The String
The String is weekly think radio featuring conversations and features on culture, media and American music - anchored by veteran journalist and broadcaster Craig Havighurst. Music makers, enablers, instigators and documentarians are featured with enough time to go deep and burrow into issues, while letting the music play too. Music news, previews, Time Machine Tape and 90 Second Spins round out the hour.
- Update frequency
- every 9 days
- Average duration
- 59 minutes
- Episodes
- 308
- Years Active
- 2017 - 2025
Field Trips w/ Rayland Baxter, Nora Jane Struthers and Gary Louris
Episode #71: This week we get out of the studio for three radio field trips with some remarkable songwriter/artists. First I visit with Rayland Baxter at the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum about h…
Shemekia Copeland and Band of Heathens
Episode 70: Shemekia Copeland was born to sing, raised by blues royalty. Her dad, Johnny Clyde Copeland, took his Louisiana and Texas roots to the New York City area where he based a career that land…
AmericanaFest 2018 w Cedric Burnside, Kris Truelsen and Birdtalker
Episode 69 is the first in a series of shows reporting on artists who performed at AmericanaFest 2018, the most wide-ranging and diverse convention in its 19 years. Americana continues to represent a…
Brittany Haas plus Leah Blevins
Episode 68: At 31 years old, Brittany Haas has been in high level touring string bands more than half her life and she's already regarded as one of the finest fiddle players in the world. As part of …
Webb Wilder plus Layman Drug Co.
Since the 1980s and a golden age of Nashville pub rock and alt-country, Webb Wilder has been The Last of the Full Grown Men, a crowd-rousing, semi-campy, always hard rocking blend of SUN Records rock…
Steve Cropper, Live at City Winery
Episode #66: At 76 years old, Steve Cropper is in ideal position to reflect on an abundant, history making life in music, and he does so in this week’s show. It’s a special edition taped on stage in …
Cordovas
Episode 65: To understand the unique and intricate Nashville based quintet Cordovas, you’ve got to flash back to the early 2000s when a songwriter from North Carolina named Joe Firstman was tearing i…
Gretchen Peters plus Ben Glover
We’re spending much of this hour with someone who’s as thoughtful and articulate about her art as the art itself. Gretchen Peters is a lover of language. She has awe and appropriate respect for the p…
John Scott Sherrill and Saving Music Row
This week's episode of The String (#63) is about a sense of place and how we stand up for the places we cherish. Nashville has thrived as the epicenter of country music songwriting in part because of…
Erin Rae plus NMAAM
Erin Rae came of age in Nashville and dropped out of college to get serious about music. She is a pure product of Music City's richly rewarding community, veteran of open mics and local venues. Her f…
Wayne Moss at Cinderella Sound
Episode 61: Craig H. and sometime producer companion Gina Frary Bacon sit down with iconic Nashville Cat Wayne Moss. Raised in Charleston WV, Moss was obsessed with music and recording and made his w…
Lera Lynn: Plays Well With Others
Her recording career began in 2011 with an alt-country album whose title asked: Have You Met Lera Lynn? We hope you've met her by now because in the seven years since, the Athens GA-turned-Nashville …
'Outlaws & Armadillos' w/ Michael Martin Murphey
In Episode 59 of The String we dive deep into the Austin/Nashville dynamic captured in the new Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum special exhibit Outlaws & Armadillos: Country's Roaring 70s. Our f…
The Travelin' McCourys plus the Opry in NYC
The Travelin' McCourys began as a side project - an outlet for Del McCourys sons and their bandmates to pursue experiments and collaborations. Over the past eight years, they've developed a repertoir…
Rev. Sekou plus John McEuen
Rev. Sekou is an activist, writer, theologian and community organizer with a dense resume stretching back to before the 2000s. He says he found his calling at age 19 when he visited the Highlander Ce…
Jeff Hanna and Matraca Berg plus Ashley Campbell
This week, two conversations with country music families at their heart. First, up a feature interview with Nitty Gritty Dirt Band co-founder Jeff Hanna and his wife, songwriter Matraca Berg. Matraca…
Guthrie Trapp plus Tommy Womack
In Nashville, the greatest guitar town in the world, Guthrie Trapp is at the top of the mountain. He can range across every style, improvise with endless invention and subtlety. He can shred or twang…
Kim Richey plus Tim Easton
Kim Richey launched her career later than most, after her old friend and college band mate Bill Lloyd (of Foster & Lloyd) urged her to move to Music City. And after one of the most powerful executive…
Tyler Mahan Coe of Cocaine & Rhinestones, plus Gibson's Woes
If nothing else was left behind about America in the 20th century but the lyrics to all the country songs written by the famous and the obscure, you’d have a pretty good catalog of what happened and …
The Secret Sisters plus Becky Buller
Two years ago, Lydia and Laura Rogers, the Alabama siblings who harmonize together so enchantingly as The Secret Sisters, looked like they had it all figured out. They’d built a sterling reputation w…