The String

Episode 337: Ken Pomeroy, who turned 23 days after this interview, is a fresh voice not just from the Oklahoma lineage of great roots songwriting and musicianship, but also from a new generation of Native American voices in popular music. She talks about her Cherokee heritage and the stewardship that comes with it, plus her emotional bond to music in this introspective hour. You'll also hear incis...

Episode 336: In a time when bluegrass is surging with young talent and mainstream dreams, Danny Burns and Shelby Means offer two profiles in making the string band business work in 2025. Burns is an Irish immigrant who brought his trad training and hearty work ethic from his native County Donegal. Even before releasing North Country in 2018, he'd made a name and reputation among roots music elites...

Episode 335: Leslie Jordan, the Nolensville, TN-based songwriter not the late comic actor and singer, makes a major statement in her pivot from a robust career in Christian folk/pop to storytelling Americana with The Agonist . It's a song cycle that fleshes out the story of her late grandfather, a conflicted and complex man who left his family in Indiana when Leslie's mother was four years old. Th...

Episode 334: Shawn Camp arrived in Nashville almost 40 years ago as a 20-year-old guitar picker and fiddle player hoping to find a niche. As he graduated from touring sideman to songwriter to respected recording artist, he found himself working with his heroes. He quietly became an avatar of traditional country music and bluegrass done right. His work with Guy Clark was especially potent, and at l...

Episode 333: Rodney Crowell let it slip in the middle of this interview that it was the eve of his 75th birthday. One of America's greatest (and most commercially successful) songwriters is now three quarters of a century old, a steady patriarch. He continues to do excellent work, evidenced by two fine albums in a row, 2023's The Chicago Sessions and the brand new Airline Highway. In both cases he...

Episode 332: It's been 30 years since three music business renegades created a radio chart for an emerging alt-country, roots music wave they called Americana. Now that it's a mature format and movement, we're seeing books emerge on the history of this idea. Poets And Dreamers: My Life In Americana Music is Tamara Saviano's contribution, a warm and affectionate, people-driven story about a communi...

Episode 331: Hayes Carll is such an admired veteran of the Texas songwriting tradition that his visage is painted on a sign along with Townes Van Zandt at the Old Quarter Cafe in Galveston. Over ten albums, he's matched cleverness with insight and tenderness with roadhouse rock and roll. In this self-effacing interview, Carll talks about his apprentice years at that storied bar, his adjustments af...

Episode 330: After a three-year tutelage with Old Crow Medicine Show, multi-faceted Appalachian artist Mason Via has set out on his own road. He was raised in bluegrass festival campgrounds and at picking parties hosted by his dad, songwriter and musician David Via. Bluegrass royalty hung out at his home near the North Carolina/Virginia border, and it rubbed off. After trying a few musical directi...

Episode 329: Few fully independent artists in any genre have been able to grow to the scale and influence that Cody Jinks has pulled off in the outlaw country space. He sells out iconic venues like Red Rocks in Colorado with a sound that layers his boyhood influence from Lefty Frizzell with the edge of the thrash metal rocker he once was. The Fort Worth native "put in the reps" for countless years...

Episode 328: While it's one of the great music cities in the world, the story of Memphis, TN is generally told as one about Elvis, BB King, Isaac Hayes, and possibly Justin Timberlake - artists from the history books or well on in their careers. Roots music fans might know more contemporary talents like songwriters Amy LaVere and John Paul Keith. Many others simmer along in that city's bars and cl...

Episode 327: To hear Mike Farris sing - an experience a bit like being pinned to the seat of an accelerating  Porsche Taycan - is to believe that he was born to the stage, motivated from childhood, and destined for soul/gospel glory. Yet in Episode 327 of The String, we learn that A) Mike is lucky to be here at all and B) that a singing career was not remotely on his own radar until he was approac...

Episode 326: Andrea Zonn has been on my list of possible Music City star musicians to be a guest on the show for some time, but her new project the HercuLeons and their debut album of the same name sealed the deal. She's been a leading studio and road musician since the 1990s, when she sweet talked her way into a touring spot with burgeoning country star Vince Gill. Her background is in classical...

Episode 325: In 1972, a 19-year-old bass player and natural born singer from Kentucky and Indiana auditioned for an emerging band called New Grass Revival. Over almost 20 years, John Cowan would be the voice of that ensemble, through mega tours supporting Leon Russell, improbable country radio success, and the emergence of a whole new genre of roots music they gave a name to. NGR got Cowan into th...

Episode 324: It's hard to believe that Nashville's SteelDrivers have been making their unique brand of hard-core string band music for nearly twenty years. They were the vehicle through which many of us were introduced to the epic voice of Chris Stapleton, back when he and Mike Henderson co-wrote that band's high impact debut album of 2008. When Henderson and Stapleton had to move on, the band pul...

Special Episode: The story of how global banjo explorer Joe Troop (formerly of Che Apalache) met Venezuelan harpist and all-around folk music master Larry Bellorín is testimony to the magic of global culture and a cautionary tale about the stark turn US policy has taken against working asylum seekers this year. Over three years as the bilingual, genre-fusing, and multi-instrumental duo Larry & Joe...

Episode 323: This episode of The String is a field report from the city that raised me in the 1970s and 80s and gave me my foundation in music, from college rock radio, to youth orchestra at Duke University, to jazz tutelage at a Black Muslim community center. It's an arts-forward city that in the past decade has become something of a magnet for roots music, building on a history of gospel, blues...

Episode 322: Texas songwriter Vincent Neil Emerson graduated from playing on the streets and in the bars of Fort Worth to tours with Colter Wall and American Aquarium and then a well-received debut album (2019's Fried Chicken And Evil Women ). That inspired none other than Rodney Crowell and Shooter Jennings in turn to take an interest in producing the young country troubadour, resulting in a self...

Episode 321: Atlanta native Kristina Murray moved to Nashville in 2014 with a fresh and original debut album and steely determination. The country singer and songwriter carved out a respected space at honky tonks like Santa's Pub and the American Legion. When hard work and critical acclaim for her two releases didn't launch her career to a new orbit, it felt like defeat. That, plus the pandemic, f...

Episode 320: JD Clayton is one of the first emerging artists to release music in an era of new leadership at the historic Rounder Records in Nashville. He's an open-hearted guy who got the songwriting bug growing up in Fort Smith, AR and who then found his songs and his way on stage led to organic growth. His 2023 album Long Way From Home got him out on the road in a big way and led to some high p...

Episode 319: This week's split episode looks at songwriting and musicianship from two very different points of view. Toronto's Jeremie Albino is a powerful roots rock singer/writer whose early love of blues and old rock and roll comes through in his self-effacing, easy grooving songs. A call from Dan Auerbach opened up new avenues for him through the production of his late 2024 album 'Our Time In...

Episode 318: Over a 15-year career that began in Boston's jazz and old-time scene, Nashville-based Miss Tess has distinguished herself with a hybrid blend of contemporary songwriting and vintage, swinging Americana. On her newest, the widely traveled artist taps a long love affair with Cajun country in Louisiana, yet it's her own blend rather than a traditional homage. Our conversation spans her u...

Episode 317: As the new year dawned, the first emerging artist that started buzzing on our radar was a California native living in Nashville with an emotional country-noir debut album called Silver Rounds. She was Olivia Wolf, and now months later, her album has proven its staying power, with critical acclaim and a long run on the Americana chart. She's no youngster, so our conversation dives into...

Episode 316: Sean McConnell was born to do this. His parents were working songwriters who helped him get started as a teen in Atlanta. He landed a long-term song publishing deal while still in school at MTSU and earned cuts by Tim McGraw, Martina McBride, Brett Young, and the TV show Nashville. Over 15 recordings - his latest is the lovely and agonizingly honest Skin - McConnell has become a belov...

Episode 315: Adam Wright is one of the most thoughtful wordsmiths in the Nashville songwriting community, one who's seen all sides of the Music Row machine. Working for a dozen years with Carnival Music, he's carved a niche for himself, scoring a couple of Grammy Award nominations and landing cuts by Lee Ann Womack, Alan Jackson, Garth Brooks, Brandy Clark and Bruce Robison, among others. When he...

Episode 314: The Devil Makes Three has been one of roots music's outstanding if quiet success stories of the past twenty years. Formed in Santa Cruz, CA in 2001, they got out ahead of the O Brother phenomenon and built a unique, crowd-pleasing sound through a renegade admixture of early blues, hard country, gospel and punk rock. In this hour, founding singer and songwriter Pete Bernhard reflects o...