The String

Episode 92: This week's show is split between two string instrument masters who have little in common save for a lifelong commitment to nurturing traditional music while allowing it to grow and adapt…

Only five artists or acts have been inducted into both the Country Music and Bluegrass Music halls of fame, and only one is actively touring and shaping the dialogue around roots music generally. And…

No. 90 - Honky tonk maestro Dale Watson grew up in Pasadena, TX, just on the Galveston Bay side of Houston. With a father and brother who played country music, he was playing professionally by his ea…

Will Kimbrough, 30-year veteran of Nashville TN is up to so many musical projects, it took a whole segment to cover them all. He's in three bands and an acoustic duo. He writes with and for Jimmy Buf…

Tulsa, OK has an important musical past but also a dynamic present built on the legacies and impact of Bob Wills, Leon Russell, J.J. Cale, Woody Guthrie and more. This special field trip edition of T…

In this special hour, a roundtable talk with two outstanding managers from the world of roots and Americana music. Denise Stiff went from college event booking to working for agencies and through tha…

Two gentlemen of Americana who share a soulful feel and a chill vibe while writing songs that cut to the bone. Seth Walker talks about his years in Austin, New Orleans and Nashville and some of the n…

Episode 85 offers two remarkable stories from the always-dynamic world of bluegrass music. Michael Cleveland is the record-setting, 11-time winner of the IBMA Fiddle Player of the Year award. He's a …

The British singer songwriter known as Yola made her first significant stateside impression at the 2016 AmericanaFest in Nashville. She returned the following year and won the Artist of the Year hono…

Colin Linden - guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer - is one of Nashville’s most interesting musicians. You may have seen him in the Americana Awards house band, or as a key live musician on th…

Fifteen years ago, Mindy Smith rocketed from local sets in Nashville to the national stage in a matter of a few months on the strength of a duet on "Jolene" with Dolly Parton and the January 2004 rel…

Episode #81: This week, the long, diverse career of Nashville's Bill Lloyd. From country hits as a writer and artist to collaborations with leading lights of rock and pop, Bill is a dynamo. And he's …

If Americana values all American roots forms and the fusion thereof, then nobody's more Americana than Austin singer/songwriter Ruthie Foster. She grew up singing in church in rural TX, developed a v…

Missy Raines grew up in rural west VA deeply immersed in bluegrass culture. And when she started playing professionally in her collegiate years, she went for it with, as she tells me, no plan B but a…

The String launches a new year with a conversation with Rodney Crowell, one of the legit icons of Americana music. The Texas born, Nashville based songwriter was one of the artists around whom the fo…

How and why this humble collection of towns hugging the Tennessee River in northern Alabama became a historic musical hot spot is an improbable, wonderful American story. But I grew interested in Mus…

This week, an evenly split hour with very different artists who have a lot to say about change and growth. The Gibson Brothers took their experience from two decades in bluegrass and poured it into a…

Bob Dylan's transition from solo folk troubadour to electric roots rocker was as important a precursor to the idea of Americana music as any other. And that transition reached its apex with the 1966 …

Episode 74: Kathy Mattea's new album Pretty Bird is her first release in six years. In the time between, she’s struggled through some problems with her voice and in so doing reached outside of her mu…

What is tradition in music? It turns out that's a tricky but illuminating question, and this week Craig puts it to a range of folks at the World of Bluegrass in Raleigh, NC. CJ Lewandowski of the hot…