The String

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 leader known as Shinyribs - a legend of the Austin scene and a wildly entertaining showman.

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 roughly a decade of live recordings at the Mother Church. Ketch talks about the band's origins, the legacy of its forty-odd shows at the Ryman and being part of Ken Burns' Country Music documentary.

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 hero, and their relationship is at the core of this conversation. Also in the hour, Raleigh NC writer Tommy Goldsmith talks about his new book, the definitive account of Earl Scruggs and his famous bluegrass instrumental "Foggy Mountain Breakdown."

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 players. You never know what might happen. Also in the hour, the next wave of the genre with Bluegrass Ramble showcase artist Jaelee Roberts. The 18-year-old is a new voice and songwriter who's being welcomed by leading musicians into her first steps as a recording artist. IBMA's World of Bluegrass runs Sept. 24-28 in Raleigh, NC.

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 to her second album, Far From Home.

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 October, Solid Gold Sounds, recorded at and for Dan Auerbach's Easy Eye Records. It's a 70s tinged classic country album that's good for the soul. Also, a catch up with Aaron Lee Tasjan, who's just released an entirely new version of his 2018 album called Karma For Cheap Reincarnated.

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 pour out of the speakers on her newest, Me And The Ghost of Charlemagne. Also, a short phoner with Marty Stuart teasing the new mega-documentary Country Music by Ken Burns.

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 and many other marquee stages. Also in the hour, we listen back to a few highlight moments from three years of The String, including Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn, Bobby Rush, Gretchen Peters and The Secret Sisters.

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 conversation, which took place hours before his Grand Ole Opry debut in the WSM Room back stage. Also in the hour, Nashville's Lillie Mae is back on the program to discuss making her second album for Third Man Records at Studio A with the super-producer Dave Cobb. It's part of a longer conversation that will get posted soon at WMOT.org.

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 combination with her surviving brothers (she was the only girl of eight kids growing up) in the vocal group The Settles Connection. And she's pulled all this off while maintaining an intense career as a nurse for premature babies at Vanderbilt Medical Center. Also in the hour, a visit with Trent Wagler and Jay Lapp, veterans of VA band The Steel Wheels, who've just released their seventh LP album.

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 made at Sam Phillips Recording. Also in the hour, the fresh new direction of songwriter/guitarist Courtney Hartman. Her life after string band Della Mae has been introspective and exploratory, culminating in a 500-mile pilgrimage in Spain and a solo debut album, Ready Reckoner.

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-written with Nashville's eclectic and under-rated singer/songwriter Dara Tucker, we pulled her in to this episode as well. The hour represents two very different journeys that intersected in Music City.

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, who've released her latest Mint Condition. Also in the hour, a catch-up with Texas reared, Nashville based country bluesman Lee Roy Parnell.

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 the new Breakdown On 20th Ave. South from New West Records. It will be one of the landmarks of 2019, and Craig sat down at the Millers' home to talk about two magical, interwoven lives in music.

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 passion for American roots, from Tin Pan Alley to country to rock and roll. Lowe has recently released another EP in a stretch of work with the band Los Straightjackets. Also this hour, the emotionally charged and luxurious roots pop of Dylan LeBlanc.

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 of valuable instruments. Also in the show, Andy Statman talks about how and why he mastered the bluegrass mandolin and the Klezmer clarinet. He's released more than 30 exceptional albums, his latest being Monroe Bus, a tribute to Bill Monroe instrumentals that took on unexpected range and dimension.

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 reflects on two key periods of his career - the 1970s when as a twentysomething he worked with epic bands the Country Gentlemen, J.D. Crowe and the New South, and Boone Creek, which he started with a young Jerry Douglas. And we talk about the 2000s, when he turned his full attention back to bluegrass and quickly dominated the industry with awards and era-shaping records.

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 carrying the torch for country music. Now he's putting down new roots in Memphis TN. He's the new owner of a legendary south Memphis road house called Hernando's Hideaway, which he'll reopen after renovations this summer. He's taken his concept of Ameripolitan music to new heights with a growing Memphis festival and an awards show that just wrapped its sixth edition. And he made his new album there - his 32nd release. So there's a lot to talk about. Also, getting to know English folk singer and master guitarist John Smith, whose new album Hummingbird blends a few originals with a collection of age-old English ballads.

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 provoking I Like It Down Here. Also in the hour, an excerpt from a recent catch up with the mighty Steve Earle, who's just released his long awaited tribute to his late great friend Guy Clark. Full conversation is at WMOT.org.

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/songwriter and producer Jared Tyler. See WMOT.org for photos, a playlist and more resources.

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 her to helping artists and it seemed destiny that she'd take them on as clients and start her own firm, Nashville based Market Monkeys. She has worked with the multi-dimensional songwriter Susan Werner and Canadian folk star Rose Cousins. Her current roster includes prog-bluegrass band Della Mae, NC songwriter Sarah Siskind and English folk singer John Smith.

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.

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 band that boldly and brilliantly fuses bluegrass and Jewish music. They sing in Hebrew and English. The melodies are beguiling and ancient-feeling. The musicianship is excellent. They talk about their four-year adventure together as the first band of their kind.

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 Auerbach and his Easy Eye studio and label in Nashville. The resulting debut LP Walk Through Fire is an exquisite album with classic textures and an unmistakable esthetic. We first spoke with Yola as part of a round-up review of AmericanaFest 2017, so with this in-depth conversation, she becomes the first-ever repeat visitor to The String! Also this hour, a talk with Erika Wollam Nichols, general manager of The Bluebird Cafe and instigator of a new documentary about the famous venue that premieres this week at SXSW.

Colin Linden - guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer - is one of Nashville's most interesting musicians. You may have seen him in the Americana Awards house band, or as a key live musician on the TV series Nashville or in the dynamic Canadian country rock band Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. He wasn't born into the blues but he sure found the music early and made it his own, through a very early meeting with Howlin Wolf and a pilgrimage through the Deep South in his teens. He's also been a long-time band leader and producer for Bruce Cockburn. We talk about all that, as well as the project he's just completed with fellow blues musician Luther Dickinson and others, a suite of vintage love songs called Amour. Plus, a visit with the new owner and proprietor of a revived historic studio in Nashville, the former home of Cowboy Jack Clement.

Fifteen years ago, Mindy Smith rocketed from local sets in Nashville to the national stage in a matter of a few months on the strength of a duet on "Jolene" with Dolly Parton and the January 2004 release of her debut album One Moment More. She became the first winner of the Americana Music Association Emerging Artist award, and wide audiences embraced her empathic songs and translucent voice. The years since have seen periods of high profile touring and periods of quiet. She's preparing to step back out and working on a new album. On the occasion of the 15th anniversary release of One Moment More on vinyl, we catch up about her life and path and a recent discovery. Also in the hour, the honey-toned voice of Adam Wakefield reached millions on television, but in Nashville he's a blue collar songwriting artist with a fine debut album.

Episode #81: This week, the long, diverse career of Nashville's Bill Lloyd. From country hits as a writer and artist to collaborations with leading lights of rock and pop, Bill is a dynamo. And he's got a fantastic new album out called Working The Long Game. We hit a lot of points of Bill's biography in our conversation, but the essentials to know going in are that he moved to Nashville after college in Bowling Green, KY to write songs. He met fellow writer Radney Foster and they shot to fame in 1987 as Foster & Lloyd, with a sound that swam upstream from the country radio mainstream. In more recent years, he's led the band the Long Players, Nashville favorites that perform live cut-by-cut covers of full classic albums. He keeps up a steady run of solo albums that blend top-flight Nashville songcraft with the timeless sound of pop music. Also, highlights from my recent sit-down with the very busy Rhiannon Giddens about her life after the Carolina Chocolate Drops and a MacArthur Fellowship.

If Americana values all American roots forms and the fusion thereof, then nobody's more Americana than Austin singer/songwriter Ruthie Foster. She grew up singing in church in rural TX, developed a variety of skills in bands while serving in the US Navy, then became a folk troubadour who slips from country to soul to blues to gospel with ease. She has been one of if not the flagship artist for Austin's excellent Blue Corn Music record label since 2002. She's been featured on a guitar blues tour with Jorma Kaukonen and Robben Ford, and that's just one fragment of a rich collaborative life. She's won the Blues Foundation's Koko Taylor award for best traditional blues female singer SIX times, and she's nominated again this year. She's also a charming person who radiates kindness. Also in the hour, Autin's Rob Baird, a funny, easy-going artist who's just released his fourth album, After All. It's an all Austin talk-fest with a ton of music.

Missy Raines grew up in rural west VA deeply immersed in bluegrass culture. And when she started playing professionally in her collegiate years, she went for it with, as she tells me, no plan B but a life in the music she loved. Over a couple of decades as a side musician, she became a pioneer and a scene favorite, winning seven IBMA awards for her bass playing alone. In 2008, she made real a long-standing dream of starting her own band, which became a vehicle for her innovative fusion-minded composing and her mentorship of emerging young master musicians. In late 2018, Missy released her first album under her name alone, as it's a songwriter's project that adds to her musical world view. Also in this hour Irishman Danny Burns, a veteran songwriter, singer and sideman who's been working hard at a music career for going on 20 years. And at the age of 37 he's taken the radical step of...putting out a debut album. The project, North Country, is a wonderful new-grass collection with Celtic overtones and impressive songs and guest artists. So what took him so long? He'll explain.

The String launches a new year with a conversation with Rodney Crowell, one of the legit icons of Americana music. The Texas born, Nashville based songwriter was one of the artists around whom the format was created 20 years ago, and indeed he won the Americana Music Association's lifetime achievement award for songwriting in 2006. He's a valued collaborator, earning a Grammy Award for his recent work with his longtime friend and colleague Emmylou Harris. He became an acclaimed author with his memoir Chinaberry Sidewalks in 2011. Recently he's released a first-ever Christmas album and a volume of stripped down "Acoustic Classics" from his extensive catalog. We cover a range of times and topics. Also in the hour, Maya de Vitry talks about her difficult but necessary departure from the beloved acoustic trio The Stray Birds. She's set out on her own with the album Adaptations.

How and why this humble collection of towns hugging the Tennessee River in northern Alabama became a historic musical hot spot is an improbable, wonderful American story. But I grew interested in Muscle Shoals of today. More and more, roots and rock and roll musicians have been traveling there to record. A string of remarkable bands and songwriters, including Jason Isbell, John Paul White, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Dylan LeBlanc and The Secret Sisters, has emerged from the area in recent years. A half dozen studios are in demand and busy. It's became clear that Muscle Shoals is no museum. It's a scene. So the only thing to do was to go there and listen.

This week, an evenly split hour with very different artists who have a lot to say about change and growth. The Gibson Brothers took their experience from two decades in bluegrass and poured it into a radically different project written and produced with Dan Auerbach. Ruby Boots has been "shedding her skin" regularly through a life on at least three continents. She's now a mainstay in the East Nashville scene and her 'Don't Talk About It' is a masterful album.

Bob Dylan's transition from solo folk troubadour to electric roots rocker was as important a precursor to the idea of Americana music as any other. And that transition reached its apex with the 1966 masterpiece Blonde On Blonde. We devote this whole episode to the album. My featured guest is longtime Nashville music journalist Daryl Sanders who's just published That Thin Wild Mercury Sound, the first book to carefully track how and why Dylan came to Music City to work with young and creative session musicians such as Charlie McCoy, Wayne Moss, Mac Gayden and Kenneth Buttrey. The companion interview features songwriter Robyn Hitchcock who talks about how Blonde on Blonde changed his life and gave him a lifetime's benchmark of artistry.

Episode 74: Kathy Mattea's new album Pretty Bird is her first release in six years. In the time between, she's struggled through some problems with her voice and in so doing reached outside of her musical comfort zones. After a couple of albums dedicated to exploring her Appalachian heritage, this one's more eclectic. She calls it a journey back to singing for the sheer joy of it. Mattea has always been a gifted interpreter from her younger days as a Music Row demo singer through her years as CMA Female Vocalist of the Year in 1989 and 90. Here she sings "Ode To Billie Joe," Bobbie Gentry's mesmerizing hit from 1967, and an old traditional Irish ballad and Mary Gauthier's new gospel Americana anthem "Mercy Now." But the title track, which closes the album, declares her continued allegiance to the old music of West Virginia. It's by Hazel Dickens, herself a WV Music Hall of Famer and one of the most influential and powerful women to ever work in folk and bluegrass music. She's a hero to Mattea and many others for her undiluted mountain sound and her down to earth feminism. Later in the show we're going to hear the late great Hazel Dickens on tape from a biographical interview.

What is tradition in music? It turns out that's a tricky but illuminating question, and this week Craig puts it to a range of folks at the World of Bluegrass in Raleigh, NC. CJ Lewandowski of the hot new Po' Ramblin' Boys (pictured) want to build bridges between fans of the inside and outside. Doyle Lawson applies it to the atmosphere he's set at his 39-year-old festival in Denton, NC. John Showman describes how the Lonesome Ace String Band produces traditional sounding music without thinking like preservationists. Multiple IBMA Award winner Becky Buller knows how to write songs from across the trad/rad spectrum. Jordan Laney brings her scholarly background to the question. East Tennessee State bluegrass music program director Dan Boner says he's seen tradition take many forms in his students. Asheville fiddler Natalya Weinstein and her husband John Miller tap their respective family histories in their music. And string music educator Happy Traum has helped pass down tradition via video lessons. It's a fascinating ramble, with music throughout.

This week circles back one final time to AmericanaFest 2018, where a global community dedicated to American roots music gathered and networked and listened to some of the world's best music. Amy Helm, out solo after a decade with Olabelle and working with her late great father Levon, is an exceptional singer with the new album This Too Shall Light. Veteran alt-country and bluegrass singer songwriter Robbie Fulks showcased his new rollicking boogie woogie rock and roll project with pianist and singer Linda Gail Lewis, Jerry Lee's sister. Their duo album is called Wild Wild Wild. And rounding out the hour is emerging Canadian folk artist Kaia Kater. She's on a remarkable journey of identity and creativity, and she is newly signed to the iconic Smithsonian Folkways record label. Her album Grenades is out in a matter of days.

Episode #71: This week we get out of the studio for three radio field trips with some remarkable songwriter/artists. First I visit with Rayland Baxter at the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum about his explosively colorful new album Wide Awake. Next it's off to the ballpark for nine questions in nine innings with rocking country songwriter Nora Jane Struthers. Finally I sit on the upper deck of the famous Mercy Lounge taking in the Nashville skyline with Gary Louris of the venerable, always relevant Jayhawks.

Episode 70: Shemekia Copeland was born to sing, raised by blues royalty. Her dad, Johnny Clyde Copeland, took his Louisiana and Texas roots to the New York City area where he based a career that landed him a Grammy award and a spot in the Blues Hall of Fame. Shemekia sang all her life and by 18 she was on record and on the minds of everyone looking at the next generation of the blues. And she's won a raft of awards in her genre. Thing is though, she's a wide ranging artist who wants to see the blues evolve and expand, so in the past few years, she and Americana have found one another in a big way. She came to Nashville to make her last two albums, calling on Will Kimbrough as a guitar player and writer on both and producer on her latest, America's Child. That album, released in September, is a pointed political and humanistic statement that features guest turns by Mary Gauthier, John Prine, and Emmylou Harris. Her showcase was one of the most anticipated at AmericanaFest 2018. Also, Austin's Band of Heathens addresses their latest politically charged release, a song-by-song cover of the 1972 Ray Charles album A Message From The People.

Episode 69 is the first in a series of shows reporting on artists who performed at AmericanaFest 2018, the most wide-ranging and diverse convention in its 19 years. Americana continues to represent and promote classic country music, bluegrass and songwriter-driven roots music. It also has become more reflective of the blues, soul and regional folk styles. This week Craig visits with Mississippi raised blues musician Cedric Burnside, a key figure in the legacy and spread of the Hill Country blues. Also, Zach and Danielle Green, the songwriting couple at the heart of Nashville indie-folk band Birdtalker and East Tennessee's Kris Truelsen. He's the leader of throwback Appalachian string band Bill and the Belles and a mover/shaker with the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol TN/VA. The range is wide and the insights about where they are taking the music are profound.

Episode 68: At 31 years old, Brittany Haas has been in high level touring string bands more than half her life and she's already regarded as one of the finest fiddle players in the world. As part of Crooked Still, she helped shape a new strain of traditional Americana. Of late she's been touring with the Dave Rawlings Machine, playing as part of the house band on public radio's Live From Here with Chris Thile and producing stunning instrumental music with her quartet Hawktail. We talk about her mentors, learning the innovative chopping technique that gives her music such propulsion and juggling a busy creative schedule. She's nominated as one of four contenders for the Americana Instrumentalist of the Year. Rounding out the hour, a conversation with Kentucky raised singer songwriter Leah Blevins. There's deep country in her voice and soul but a spirit of exploration and growth that she fully embraces. She is showcasing at AmericanaFest 2018 with a tour ahead of her opening for Amanda Shires.

Since the 1980s and a golden age of Nashville pub rock and alt-country, Webb Wilder has been The Last of the Full Grown Men, a crowd-rousing, semi-campy, always hard rocking blend of SUN Records rock and roll, surf music and hillbilly twang. He was born and raised in Hattiesburg, MS - a music freak from the get go. He and a high school friend launched themselves into music by moving to Austin in the mid 70s. But in Nashville Webb fulfilled his identity and his destiny. He's just released Powerful Stuff! Webb Wilder and the Beatnecks: Previously Unreleased Recordings 1985-1993. It was a good chance to have a wide ranging conversation about a vibrant time in Music City that never really went away. Also, a visit with Will Greig, proprietor of the one-year old Layman Drug Co., an audio and video recording showplace in a meticulously restored 120-year-old building in a fast-changing downtown neighborhood. What does its first year in business say about the Nashville studio business environment?

Episode #66: At 76 years old, Steve Cropper is in ideal position to reflect on an abundant, history making life in music, and he does so in this week's show. It's a special edition taped on stage in front of an eager audience at Nashville's Who Knew at City Winery. The series features speakers from the local to the world famous, on matters of creativity, entrepreneurship and mission. And Steve Cropper and his history with Stax Records represent all of those in abundance. Cropper grew up in Memphis from the age of nine, getting his first guitar by mail order in 1955. He channeled the city's sounds - blues, R&B, gospel and SUN Records rock and roll - into the band the Mar-Keys and then into the studio band at Stax. That history-making ensemble became the recording and touring band Booker T & The M.G.s. Cropper wrote masterworks of the American soul songbook: "Knock On Wood," "In The MIdnight Hour" and "Dock of the Bay." We talk about all that and his subsequent career with the Blues Brothers in this in-depth interview.

Episode 65: To understand the unique and intricate Nashville based quintet Cordovas, you've got to flash back to the early 2000s when a songwriter from North Carolina named Joe Firstman was tearing it up in Los Angeles. Blazingly talented, he got signed to Atlantic Records but it was a brutal time for the music industry and he went his own way in 2005. He was the bandleader for a late night network show. Then it was time for rebuilding - and over a lot of years, Cordovas became the result. With smart guitar duo parts arranged by Lucca Soria and Toby Weaver, plus a loosely grooving rhythm section, Cordovas evokes The Band, The Allman Brothers and The Grateful Dead. But they defy jam band logic with tightly constructed songs on their ATO Records debut That Santa Fe Chanel. Craig visits their home/rehearsal compound in Madison TN for a full band interview.

We're spending much of this hour with someone who's as thoughtful and articulate about her art as the art itself. Gretchen Peters is a lover of language. She has awe and appropriate respect for the power of words and healthy fear of their misuse. And while I would place her among the most literary of songwriters - Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan are among her heroes - there's nothing aloof or unreachable in her work. Her reputation in country music was secured by recordings and hits for George Strait, Trisha Yearwood, Faith Hill and Martina McBride. But she set out to be a performing songwriter and recording artist, and indeed she's built a devoted following. Peters's new album Dancing With The Beast takes up a lot of time in the conversation ahead. It grapples with the shock of the 2016 presidential election, the tumult in the country and the #MeToo movement. Its stories are ferocious and candid, but as always the music is gorgeous and easy on the ears if not always the heart. Also, we get to know Gretchen's friend and frequent co-writer Ben Glover, an exceptional Nashville based songwriter from the coast of N. Ireland.

This week's episode of The String (#63) is about a sense of place and how we stand up for the places we cherish. Nashville has thrived as the epicenter of country music songwriting in part because of its own strong sense of place. It was a mid South crossroads city that welcomed art and music from the 19th century on. It became a pioneer in radio in the 20s and 30s by reflecting and broadcasting local values and sounds. Then in the mid 1950s, music business innovators and instigators began to cluster together on the parallel streets of 16th and 17th avenues, transforming a residential neighborhood into Music Row. Compact and convivial, Music Row was like a village, where music makers and business people worked and mingled and loitered with intent. A culture evolved over the decades that still hangs on today. And yet, people are concerned. A city that used to change slowly is transforming and growing, too fast for many. Commercial interests and cultural passions are clashing. And at the vortex of that conflict is Music Row. We're spending this hour of radio on Music Row, 1028 16th Ave. to be precise, a little bar called Bobby's Idle Hour. And our featured guest is a wonderful veteran songwriter who hangs out here, named John Scott Sherrill.

Erin Rae came of age in Nashville and dropped out of college to get serious about music. She is a pure product of Music City's richly rewarding community, veteran of open mics and local venues. Her first album Soon Enough turned a lot of heads. Now her follow up, the moody and gorgeous but emotionally candid Putting On Airs, is earning national acclaim. She's one of East Nashville's new stars, and we talk about Cafe Coco, her all-woman songwriting posse and singing alongside Margo Price at the Ryman. Also in the hour, a progress report on the remarkable National Museum of African American Music, on target to open in December of 2019.

Episode 61: Craig H. and sometime producer companion Gina Frary Bacon sit down with iconic Nashville Cat Wayne Moss. Raised in Charleston WV, Moss was obsessed with music and recording and made his way to Music City in 1959. He put his guitar to work with The Casuals, Nashville's first rock and roll band. And his web of relationships - Buzz Cason, Charlie McCoy, Norbert Putnam, Mac Gayden and others - put him at the center of the recording scene. He played famous licks and solos for Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton, Charlie Daniels and others. He formed the bands Area Code 615 and Barefoot Jerry for an extra dash of creative freedom. He built his studio Cinderella Sound in 1961 and it's still in business, the oldest surviving indie studio in the region. Moss talked about his extensive career and his new anthology CD called Collaborations With My Guitar Heroes.

Her recording career began in 2011 with an alt-country album whose title asked: Have You Met Lera Lynn? We hope you've met her by now because in the seven years since, the Athens GA-turned-Nashville TN songwriter has emerged as a fascinating and dynamic artist with a grasp of sound and production along with her mesmerizing voice. Her newest record finds her co-writing and collaborating. Plays Well With Others is a set of co-written duets with some important indie artists, including Peter Bradley Adams, Nicole Atkins, JD McPherson and the album's producer and record label boss John Paul White. We listen to the record in detail and burrow into what the songs say about Lera Lynn's vision and journey so far.

In Episode 59 of The String we dive deep into the Austin/Nashville dynamic captured in the new Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum special exhibit Outlaws & Armadillos: Country's Roaring 70s. Our feature interview is with Michael Martin Murphey. Best known to many for his crossover hit "Wildfire" from the summer of '75, Murphey's had a wide ranging career. His songs have been recorded by Johnny Cash and Lyle Lovett among others. And he's earned abundant recognition for his decades as a champion and revivalist in the field of cowboy songs and western music. But before all that, Murphey was a key player in the Austin TX phenomenon, residing there as a full time musician from 1968 to 1974. He was a regular at the Armadillo World Headquarters, the iconic venue at the heart of the live scene, where a diverse audience heard a diverse array of roots music, from hard country to traditional blues. Murphey, along with Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker (about whom he wrote the era-defining song "Cosmic Cowboy") and others forged a country-rock hybrid that became the foundation for the progressive folk music field we now call Americana. Also, a visit with exhibit co-curator Peter Cooper.

The Travelin' McCourys began as a side project - an outlet for Del McCourys sons and their bandmates to pursue experiments and collaborations. Over the past eight years, they've developed a repertoire and an identity all their own, and with the addition of full time guitarist Cody Kilby, a personnel they at last called official. So now they've released their debut self-titled album and launched a limitless future, for now very much in parallel to the iconic Del McCoury Band, arguably the most influential bluegrass outfit of the past 20 years. In this special edition of The String, taped before a live audience at Nashville's City Winery, Craig talks with Ronnie McCoury (mandolin), Rob McCoury (banjo) and Jason Carter (fiddle) about the past and future of their wide-open view of bluegrass. Also, guest producers Matt Follett and Brady Watson report on the Grand Ole Opry's most recent venture to New York City.