The String

Episode 367: One of the stars of Nashville's recent honky tonk boom first found her muse playing in late night jazz clubs of New York and Paris. That set Sweet Megg apart when she moved here just after the pandemic - a flair for early blues and hot club swing. In Music City, she's also developed as a songwriter releasing stylish Americana fare, but she continues to mine the catalog for golden nuggets she can make her o...

Episode 366: In The Hour Of Chaos, Allison Russell's third solo album, brings the power of harmony and solidarity into a time of division and fear. In an interview days before its release, the songwriter says her "rainbow coalition" of collaborators has grown since her breakout album Outside Child of 2021, and many of them, including Brittany Spencer, Norah Jones, and Kashus Culpepper, sing duets with her. She also get...

Episode 365: His biography sounds like several different people: accomplished jazz guitar player, New York City glam rocker, progressive Americana songwriter in Nashville. That's why Aaron Lee Tasjan comes across as a true American original. Over 13 years in Music City, Tasjan's been prolific and acclaimed, releasing half a dozen albums touching many colors of pop music. His latest came after a time of discouragement and personal r...

Episode 364: As Avery Hellman came of age in California, she took advantage of her good fortune of being from the family that established the game-changing Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco. It exposed her to standard-setting songwriting and artistry in folk and roots music, and with a bit of reluctance, she became an artist too under the name Ismay. Her two albums, Desert Pavement and the new Half Truth, are aliv...

Episode 363: Devon Gilfillian has been a key artist fulfilling the promise of a New Music City - a Nashville that's been welcome to the widest-ever range of genres, influences and innovations. He came to town with no contacts and a job with AmeriCorps in 2013. But before very long he'd landed a major label deal and national radio hits - all with an iconoclastic take on soul, funk and Americana. His newest album - his s...

Episode 362: Songwriter and artist Tenille Townes is a certified star in Canada where she's won heaps of awards and seen her moving songs top the country charts. In over a dozen years in Nashville, she's been an impressive songwriter with one foot in major label country and another in Americana. Now with a lovely self-produced acoustic album called The Acrobat, Townes points to an independent future with a unique vision and a renew...

Episode 361: Folk rocker John R. Miller can be dry and understated, but get beneath the surface and you'll find an artist keen to write music that helps people be better people. Inspired by John Prine and others, the Nashville based West Virginian has earned widespread acclaim and released three albums for the prestigious Rounder Records, the latest being the sweeping and fiery The Great Unknowning. He spoke with Craig...

Episode 360: Andy Leftwich was a Tennessee string picking prodigy who crushed it at fiddle competitions and was working by his late teens. Then, before he turned twenty, he was offered a job (on stage no less) by legend Ricky Skaggs. For 15 years with Kentucky Thunder, he built a reputation as one of the most complete and technically gifted musicians in bluegrass, sharing in numerous IBMA and Grammy Awards. Now, after ...

Episode 359: We love it when great things happen to good people, especially when the story is a total surprise, and that's what's been going on with Alabama-raised singer and songwriter Kashus Culpepper. He'd never been on a stage or played the guitar before 2020, but a confluence of free time, an encouraging group of friends, and a timely instrument helped Kashus find his voice and his calling. He's been celebrated by...

Episode 358: Fifteen years into their close and literally harmonious relationship, Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale sound as satisfied and enriched as ever by the audience and aura they've established in Americana music. The Milk Carton Kids name was a self-effacing joke about how quickly they expected to be forgotten, but it's been quite the opposite. They've earned four Grammy nominations and an Americana Award as Du...

Episode 357: Liam Duncan grew up in the small city of Brandon, Manitoba and moved to the provincial capitol and musical hotbed of Winnipeg as soon as he could, thinking he might be a session musician and sideman. But post pandemic, he's been Boy Golden, a quirky, neo-romantic persona making some of Canada's most compelling folk rock. During a swing through Nashville, Boy Golden talked about shifting focus from Canada t...

Episode 356: Brit Taylor came to town from eastern Kentucky chasing the US Route 23 dream that brought us Loretta Lynn and Patty Loveless - and wound up working with Cowboy Jack Clement and Sturgill Simpson. Adam Chaffins grew up one or two counties over and ensconced himself, as a bass player and singer, in the East Nashville bluegrass scene. Eventually, a friend was smart enough to introduce them, and they became a super-talented...

Episode 355: Nearly 12 years ago, an informal arrangement between the caretakers of a down-on-its-luck American Legion Post and a handful of young honky tonk musicians led to the creation of Honky Tonk Tuesday Nights, one of the most vibrant residency music series of the past two decades. It's been a haven for people who love to dance, for East Nashville community, for visits from stars, and for talent development in roots/American...

Episode 354: The Infamous Stringdusters emerged out of Nashville's world-class but somewhat undiscovered bluegrass scene of the 2000s. Six guys with different professional pathways into the music and wide ranging tastes in other genres got to know each other at gigs, picking parties, and the IBMA World of Bluegrass. And their first gesture as a band - the 2007 album Fork In The Road - was a triumph, winning three IBMA ...

Episode 353: He was an East Tennessee country guitar prodigy who was invited on the Grand Ole Opry at age 11 by Marty Stuart, and Trey Hensley has made good on that promise by emerging as one of the finest singers and pickers in contemporary roots music. His national profile took shape after forming a super-flexible duo with dobro master Rob Ickes around 2016. Now, after four albums, collaborations with Taj Mahal and a Grammy nomin...

Episode 352: When Emily Scott Robinson released Appalachia, her fifth album in a 10-year career and her third for Nashville boutique Oh Boy Records, it spiked up into the Americana airplay top ten, something that had never happened to her before. But she had set the table through quality songwriting, ambitious touring, and a luminous voice that embraces the dark and the light with a rare alchemy. At WMOT's Eastside stu...

Episode 351: Justin Townes Earle, blazingly gifted and deeply troubled, died of an accidental drug overdose in 2020 at the age of 38, after a life beset by addiction. Six years later, two coincident projects expand on what we knew about the songwriter with a mix of compassion and regret. Sammy Brue, Earle's much younger friend and protegé, has written a song cycle based on Justin's private notebooks, shared by his widow. Rolling St...

Episode 350: Since breaking out with his 1989 major-label album How Did You Find Me Here, North Carolina's David Wilcox has been a consistently excellent practitioner of the new folk, fingerstyle guitar arts. The songwriter, known for his empathic writing and audience-embracing shows, is now 67 and still thinking deep thoughts about the world, compassion, art, and the arc of life. He stopped through Nashville last Nove...

Episode 349: For its 38th annual conference, Folk Alliance International returned to New Orleans, home of their largest-ever event (2020's draw of 3,600 people) and the epicenter of one of the nation's great regional roots music legacies. Besides a slate of Louisiana talent in blues, Cajun and zydeco, FAI was once again distinguished by diversity of style, genre, and nationality. Craig captured conversations with showc...