When you think of Venezuelan music, perhaps salsa or merengue come to mind. But have you delved into joropo, or llanera music, from the plains in the country’s east? When you think of string band music like bluegrass, does anything far outside the region of the southern United States jump out as having a parallel makeup, or a kinship that might len…

When it comes to Marty Stuart, there simply is not enough time or space available to address the enormity and the lasting impact of his music, let alone his life story, here in this episode. We would need a whole year’s worth of podcasts to come close, and I doubt that he would be quite that generous with his time. Luckily, he was generous enough t…

When it comes to artists like Jim Lauderdale and Donna the Buffalo, I think back to a comment that Jerry Douglas made to me in an interview for this series, when he talked about what he called roots music 12 O'clock. Whereas the mainstream comes back around to roots music only so often in this metaphor, for artists like himself it is always roots m…

Back in the day, I discovered the music of Bob Wills when I was a fresh faced college DJ at WXYC Chapel Hill. It was like hearing songs from an alternate universe to me, a kid who grew up listening to FM and AM radio’s menu of pop, rock and rap of the day, sprinkled with music bought from cassette clubs and record stores that ventured as far back a…

In the first of two episodes from MerleFest in April 2024, we highlight two artists making their debuts at the festival, Nick Shoulders and Adeem the Artist. Following this episode are two artists who have made MerleFest a regular stop over its history — 24 and 26 times, respectively — Jim Lauderdale and Donna the Buffalo. Gallery images above: (le…

Hymns and gospel songs have flowed into, and very often, back out of out of every style of music with roots in the American South. From the music itself to its context in worship through choirs, instruments ranging from piano to organ to praise bands, and communal singing, the gospel tradition is, if not front and center in one’s life experience, t…

It was the last gig of a late winter tour, and Daniel Donato was ready to exhale. His band was, too, having had the rare treat of seeing their wives the night before, as they prepared for one more show, a late night performance in Asheville, NC. As Daniel told me, they were all in high spirits, and I knew this bode well for their performance, which…

It is natural that a second generation bluegrass banjo player would have soaked up as much of Earl Scruggs’ style on the five string as possible when starting out; it is just as natural that they would push outside of those boundaries of the territory staked out by their pioneering forebears. In Tony Trischka’s case, part of this instinct to turn b…

There is a decidedly darker mood in the United States than ever in our lifetimes, it seems. In just one example poll recently, one in five Americans agreed that violence is necessary to get the country back on track. With that in mind, it seems like a good time to remember what happened the last time the country acted on this, when we fought the Ci…

It was one of the first cold days of the fall in the western NC mountains when I trekked up from Spindale to Brevard to talk with Travis Book ahead of his show in town that night. Spindale is perhaps 60 miles away, where I work at WNCW, and with special shortcut directions from a trusted source who travels that route regularly, I figured it would t…

What connects you to the year 1946? Think of the time immediately following World War II, and perhaps black and white images of men in fedoras and women in long dresses come to mind. Maybe you have parents or grandparents who were born around that time, or maybe you know someone who lived then and has past on. It is an era that now seems quite dist…

Here at Southern Songs and Stories, we take some liberties from time to time with what we put forward as songs and stories that fall under the umbrella of the American South. After all, we have featured a band from England (The Ruen Brothers), an artist from Idaho (Eilen Jewell), and several artists out of the sui generis state of Texas (Shinyribs,…

It was day five of the IBMAs and I had been up until four that morning, but Stephen Mougin and Ben Wright might have even seen the sun come up that day after they hosted yet another late night music showcase. Technically their showcases shut down around two or three in the morning, but there was always the chance that artists such as Sierra Ferrell…

Here at Southern Songs and Stories, there is never a shortage of stories to draw from a seemingly bottomless well of music artists; we only scratch the surface of what we would love for you to hear on this series. But even with that, we have a parallel problem, a good problem if you will, of having a whole lot of material on hand waiting to make it…

Delta blues found its voice and audience on the airwaves of KFFA’s King Biscuit Time, a daily broadcast out of Helena, Arkansas. Bluesmen like Sonny Boy Williamson and Robert Lockwood Jr., who would go on to become legends, interspersed their own songs with advertising jingles. King Biscuit Time, which launched in 1941, gave unprecedented exposure …

Imagine getting your dream job and immediately being scrutinized for your appearance; being asked to wear a wig that was nothing like your natural hair; being quizzed on obscure bits of the history of your field; being asked whether you took the job as a stepping stone to another one. Imagine getting lots of hate mail about the fact that you look d…

It is easy to think of musical genres as enduring, definitive territories that are discovered as much as they are created. But even continents drift, and when you dig deep into the careers of artists who are said to be from musical land X,Y or Z, you find that they often do not stay in one place for long, and are likely to be pushing their home ter…

At Southern Songs and Stories, we have become fans of the WUNC - North Carolina Public Radio podcast The Broadside, and here we collaborate to give you a special presentation of one their recent episodes. The Broadside explores news, history, and pop culture stories rooted in the American South. Plus, the show was recently named “New & Noteworthy” …

When was the last time you picked up a book or a magazine instead of going to your smart phone or computer to read about music? I admit that, like so many of us these days, my first instinct is to scroll through social media or look at websites. The rise of digital media along with the ubiquity of smart phones has been nothing short of dramatic; th…

Shinyribs is an Austin Texas band that began in 2007 as a side project for Kevin Russell, who also goes by Kev, and was then still committed to The Gourds, the band he had co-founded fifteen years earlier. A few years later, The Gourds released their last album, and Kev sauntered over to Shinyribs full time. Known for his showmanship on stage and f…

Credit Halloween coming up for this. You probably know that this podcast has a direct tie to public radio station WNCW — it is produced in studio there where I am program director — but its origin can be traced all the way back to the 2006 Podcaster Con in Chapel Hill, NC, where I witnessed an event reflecting and directing the medium at its incept…

For Jonathan Wilson and Bella White, family figures prominently not only in their lives behind the scenes, but also in the musical paths both chose early on. It should come as no surprise that as a boy in rural North Carolina, celebrated producer and artist Jonathan Wilson played in a family band of sorts (he would fill in for various band members …

Over the four days of the 2023 Earl Scruggs Music Festival, held at the Tryon International Equestrian Center over Labor Day weekend, I was alternately emceeing performances, working with WNCW staff, taking in as much music as possible and talking with artists when I had the chance. Here, I spoke with Michael Daves, the renowned guitarist who has p…

Sometimes people have a determination and intensity that is not obvious at first. In our conversation after her performance last August at the Reeves Theater in Elkin, NC, Cristina Vane said, “I'm not gonna wait for something, some miracle to happen, right? So I have to get out there and like, just do it. Nike sign style, you know, just do it. And …

Ed Snodderly is a renaissance man -- he is a prolific songwriter with a who’s who of artists performing his compositions; his lyrics to the song "The Diamond Stream" are featured in Nashville’s Country Music Hall Of Fame; he is half of the duo The Brother Boys with musical partner Eugene Wolf going back to their inception in the late 1980s, and thi…

As Carl Sandburg said in his poem “Washington Monument by Night”, "Nothing happens unless first we dream." In the case of Miko Marks, her music career took off only after she had a literal dream, where she reunited with her old producer in a jam session. Prior to that, her dream of making it as a country music artist had long laid fallow, having be…

In this series, we often spend time with artists and styles of music that are not celebrated in the mainstream, and our guest here is no exception. With a focus on music that is from artists living in the South and on music that has roots from the region, we are constantly talking with bluegrass, blues, country, rock and Americana artists in this e…

It is that time of year again -- the beginning of summer and in the U.S., Independence Day. The July 4th holiday is celebrated in many ways, including in song, like the one that starts off this podcast, Billy Stewart’s version of the George Gershwin and Edward Dubose Heyward classic “Summertime”. With over 25,000 versions recorded in its now almost…

This story begins with Citizen Vinyl, a combination vinyl pressing plant, recording studio, bar and restaurant in downtown Asheville, North Carolina, in the old Citizen-Times building. Built in the late 1930s, it was originally the home of two newspapers and the WWNC radio station. Wanting to host more events there, Citizen Vinyl reached out to Gre…

It was a warm and picturesque spring day in the South Carolina countryside, just outside of the city of Greer, on the grounds of the Albino Skunk Music Festival, which got its name from some white skunks that were on the property, land which used to be a working farm. Now a largely wooded little valley of twenty plus acres, with one stage and many …

We talked for an hour and a half and could have easily talked for much longer, although even in this relatively short time, it felt like our conversation was far greater than the time it occupied, almost like seeing the whole world in a grain of sand. Collaboration was the main topic we discussed, and as you will hear, collaboration for Peter Rowan…

Hello and welcome to Southern Songs and Stories, with a favorite episode from 2021 here on this re-podcast of The Country Heart and Jazz Mind of Sierra Ferrell, published in late July of that year. Since then, Sierra Ferrell has enjoyed seeing the ranks of her fans swell on the heels of Long Time Coming, her album released later that summer. Curren…

They call it “Klezgrass”. Taking equal parts bluegrass and klezmer, husband and wife duo Zoe & Cloyd use fusion as their north star to guide their musical direction on their latest collection Songs Of Our Grandfathers. John Cloyd Miller and Natalya Weinstein’s fifth album draws from songs associated with John’s grandfather Jim Shumate, the fiddle p…

To be honest, I had never considered The Get Right Band to be psychedelic, and before hearing their album iTopia, had thought of them more as a kind of power pop group. But when I started diving in, one of the first things that jumped out was their own description of themselves as a “psychedelic indie rock power trio”, which was a kind of “a-ha” mo…

Half a century ago, one of the first all-female bluegrass bands gave us the genre’s first album played exclusively by women; their banjo player’s mother was embarrassed about her daughter’s choice of profession. It was only fifty years or so after the passage of the 19th Amendment, after all. Today, there are more all-female bluegrass and roots mus…

It would be very easy to think that rap and hip hop have little if anything in common with music like bluegrass and old time. After all, we have been led to believe that these styles of music come from cultures on opposite sides of the musical spectrum. How could the two have any common ground? Actually, they have many more connections than you mig…

The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys’ C.J. Lewandowski sat with us at the International Bluegrass Music Association conference and festival in Raleigh, North Carolina in early Fall, 2022, and our conversation touched on everything from the often unflinching nature of their approach to subject matter, how he views his band as “progressively traditional”, their lov…

Sierra Hull won her fourth award for Mandolin Player Of The Year at the IBMA conference in fall of 2022, a feat that would not have been within her grasp in the not-too-distant past. Now, women like Sierra Hull, Natalya Weinstein of Zoe & Cloyd and the group Della Mae can and do receive the recognition that women before them, like Becky Buller and …

For his 99th birth anniversary, WNCW honored the late great Earl Scruggs by sharing portions of interviews with artists who knew him, broadcasting stories ranging from brief encounters in young adulthood, like Sierra Hull’s memories of Earl, on to years of friendship and collaboration with guests like John McEuen and Pete Wernick (note: Sierra Hull…

2022 was a very good year for Charley Crockett. It was another prolific period for the Texan artist, who is mostly known as a country musician, although the breadth and depth of his music cannot be grasped with just that one handle. His first collection of 2022, Lil' G.L. Presents: Jukebox Charley found Crockett in his covers mode, which he has emp…

2022 has been a year of firsts at Southern Songs and Stories. Beginning with our first guest host, WNCW’s Corrie Askew took stock of her favorite episodes of this series in the previous year. We went even further back in time to revisit Green Acres Music Hall with an episode summing up the first three podcasts on the beloved music venue, and focusi…

When you think about the history of the banjo, its modern context seems ironic in that so many people who enjoy banjo music are unaware of its origin story and any other context than bluegrass and old time. The banjo has become closely associated with string bands especially from the American South of the mid 20th century onwards, while its early A…

This one is for all the late bloomers. For anyone that went all in on their passion as an adult rather than a youth (or hopes to still), you will find a kindred spirit in Barrett Davis, who in his late 20s has released his debut album and is pushing to make music his career. While it may be harder to start a music career later in life, it has been …

It is easy to think of someone who has incredible talents and intellect as unapproachable, like they exist on some other plane of reality. If it were a question of bona fides, I would have some doubts about being on the same stage with someone on the level of Craig Havighurst. Taken from his bio, Craig is a writer, multi-media producer and speaker …

As a lifelong Southerner, and a mostly small-town Southerner all these years, I can understand when people want to get out of their small, Southern town in favor of a city with more people of like minds. And as that mostly happy small-town Southerner, I can understand why people want to get out of the city and put themselves in that countryside. Bo…

For a place as remote as Ashe County, NC, you could be forgiven for overlooking it as a wellspring for musical talent. But music seems to flow naturally out of the Appalachian mountains in and around towns like Sparta, NC, where artists like Brian Swenk grew up. Our recent episode on banjo player Tray Wellington gives another example of how the reg…

Years ago, when the tenth anniversary of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack was the topic on my WNCW talk show What It Is, writer and editor Kim Ruehl remarked that the movie made an indelible mark on the music scene by taking heretofore uncool hillbilly music, putting it in the mouth of George Clooney, and exposing all the punk and rock and…

Back in 2018, we dove into the history of a beloved venue that was its own cultural phenomenon over a span of nearly four decades. It was a sprawling, quirky, at times surprising and almost always joyful tale; those first three episodes of our Green Acres series totaled almost three hours (they started with fifteen separate interviews totaling over…

As nineteenth century US senator Daniel Webster said, “When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers therefore are the founders of human civilization.” In the case of Darrell Scott, he mastered one of the arts that followed so well that it became possible to try his hand at music’s ancient ancestor, the equally challenging, mysterious and at …

Do you love live music? This episode is for you! After taking in a number of shows after a bit of a lull, I was energized, engaged, and excited. It got me thinking about telling the story of not only those concert experiences, but also about the broader subject of live music. So let’s talk, shall we? I’ll start, and then hopefully you can respond, …