The String

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 T…

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 broade…

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 …

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. …

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…

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 …

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 Martin…

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 son…

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 differen…

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. …

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 qua…

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…

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 balan…

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 s…

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 Nash…

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 …

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 draw…

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 …

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 M…

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 fol…