Used To Be. Garrison is a fantastic talent with deep Nashville ties, and the story of how this personal album got written will surprise you. Also, I meet Nashville-based, English-bred newcomer Lilly Winwood, who's seen the music industry from the bottom and the top.

Episode 163: It's been a year since the music industry slammed to a halt due to Covid-19. Performing artists had to adjust financially, logistically, emotionally and more. Now with a year's hindsight, The String sought out a sampling of roots musicians to hear how they coped. Many found unexpected gifts. Some started new businesses. Everybody learned a lot about themselves and their field. Featured: Kyshona Armstrong, Jill Andrews, Tim Easton, Robert Greer, Molly Tuttle, Rob Ickes, Doug and Telisha Williams, Garrison Starr, Sarah Jarosz, Suzanne Santo and Jerry Pentecost. With music by all.

Episode 162: From his breakout days as guitarist for Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen to his four-decade career as a bandleader, songwriter and recording artist, Bill Kirchen has been a badass hero of Americana music. His dextrous and dazzling Telecaster picking may get the most attention, but he's a clever and insightful songwriter who knows how to put on a memorable show. The String is officially lobbying for an Americana Lifetime Achievement Award for the Ann Arbor MI native. I reached Bill at home in Austin to talk about his career and the fine 2020 anthology of his three albums with Proper Records. It's a blast.

Episode 161: Bluegrass has an instrumental tradition going back to its Bill Monroe origins and its old-time forebears. Over time, the playing and composing became more refined and exploratory. This show features three young masters of contemporary acoustic music who've released all-instrumental albums in recent months. I speak with Wes Corbett, banjo player currently with the Sam Bush Band, Jeff Picker, bass player for Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, and Andrew Marlin, half of the married duo Mandolin Orange. They talk about their new recordings and about the path that led them to write and record without words.

Episode 160: Women with roots - in jazz is the heart of this hour. Jenny Scheinman is one of the leading jazz violinists working today, yet her musical life began grounded in folk music and she's been a prolific contributor to records and tours by the likes of Rodney Crowell, Robbie Fulks, Ani DeFranco and others. Her many collaborations with guitarist Bill Frisell have produced sublime fusions of folk, country and jazz. And Jenny has released two acclaimed songwriter albums as well. Now she's leading a band with drummer Allison Miller. You'll hear samples from that catalog as we speak about a unique life in music. Also in the hour, Nashville's Kandace Springs talks about getting mentored by Prince, landing a record deal on Blue Note and making a new album with heroes like Nora Jones and Christian McBride. We've posted a feature about her here.

Episode 159: Tennessee snuggles up against North Carolina at the apex of the Appalachian Mountains, together making a mid-South band from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River. It also defines possibly the most musically consequential pair of states in the nation. In a new history, veteran Raleigh journalist David Menconi describes NC music from Charlie Poole to the Avett Brothers and beyond. After a talk with him, we dive in with one of the most important and admired talents of our time from the state, songwriter M.C. Taylor who plays as Hiss Golden Messenger. His album Terms of Surrender is up for an Americana album Grammy Award.

Joachim Cooder has pursued his musical life as drummer, percussionist and family man, staying near and working regularly with his father, blues/roots guitarist Ry Cooder and his songwriting wife, among other scattered projects. In recent years though, his writing/composing side has fully emerged, and his debut on Nonesuch Records 'Over That Road I'm Bound,' featuring modern interpretations of Uncle Dave Macon songs, was one of the most unique and beguiling albums of 2020. We speak from his Los Angeles home. Also, Nashville writer/producer Daniel Tashian talks about his generation-spanning collaboration with the legendary Burt Bacharach.