The String

Episode 235: After a remarkable life in show business and soul music, Charles "Wigg" Walker moved back to his native Nashville in the 90s, and he's been an important fixture in Music City ever since, a one-of-a-kind voice in soul and blues. It started on Jefferson Street in his teens. Then he moved to New York, opened shows for James Brown, played the Apollo Theater and held down Harlem residencie...

Episode 234: Not very long ago, Sunny War was busking on Venice Beach in Los Angeles, nearly homeless and beset with substance abuse. But she was also making weirdly beautiful and honest music that evoked country blues, punk rock and old folk songs without being really any of the above. Now she's moved to Nashville, signed to New West Records, with one of the most talked-about albums in indie musi...

Episode 233: Madison Cunningham blasted on to the modern folk scene in 2019 with a debut album so thoughtful and original that it landed on the prestigious Verve Forecast label and was nominated for a Grammy Americana Album award. After the pandemic interrupted her career momentum, she picked right back up in 2022 with a fast-growing audience and a brilliant sophomore album called Revealer. Just h...

Episode 232: Willi Carlisle is a folk singer in the populist tradition of Utah Phillips and Woody Guthrie, a boisterous, tender, funny performer who is impossible to forget. After years pursuing various outlets in old-time, poetry and theater, he emerged in 2022 as one of the finest songwriters in traditional folk music. The vehicle was his album Peculiar, Missouri, a varied collection of ruminati...

To kick off the new year during my three week book leave, here's a special edition of The String in which I read my own in-depth analysis of how two great and sweeping genres - jazz and Americana - can have such different audiences and narratives in contemporary life despite their common origins in the blues. Reviewed are two releases - the 10th anniversary vinyl edition of Esperanza Spalding's Gr...

Episode 231: Sam Bush was the first guest on The String way back in September of 2016, because he's a hero of mine and an exemplar of the Americana ideal, traditional American music with a contemporary outlook. He returns to talk about one of his heroes, the late great John Hartford. They were friends, picking buddies and sometime tour mates. And while there are many sides to Hartford, Sam wanted...

Episode 230: With an instantly recognizable voice and uncommon skill for balancing melancholy with radiance, Courtney Marie Andrews has released a string of four acclaimed album since her 2016 breakout Honest Life. She's a Tucson, AZ native who hit the road on her own at the tender age of 16 and gave her life over to writing and sharing her soul with others. Her newest follows the arc of a new lov...

Episode 229: Todd Snider walked out alone on the stage of the Ryman Auditorium in late September looking radiant. He was bolstered and beloved by the loyalist lifer fans that hang on his every word, spoken or sung. He told the one about his first open mic and the one about East Nashville character Skip Litz who loved Train Songs. Todd's mother was on hand and it was her birthday, so we all sang fo...

Episode 228: One day during AmericanaFest 2022 I visited the headquarters of leading label New West Records to catch up with their two newest band signings - bands that fit on the label and in an episode with each other. 49 Winchester, school friends from tiny Castlewood, VA, had a breakout year while releasing Fortune Favors The Bold. Town Mountain began 15 years ago as a trad bluegrass band that...

Episode 227: This week dwells on origins and growth with two artists who've had very different journeys but who had to get resourceful in their own way. Amy Ray put the Indigo Girls on the map with her partner Emily Saliers in part through a relentless focus on activism and support of causes they cherished. They were given the Americana Lifetime Award for Free Speech in September. Tami Neilson gre...

Episode 226: The 5 Spot is a nightclub at the heart of East Nashville's music community, and for 12 years, Derek Hoke was at the heart of the 5 Spot. His showcase series Two Dollar Tuesdays offered newcomers a chance to play and music lovers 4-5 artists to sample in a cozy scene, many of whom would become the next wave of Americana stars. Hoke came from South Carolina with a ton of humility and ea...

Episode 225: When you serve a community on a good radio station, you get a feel for the soul of that place, and for me over these many years, that place is Nashville. So I thought it would be fun to join forces for a week with a friend of mine who has a similar gig in western North Carolina who has developed expertise and perspective on the amazing music scene around Asheville. He's Joe Kendrick,...

Episode 224: It's a double Dan special as I visit with two movers and shakers who've contributed perhaps more behind the scenes than most musicians of their stature. Daniel Tashian is a Nashville lifer who's worn all the hats - songwriter, artist, band-leader and producer. He won a Grammy for Kacey Musgraves's Golden Hour and collaborated with Burt Bacharach. Now he's co-written the classic countr...

Episode 223: Americanafest 2022 is in the books, and as usual, I took advantage of all the visiting talent to collect a bunch of interviews with artists from stars to newcomers. Here, I speak with three fascinating emerging artists who will be shaping the scene for years to come. Tray Wellington is a new voice on the banjo from rural Appalachia, but his take on Scruggs style is modern and devoted...

Episode 222: Kentucky natives Linda Jean Stokley and Montana Hobbs have been musical partners for about a decade. They met as college students at Morehead State University, where they both more or less wandered into the school's distinguished traditional music program. They formed the duo The Local Honeys and have gradually built a following and a sound that rides the line between old-time traditi...

Episode 221: Cristina Vane discovered American roots music from a greater distance than most converts. She grew up in capitals of Europe, identifying as a "third culture kid" and struggling with her identity. The slide blues guitar and Appalachian banjo became important icons of her journey to America and her burgeoning career as a singer songwriter who doesn't imitate the blues but who takes insp...

Episode 220: Early James pushed himself to find a singing voice and songwriting style all his own, and it certainly got the attention of Nashville's Dan Auerbach. The Birmingham, AL artist was invited into Dan's Easy Eye Sound studio to write and produce his debut album Singing For My Supper in 2020. That release was acclaimed by stymied by the pandemic. Not so the new one, Strange Time To Be Aliv...

Episode 219: This time I catch up with two dynamic women from Nashville with albums that are journalistic in nature, chronicling change and life passages. Nicki Bluhm is a national jam roots star thanks to hear years leading The Gramblers and numerous collaborations with the likes of Phil Lesh and Little Feat. On her new Avondale Drive album she ruminates on the end of her marriage and building a...

Episode 218: Of all the 1960s California folk rockers, Richie Furay had a quieter but most interesting career. He co-founded two iconic bands in Buffalo Springfield and Poco. He wrote and sang a landmark country rocker in "Kind Woman," the track that brought steel guitar man and eventual frontman Rusty Young into the Poco fold. And then in midlife Furay moved to Colorado to become a pastor, leadin...

Episode 217: Nashville master songwriter Mary Gauthier returns to The String to talk about her new album Dark Enough To See The Stars and her remarkable 2021 memoir Saved By A Song. Mary's entree into songwriting was unusual to say the least, a lifeline for a woman in her 30s recovering from substance abuse and putting together a full self after a traumatic childhood. She handles the prose and her...

Episode 216: In a casual, expansive conversation, Craig visits with his old friend Eric Brace, founder of alt-country band Last Train Home. Brace was a music journalist for the Washington Post when he formed the DC based group in the mid 1990s. Then in the early 2000s, he and the rhythm section moved to Nashville, where LTH found a new life and Brace branched out as a label owner with Red Beet Rec...

Episode 215: Since moving to Nashville at age 21 in 1978, Kenny Greenberg has built a reputation as a guitarist who could bring rock and roll punch and jangle to commercial country records as well as a standout behind the glass. Besides his seminal work with Allison Moorer, Kenny has produced albums by the Mavericks, Josh Turner, Joan Baez, Toby Keith and just recently Hayes Carll. And his studio...

Episode 214: Will The Circle Be Unbroken , released 50 years ago, revolutionized how country and bluegrass music were perceived by mainstream and youth culture in America. The 3-LP set of 37 songs came about when west coast country-rockers The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band persuaded a cast of venerated elders of Nashville to collaborate with them over a week at Woodland Studio in East Nashville. Craig sp...

Episode 213: Rarely do artists retire in their prime, but that's what Texas songwriter Robert Earl Keen is doing. In January, he announced to the surprise of his many fans that he'd play 2022 into September and then wrap up his road career with a final show in Helotes TX, a favorite venue. He's 66 years old and very much in fighting shape. But he's got other things he wants to do. He's planning to...

Episode 212: Decades after it came out in 1979, you still regularly hear "Romeo's Tune" by Steve Forbert over PAs in the grocery store or on oldies radio if that's what you're into. But don't let that early hit define Forbert's long, distinguished career. He's an excellent and widely admired songwriter with more than 20 albums to his credit. He came by Craig's home studio to talk about his mindset...