The String

Episode 172: A sense of place pervades this split show featuring two of the most fascinating and accomplished voices in Americana music. Amy Helm is a veteran singer but a relatively new solo recordi…

Episode 171: Founded by an irrepressible enthusiast in his very early twenties, Alligator Records grew into the most authoritative and wide-ranging label chronicling urban blues in the US. That man, …

Episode 170: They're both Nashville icons but they'd rarely worked together until now. John Hiatt is a songwriter's songwriter with a voice that's made him a roots music star. Jerry Douglas is the mo…

Episode 169: He's known worldwide as a consummate virtuoso on the fiddle and the violin, but Mark O'Connor's first instrument was actually the guitar. After starting his music life with classical and…

Episode 168: By the time 2020’s pandemic shroud covered the land and stilled its musicians, Oklahoma songwriter Samantha Crain knew all too well about incapacitation. In 2017, touring behind her albu…

Episode 167: I met Casey Driessen almost 20 years ago when he was new to Nashville, fresh off a music degree from Berklee in Boston and full of new ideas about bluegrass and American fiddling. He bec…

Episode 166: Still waters run deep with Nashville's Mando Saenz. He's cool and contemplative in conversation, while songwriters tell you he's a fountain of ideas in the writing studio, where he spend…

Episode 165: Growing up in the Pacific Northwest in the 1960s, Curtis Salgado fell down the rabbit hole of Deep South blues, jazz, soul and R&B and knew it would be his life's work. Now in his mid 60…

Singer-songwriter Garrison Starr grew up in Mississippi, made rock and roll out of Memphis and got signed in her late teens to a major label deal where her song "Superhero" took her to the charts and…

Episode 163: It's been a year since the music industry slammed to a halt due to Covid-19. Performing artists had to adjust financially, logistically, emotionally and more. Now with a year's hindsight…

Episode 162: From his breakout days as guitarist for Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen to his four-decade career as a bandleader, songwriter and recording artist, Bill Kirchen has been a bada…

Episode 161: Bluegrass has an instrumental tradition going back to its Bill Monroe origins and its old-time forebears. Over time, the playing and composing became more refined and exploratory. This s…

Episode 160: Women with roots - in jazz is the heart of this hour. Jenny Scheinman is one of the leading jazz violinists working today, yet her musical life began grounded in folk music and she's bee…

Episode 159: Tennessee snuggles up against North Carolina at the apex of the Appalachian Mountains, together making a mid-South band from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River. It also defines possib…

Joachim Cooder has pursued his musical life as drummer, percussionist and family man, staying near and working regularly with his father, blues/roots guitarist Ry Cooder and his songwriting wife, amo…

Episode 157: The bluegrass and acoustic music world saw Sarah Jarosz coming. As she grew into her teens, artists and talent scouts knew of this young phenom from Wimberly, TX who excelled on banjo, m…

Episode 156: Banjo innovator and string band visionary Tony Trischka has kept his eyes on the future over a fifty year career, but on a new album he looks to our uneasy past. Shall We Hope is a song …

Episode 155: Journalist and author Peter Guralnick is regarded by many as America's premiere chronicler of roots music. Besides his influential profiles, compiled into classic volumes in the 1970s an…

Episode 154: 2020 will go down in infamy but one happy occasion this year was the 95th anniversary of the Grand Ole Opry, the longest-running broadcast show in American history and the anchoring forc…

Episode 153: Two great roots songwriters at different stages of their careers. Brent Cobb is a laid-back Georgian who got his first chance to record through his cousin Dave Cobb but who earned his st…