The String

Episode 112: Michaela Anne went to New York City to study jazz vocals and emerged a full on convert to country music. She built a career in Brooklyn then moved to Nashville to see it through. She's r…

Episode 111: This week, one last round of visits with great artists visiting Nashville to showcase during AmericanaFest 2019. My guests include two songwriter artists from the United Kingdom who’ve m…

Episode 110: Ideal Man, the fourth full-length album from Nashville songwriter Andrew Combs has been praised by major outlets including Rolling Stone Country. Is it a country album? Is Combs a countr…

As I browsed World of Bluegrass in Raleigh last September, I caught up with four artists who make for a pretty good cross section of the genre circa 2019: Tim Stafford of Blue Highway, an iconic band…

Episode 108: The album Steady On in 1989 marked the pivot in Shawn Colvin's life between playing bars to make the rent and being a leader in the singer songwriter movement. Through a string of albums…

Episode 107 features three conversations held on the run during AmericanaFest 2019 in Nashville, Sept. 10-14. Billy Strings represents the cutting edge of bluegrass and improvisational acoustic music…

Episode 106: Ketch Secor is the fiddler and front man of the uncanny success story Old Crow Medicine Show. As they enter their third decade as a band, they can claim to have revived and re-imagined o…

In her new song "1988," Kelsey Waldon tells the story of the year she was born in Western Kentucky and what happened after that. What music fans know is that she brought her songs to Nashville and fo…

Del McCoury is a bluegrass hall of famer and repeat host of the International Bluegrass Music Association Awards. Jim Lauderdale is a beloved Nashville songwriter whose wide range of projects and son…

Episode 103 features two artists who are showcasing at AmericanaFest 2019 with new albums ready for early next year. Brian Wright has lived and made music in Texas, Los Angeles and Nashville, where h…

Episode 102: Kendell Marvel, native of rural southern Illinois, is a veteran professional Music Row songwriter whose work has been recorded by Gary Allan, George Strait, Lee Ann Womack, Chris Staplet…

Episode 101: Songwriter Amy Speace was entirely absorbed in theater, studying to be a Shakespearian actress in NYC. Then some fates and muses intervened and she began leaning into folk music. Before …

The String turns 100 Episodes old with a focus on one of the most celebrated and dynamic young artists in Americana music, a singer/songwriter who has negotiated the bridge from bluegrass to mainstre…

 Charley Crockett has a story that's difficult to imagine playing out in the 21st century - he's hoboed around the country, lost loved ones, scuffled with the law, played on the streets for a decade.…

The lineage of Nashville's Fairfield Four thrives and resonates in Odessa Settles, this week’s guest on The String. The daughter of singer Walter J. Settles (1928-1999), Odessa is an in-demand singer…

The decade-plus since the conclusion of his era-shifting band BR549 have been a case study in creative evolution for Chuck Mead. He's still a stalwart of classic country music and an original songwri…

Episode #96. Launching a career in the blues in the mid 1990s seems in retrospect a bit audacious and foolhardy, but when LA songwriter and studio musician Kevin Moore became Keb' Mo', his blend of r…

Episode #95. Caroline Spence moved to Nashville eight years ago fresh out of college with a "vague dream" of writing songs, probably she thought for other artists. But as her network and her confiden…

Episode 94: They've each had distinguished careers as songwriters and musicians in American roots music, but together they're especially sublime. Buddy and Julie Miller met in Austin in the 70s and p…

Episode 93: In the 1970s Nick Lowe carved out a place on the thoughtful side of punk and pop in England, landing "Cruel To Be Kind" on the charts with his band Rockpile but doing so much more besides…