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
The Wood Brothers plus Ear Trumpet Microphones
With the aggressive acoustic bass, second-line intricate drumming and soaring brotherly harmony, the Wood Brothers have become a mainstay of roots and Americana music. What began well over a decade a…
David Ball on Uncle Walt's Band
David Ball is one of our best traditional country singers, a regular on the Grand Ole Opry and that rare classic indie who had big radio hits in two different decades. But before he twanged us up wit…
Lillie Mae plus Julian Lage
Lillie Mae has lived a classic Nashville journey. She came of age on Lower Broadway, playing six nights a week with her family band as a teenager. She and her siblings were mentored and produced by t…
Delbert McClinton plus Rounder Records
Delbert McClinton has two gifts that have served him well. He’s got a one in a million voice. It’s thunder and whiskey and leather and silk. It’s instantly recognizable. It’s innate and inimitable. D…
Folk Alliance 2018 w Richard Thompson and more
The 30th annual Folk Alliance International conference recently wrapped in Kansas City. It’s a confab like no other, with countless showcase performances large and small. And it’s the subject of this…
Sierra Hull's Journey, plus Kurt Bardella
Songwriter, singer and mandolin virtuoso Sierra Hull was born in Byrdstown, TN in 1991. Halfway between Nashville and the Smoky Mountains, it was an advantageous place to study bluegrass music, which…
Mary Gauthier w/ Protest Playlist
Most songwriters start writing in their teens and THEN accumulate the life experience that give their work insight and heft. Mary Gauthier flipped the script. Like fellow American musician Louis Arms…
Dan Tyminski's Southern Gothic
He's been a key part of Alison Krauss & Union Station for 25 years. He's the voice of the most popular and successful bluegrass track of the 21st century in "Man of Constant Sorrow." And he's one of …
John Jorgenson and John D. Loudermilk Tribute
This hour, a tale of two Johns.
My guest is John Jorgenson, one of the most well-rounded and admired guitar players of the last 40 years. His life and career have carried him from the country music h…
Amber Rubarth, plus Nashville R&B
American Folk, a feature film that's already won numerous jury prizes at film festivals, starts its theatrical run in late January of 2018. First time writer/director David Heinz wanted true-life fol…
David Rawlings w/ Gillian Welch, plus Thomm Jutz
The plan was to spend an hour with David Rawlings, an artist who’s releasing brilliant folk albums, touring to huge acclaim and driving a new string band agenda. The plan was to ask him about his eme…
Radney Foster and WNCW's Joe Kendrick
Blessed are the storytellers, and this week we’ll visit with two of them from the world of roots music. Thirty years into his recording career, Radney Foster is a certified star of Texas songwriting …
Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn, plus Restoring the Jimmy Dean Show
It’s a love story, with an all banjo soundtrack. Hollywood would never buy the pitch. But it’s better that it’s real life. Béla Fleck is the most famous banjo player of his time, a searcher who’s pla…
Norbert Putnam and Jon Langford
It’s hard to over-state the importance of Norbert Putnam to Southern music. As a teenager he was one of a handful of guys who built the legendary recording scene in Muscle Shoals from scratch. Workin…
Jerry Douglas w Porchlight Sessions
Jerry Douglas in the encyclopedias as the singular innovator of the Dobro, that horizontal acoustic slide guitar developed in the early 20th century. But that’s like calling Charlie Parker a saxophon…
Luther Dickinson and Sam Gleaves
Since his band the North Mississippi Allstars broke out in the early 2000s, Luther Dickinson has been at the vanguard of an important roots music revival. Not only has he and his brother Cody champio…
Ben Sollee and Kentucky Native w/ Wild Ponies
On the cover of Ben Sollee’s new album Kentucky Native, an astronaut with a pick axe on his shoulder looks at Earth from the surface of the moon, contemplating loneliness and the fragility of life. H…
Americanafest 2017: A Review
AmericanaFest 2017 is in the books, and it was large and loud. Fifty venues across Nashville. A new hotel headquarters. It felt the same yet different. We’re 18 years into this thing after all. It’s …
Robert Greer of Town Mountain
The Great Smoky Mountains of Western NC are ancient but alive. The region gave us Charlie Poole, Doc Watson and now a cadre of diverse and important bands and artists working the many strains of r…
A&R w Kim Buie plus Will Hoge
Kim Buie got into the music business through college radio. She’s worked in New York, Los Angeles and Nashville at a variety of record companies including some industry giants and some important indi…