The String

Episode 147: As a literal child of the 1970s country outlaw movement, Waylon Payne had access to opportunity and temptation, and for most of his 48 years, temptation won. While immensely talented as a singer, songwriter and actor, he struggled with some harsh drug addictions and personal trauma. On the new album Blue Eyes, the Harlot, the Queer, the Pusher & Me,  Payne chronicles his crash, his re...

Episode 146: Wendy Moten is one of Nashville's most versatile and accomplished singers. She's been a solo R&B artist, a jazz singer, a duet partner with Julio Iglesias and a road vocalist with Martina McBride and Vince Gill. But lately she's taken on a storied role, singing lead with Nashville's extraordinary western swing band The Time Jumpers and she's released a new album of classic country cov...

Episode 145: Elizabeth Cook was welcomed with celebration into the Nashville country music fold in the early 2000s, because of her charm, her fascinating story and her bracing traditional country songs and songwriting. She's become an Americana star in these intervening years, but she had some rough times in the 2010s. Now back with the album Aftermath, she's on solid ground and reflective about a...

Episode 144: New Grass Revival showed the world new ways of playing and thinking about bluegrass music between 1972 and 1989. Founded and led by fiddler, mandolinist and singer Sam Bush, two different lineups reached new audiences, interpreted and wrote important repertoire and ushered in today's modern and very popular jamgrass scene. The String talks with Bush and the rest of the 1980s lineup, b...

Episode 143: Matt Rollings says his role as the leading studio piano playing sideman in Nashville from the late 1980s onward made it hard for him to forge his own taste and sensibility as an artist. Now that he's slowed that work and broadened his projects, he's made his first album as a leader in 30 years, Matt Rollings Mosaic, with a bunch of friends and collaborators who happen to be superstars...

Episode 142: Ah, to be 25 again. Old enough to have a direction. Young enough to not know or care that the road ahead is steep and hard. This week, two remarkable emerging artists who've put in a quarter century and found unique pathways. Daniel Donato landed a plum guitar gig in downtown Nashville at age 16 and now he's building a new world of twangy jam with his debut LP 'A Young Man's Country'....

Episode 141: Two guests this show who both have careers straddling Nashville's hit-driven Music Row and art-driven Americana scenes. Heidi Newfield had a run of country hits in the 2000s w a band and as a soloist. Now she's reinventing and going gritty with her songwriting and blues harp on her first new album in more than a decade, The Barfly Sessions, Vol 1. Mac McAnally is a legend on the Row -...

Episode 140: Chuck Prophet is a lifer who at 57 says he's just getting the hang of it - it being crafty, intelligent songs that feel good even when they're downers, songs that rock and twang in balanced proportions. Since going solo after a decade with the psych garage band Green On Red, Prophet has given us a vast body of work that sits easily on the shelf next to Rockpile, Elvis Costello or Tom...

Episode 139: Reaction to Joshua Ray Walker's debut album was as strong and swift as any to come along in country music and Texas songwriting in quite a while. But the Dallas native had been working stages nightly for ten years by the time the world paid attention. He was ready to follow up fast and he did so to great acclaim on 2020's Glad You Made It. This self-assured, thoughtful artist has a lo...

Episode 138: Adia Victoria taps the lineage and resolve of the early Blues queens with a sound made for the now on her 2019 album Silences. Her journey from South Carolina to Atlanta and then to Nashville reads like no other artist of recent memory and she works hard to set herself apart from the institutional trappings of the indie music business. Critically acclaimed and sharply thoughtful, this...

Episode 137: Raleigh NC's Chatham County Line started at the dawn of the new millennium in a surge of passion for bluegrass music, with an old-school look and feel. Now at 20 years old, they've made only one very recent personnel change and refreshed their concept as a post-modern string band with drums. The new album Strange Fascination displays far-reaching vision and a warm cohesive sound, ridi...

Episode 136: Just beyond the fuzzy boundaries of roots and Americana music, we find Brooklyn Based singer-songwriter Becca Stevens. And I hope you have found her. With a complex musical language drawn from folk, jazz, classical and pop, her output is searching, challenging and ever-evolving. A graduate of the NC School of the Arts and the New School in New York, she leaps from American public radi...

Episode 135: With ten albums and 20 years under his belt as one of the finest and wittiest songwriters working the Western end of country music, Alberta's Corb Lund is on his way to legendary status in Rocky Mountain cowboy-inspired songwriting. His newest is Agricultural Tragic, a 13 song collection that evokes the characters and colors of his home region. Also in the hour, Henry Hicks talks abou...

Episode 134: In an era where women are marginalized on country radio, Brandy Clark is at the top of most people's list of women who should be on the air a lot more. She's written hits for others on Music Row, but her own records are beautifully produced and full of insight about people and humor that would have tickled Roger Miller. Clark's shared a Grammy Award for writing Kacey Musgraves' "Follo...

Episode 133: David Bromberg is one of the most fascinating and multi-faceted figures in roots music, a pioneer of the Americana idea decades before the term came into being. In the 1960s New York folk revival, he was a guitar player and multi-instrumental sideman who specialized in the blues. Then as an artist on Columbia Records, he made dazzling varied roots albums while supporting stars like Bo...

Episode 132: The timing was right to split the hour between two exceptional emerging artists making hard country music in the outlaw tradition. As you'll hear, Jesse Daniel and Jaime Wyatt have lived the life, paid the price and processed their pain and redemption in song. Both are products of the West Coast and both have dug deep into their own stories. Many are sizing up Daniel's 'Rollin' On' an...

Episode #131: Two of the most exceptional and provocative songwriters of their respective generations take on America's political divide and inject some radical empathy in the red/blue schism. Steve Earle addresses coal mining from the heart of a state that didn't vote like he does in Ghosts of West Virginia. BJ Barham caps off 15 years of leading American Aquarium with the amazing Lamentations, w...

Episode 130: She's a daughter of Grand Ole Opry royalty, but Pam Tillis found her own way to the music business and the top of the country charts in the 1990s. She's long been one of Music City's most independent-minded major leaguers, and she shows it on Looking For A Feeling, her first album in more than a decade. She works with some of Nashville's most creative musical minds too. Also in the ho...

Episode 129: Lilly Hiatt put in a lot of work at the local and regional level, including releasing two albums, before her third, Trinity Lane, met the moment and became a breakout work. So a lot of ears were lifted toward her 2020 release of Walking Proof, and it was quickly acclaimed as punchy, vivid and memorable. We talk about going on the road with her dad songwriter John Hiatt back in the day...

Episode 128: Katie Pruitt has been known as a phenom ready for big things in Nashville for a few years now. With patience and enough maturity to get the music exactly as she intended, Pruitt has now made her debut on Rounder Records. The album Expectations is a bold, ambitious and succulent collection, and vividly honest as well, with songs documenting a difficult journey from a conservative famil...

Episode 127: Paul Burch moved from Indiana to Nashville in 1994 when his friend Jay McDowell (BR549) told him about the burgeoning indie country music scene on sleepy Lower Broadway. In the 25 years since then, Burch has made uncompromising and original music with shades of classic honky tonk and timeless rock and soul. Here we talk about his role in the fascinating band Lambchop, the evolution of...

Episode 126: This Spring, many of the outstanding women of roots music have released new albums, and here we catch up with two of them. Jessi Alexander, native of Jackson TN, moved to Nashville at 18 and landed songwriting and record deals. She's a hitmaker behind the scenes who rarely surfaces with her own heartfelt country music, but she sure does so on Decatur County Red, anchored in stories of...

Episode 125: Recording producers are often the best people to speak with to gain extra insight into what makes some music more effective than others. And that's what we do this episode with two Nashville leaders with very different stories. Rick Clark came of age in Memphis and moved to Nashville in the 90s. He's been a DJ, a compilation curator and a music supervisor for film and TV. He's also ge...

Episode 124: Caleb Caudle grew up in rural North Carolina outside of Winston Salem, captivated by music far beyond what his school peers cared about - English punk, folk music and Bob Dylan among them. Since entering the fray as a singer songwriter in the mid 2000s, he's released seven studio albums, with a brand new one on the way later this week. Better Hurry Up was cut in 2019 just days after t...

Episode 123: Ron Pope is a case study in good indie art and commerce. He's an admired songwriter with an avid following for his cathartic, detail-laden songs and his range across a bunch of roots and rock and roll genres. Over more than a dozen albums, he's steered his own ship in a business partnership with his wife/manager and their Brooklyn Basement Records. The newest project is the sweeping a...