The String

Episode 161: Bluegrass has an instrumental tradition going back to its Bill Monroe origins and its old-time forebears. Over time, the playing and composing became more refined and exploratory. This show features three young masters of contemporary acoustic music who've released all-instrumental albums in recent months. I speak with Wes Corbett, banjo player currently with the Sam Bush Band, Jeff P...

Episode 160: Women with roots - in jazz is the heart of this hour. Jenny Scheinman is one of the leading jazz violinists working today, yet her musical life began grounded in folk music and she's been a prolific contributor to records and tours by the likes of Rodney Crowell, Robbie Fulks, Ani DeFranco and others. Her many collaborations with guitarist Bill Frisell have produced sublime fusions of...

Episode 159: Tennessee snuggles up against North Carolina at the apex of the Appalachian Mountains, together making a mid-South band from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River. It also defines possibly the most musically consequential pair of states in the nation. In a new history, veteran Raleigh journalist David Menconi describes NC music from Charlie Poole to the Avett Brothers and beyond. Afte...

Joachim Cooder has pursued his musical life as drummer, percussionist and family man, staying near and working regularly with his father, blues/roots guitarist Ry Cooder and his songwriting wife, among other scattered projects. In recent years though, his writing/composing side has fully emerged, and his debut on Nonesuch Records 'Over That Road I'm Bound,' featuring modern interpretations of Uncl...

Episode 157: The bluegrass and acoustic music world saw Sarah Jarosz coming. As she grew into her teens, artists and talent scouts knew of this young phenom from Wimberly, TX who excelled on banjo, mandolin, singing and songwriting. She got signed at 16 and launched a Grammy-decorated recording career soon after. Now her latest album World On The Ground, about loving and leaving her home ground, i...

Episode 156: Banjo innovator and string band visionary Tony Trischka has kept his eyes on the future over a fifty year career, but on a new album he looks to our uneasy past. Shall We Hope is a song cycle about the Civil War and its aftermath, featuring a cast of elite collaborators such as Maura O'Connell and Guy Davis. We talk about how the project came together over more than a decade and about...

Episode 155: Journalist and author Peter Guralnick is regarded by many as America's premiere chronicler of roots music. Besides his influential profiles, compiled into classic volumes in the 1970s and 80s, he wrote magisterial biographies of Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke and Sam Phillips. His newest collection, Looking To Get Lost: Adventures In Music And Writing, revisits some of his longtime subjects...

Episode 154: 2020 will go down in infamy but one happy occasion this year was the 95th anniversary of the Grand Ole Opry, the longest-running broadcast show in American history and the anchoring force that helped Nashville become Music City. In August of 2019, Dan Rogers was named Executive Producer of the show, putting him in a lineage that stretched back to George D. Hay. And in old school WSM f...

Episode 153: Two great roots songwriters at different stages of their careers. Brent Cobb is a laid-back Georgian who got his first chance to record through his cousin Dave Cobb but who earned his stripes in Nashville and beyond thanks to his sensitive eye and relatable way with a lyric. He's released his fourth album Keep Em On They Toes. Dave Alvin is an icon of Americana who translated a musica...

Episode 152: As recently as five years ago, Nashville's Margo Price was having trouble making ends meet after many years of "playing dives trying to stay alive" as she says in her new song "Twinkle Twinkle." But as that song also documents, she hit on the right sound with the right team. Third Man Records released her debut album in 2016 and it's been a remarkable ride ever since. By her side the...

Episode 151: The Steep Canyon Rangers emerged from the collegiate scene in central North Carolina around 2000 with a traditional sound that started winning them awards. Over 20+ years, they've broadened and deepened their sound through 13 albums on their own - including a bluegrass Grammy winner - and three with Steve Martin. Now they've released three very different albums in a calendar year, dis...

Episode 150: As a teenager, Philadelphia native Ray Benson fell hard for traditional American roots music and by 1970 he'd become the founding leader of a nimble, road-rambling band called Asleep At The Wheel. After a stint in California, they found their natural home in Austin TX and became icons of the scene there, while reaching the world as modern day masters of western swing music. This Fall,...

Episode 149: Randall Bramblett is a powerhouse journeyman and veteran of southern roots and soul music, with a dense and deep resume working for others, from the Allman Brothers to Widespread Panic. But between his stints as a sax player, keyboardist, singer and songwriter he's released more than ten albums as an artist, and his fans know them to be a blend of sharp writing, a sensuous voice and s...

Episode 148: Dirk Powell has build a Grammy-winning career by standing out in all aspects of folk and roots music. He's an outstanding fiddler and banjo player, a singer and songwriter, a curator and producer. And he's made marks in three related realms of music - Appalachian, Cajun and Celtic. Now the Louisiana-based Powell has turned back as he periodically does to recording his own music, and h...

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...