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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.
Southern Songs and Stories is a documentary series about the music of the South and the artists who make it. We showcase their performances and discover the stories behind their songs with a look at their lives on stage, in the studio and at home as well as the family, friends, fans and music professionals around them.
Music City Roots: Live From The Factory is a weekly concert and live radio show that broadcasts every Wednesday night (7PM CST) on WMOT Roots Radio 89.5 FM in Murfreesboro-Nashville, Tennessee, and worldwide at www.musiccityroots.com. It's hosted by Grammy-winning artist Jim Lauderdale, legendary radio announcer Keith Bilbrey and show journalist/interview guy Craig Havighurst. We feature leading lights and new discoveries in Americana, blues, rock and roll, gospel, jazz, rockabilly, bluegras ...
Talking with the folks who live, work, agitate and make art in Nashville, TN
Episode 238: Cellist and composer Larissa Maestro enjoys a rich and diverse career as a Nashville session and stage musician. When she came to town in 2007, she had a music degree and flexible expectations about what she'd find in a place she'd never been. Now she's a veteran of creative collaborations with Margo Price, John Legend, Brandi Carlile …
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…
Episode 237: Ron Sexsmith's brilliant solo debut album of 1995 - the one with the song "Secret Heart" - was on the verge of being overlooked and forgotten when Elvis Costello endorsed it as one of his favorite projects in a major magazine. It changed the conversation about the young balladeer and he was quickly recognized as one of Canada's finest …
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Sketching the Classic and the Tragic With The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys
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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…
Episode 236: It would be difficult to name one musician with such long and distinguished resumes as both a recording artist and a record producer as Joe Henry. Since emerging around 1990 as a layered, visionary songwriter, he's released 17 albums to almost universal acclaim. And since his tutelage under T Bone Burnett, stemming from one of his earl…
Episode 235: After a remarkable life in show business and soul music, Charles "Wigg" Walker moved back to his native Nashville in the 90s, and he's been an important fixture in Music City ever since, a one-of-a-kind voice in soul and blues. It started on Jefferson Street in his teens. Then he moved to New York, opened shows for James Brown, played …
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Sierra Hull, Natalya Weinstein, Becky Buller, Claire Lynch, and Della Mae: What Does It Take To Be A Leading Lady?
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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 …
Episode 234: Not very long ago, Sunny War was busking on Venice Beach in Los Angeles, nearly homeless and beset with substance abuse. But she was also making weirdly beautiful and honest music that evoked country blues, punk rock and old folk songs without being really any of the above. Now she's moved to Nashville, signed to New West Records, with…
Episode 233: Madison Cunningham blasted on to the modern folk scene in 2019 with a debut album so thoughtful and original that it landed on the prestigious Verve Forecast label and was nominated for a Grammy Americana Album award. After the pandemic interrupted her career momentum, she picked right back up in 2022 with a fast-growing audience and a…
Episode 232: Willi Carlisle is a folk singer in the populist tradition of Utah Phillips and Woody Guthrie, a boisterous, tender, funny performer who is impossible to forget. After years pursuing various outlets in old-time, poetry and theater, he emerged in 2022 as one of the finest songwriters in traditional folk music. The vehicle was his album P…
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…
To kick off the new year during my three week book leave, here's a special edition of The String in which I read my own in-depth analysis of how two great and sweeping genres - jazz and Americana - can have such different audiences and narratives in contemporary life despite their common origins in the blues. Reviewed are two releases - the 10th an…
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Revisiting A Country Music Renaissance Man: Charley Crockett
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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…
Episode 231: Sam Bush was the first guest on The String way back in September of 2016, because he's a hero of mine and an exemplar of the Americana ideal, traditional American music with a contemporary outlook. He returns to talk about one of his heroes, the late great John Hartford. They were friends, picking buddies and sometime tour mates. And w…
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Itching for Christmas With The Dancing Fleas
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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…
Episode 230: With an instantly recognizable voice and uncommon skill for balancing melancholy with radiance, Courtney Marie Andrews has released a string of four acclaimed album since her 2016 breakout Honest Life. She's a Tucson, AZ native who hit the road on her own at the tender age of 16 and gave her life over to writing and sharing her soul wi…
Episode 229: Todd Snider walked out alone on the stage of the Ryman Auditorium in late September looking radiant. He was bolstered and beloved by the loyalist lifer fans that hang on his every word, spoken or sung. He told the one about his first open mic and the one about East Nashville character Skip Litz who loved Train Songs. Todd’s mother was …
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…
Episode 228: One day during AmericanaFest 2022 I visited the headquarters of leading label New West Records to catch up with their two newest band signings - bands that fit on the label and in an episode with each other. 49 Winchester, school friends from tiny Castlewood, VA, had a breakout year while releasing Fortune Favors The Bold. Town Mountai…
Episode 227: This week dwells on origins and growth with two artists who've had very different journeys but who had to get resourceful in their own way. Amy Ray put the Indigo Girls on the map with her partner Emily Saliers in part through a relentless focus on activism and support of causes they cherished. They were given the Americana Lifetime Aw…
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A Mythical and Moral Tale To End All Tales With Barrett Davis
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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 …
Episode 226: The 5 Spot is a nightclub at the heart of East Nashville's music community, and for 12 years, Derek Hoke was at the heart of the 5 Spot. His showcase series Two Dollar Tuesdays offered newcomers a chance to play and music lovers 4-5 artists to sample in a cozy scene, many of whom would become the next wave of Americana stars. Hoke came…
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Southern Strings and Stories With Craig Havighurst
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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 …
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Southern Strings And Stories With Joe Kendrick
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Episode 225: When you serve a community on a good radio station, you get a feel for the soul of that place, and for me over these many years, that place is Nashville. So I thought it would be fun to join forces for a week with a friend of mine who has a similar gig in western North Carolina who has developed expertise and perspective on the amazing…
Episode 224: It's a double Dan special as I visit with two movers and shakers who've contributed perhaps more behind the scenes than most musicians of their stature. Daniel Tashian is a Nashville lifer who's worn all the hats - songwriter, artist, band-leader and producer. He won a Grammy for Kacey Musgraves's Golden Hour and collaborated with Burt…
Episode 223: Americanafest 2022 is in the books, and as usual, I took advantage of all the visiting talent to collect a bunch of interviews with artists from stars to newcomers. Here, I speak with three fascinating emerging artists who will be shaping the scene for years to come. Tray Wellington is a new voice on the banjo from rural Appalachia, bu…
Episode 222: Kentucky natives Linda Jean Stokley and Montana Hobbs have been musical partners for about a decade. They met as college students at Morehead State University, where they both more or less wandered into the school’s distinguished traditional music program. They formed the duo The Local Honeys and have gradually built a following and a …
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Where Soil and Song Work In Harmony: S.G. Goodman
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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…
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Making Festival Goers Sing and His Banjo Ring: Brian Swenk
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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…
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Melody, Nuance and Innovation on the Banjo With Tray Wellington
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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…
Episode 221: Cristina Vane discovered American roots music from a greater distance than most converts. She grew up in capitals of Europe, identifying as a "third culture kid" and struggling with her identity. The slide blues guitar and Appalachian banjo became important icons of her journey to America and her burgeoning career as a singer songwrite…
Episode 220: Early James pushed himself to find a singing voice and songwriting style all his own, and it certainly got the attention of Nashville's Dan Auerbach. The Birmingham, AL artist was invited into Dan's Easy Eye Sound studio to write and produce his debut album Singing For My Supper in 2020. That release was acclaimed by stymied by the pan…
Episode 219: This time I catch up with two dynamic women from Nashville with albums that are journalistic in nature, chronicling change and life passages. Nicki Bluhm is a national jam roots star thanks to hear years leading The Gramblers and numerous collaborations with the likes of Phil Lesh and Little Feat. On her new Avondale Drive album she ru…
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…
Episode 218: Of all the 1960s California folk rockers, Richie Furay had a quieter but most interesting career. He co-founded two iconic bands in Buffalo Springfield and Poco. He wrote and sang a landmark country rocker in "Kind Woman," the track that brought steel guitar man and eventual frontman Rusty Young into the Poco fold. And then in midlife …
Episode 217: Nashville master songwriter Mary Gauthier returns to The String to talk about her new album Dark Enough To See The Stars and her remarkable 2021 memoir Saved By A Song. Mary's entree into songwriting was unusual to say the least, a lifeline for a woman in her 30s recovering from substance abuse and putting together a full self after a …
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On the Road With the Electric Trio and on the Farm With His Orange Scout: Darrell Scott
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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 …
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Eric Brace on 25 Years of Last Train Home
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Episode 216: In a casual, expansive conversation, Craig visits with his old friend Eric Brace, founder of alt-country band Last Train Home. Brace was a music journalist for the Washington Post when he formed the DC based group in the mid 1990s. Then in the early 2000s, he and the rhythm section moved to Nashville, where LTH found a new life and Bra…
Episode 215: Since moving to Nashville at age 21 in 1978, Kenny Greenberg has built a reputation as a guitarist who could bring rock and roll punch and jangle to commercial country records as well as a standout behind the glass. Besides his seminal work with Allison Moorer, Kenny has produced albums by the Mavericks, Josh Turner, Joan Baez, Toby Ke…
Episode 214: Will The Circle Be Unbroken, released 50 years ago, revolutionized how country and bluegrass music were perceived by mainstream and youth culture in America. The 3-LP set of 37 songs came about when west coast country-rockers The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band persuaded a cast of venerated elders of Nashville to collaborate with them over a we…
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Why Is Live Music So Good? Let’s Talk It Over
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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, …
Episode 213: Rarely do artists retire in their prime, but that’s what Texas songwriter Robert Earl Keen is doing. In January, he announced to the surprise of his many fans that he’d play 2022 into September and then wrap up his road career with a final show in Helotes TX, a favorite venue. He’s 66 years old and very much in fighting shape. But he’s…
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From #1 Hitmaker to Roots Music Torchbearer: Colin Hay
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Music artists often face a difficult choice: do I make songs that people likely expect me to make, or do I go in a new direction? Artists who are successful become associated with the style of music that got them their fame, and the stakes are then higher, the question harder to answer. Success can become a gilded cage, and is a large reason why so…
Episode 212: Decades after it came out in 1979, you still regularly hear “Romeo’s Tune” by Steve Forbert over PAs in the grocery store or on oldies radio if that’s what you’re into. But don’t let that early hit define Forbert’s long, distinguished career. He’s an excellent and widely admired songwriter with more than 20 albums to his credit. He cam…
Episode 211: Not many instrumentalists have invented and spread a new technique, but Darol Anger has, and now the percussive bow and string practice called "the chop" is almost mandatory for rising bluegrass and even some classical players. This happened over a 40+ year career that's seen Anger contribute to the historic David Grisman Quintet, co-f…
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Tradition and Diversity: A New Appalachia with Dori Freeman
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Time travel is real. Not in the science fiction sense of the term, but you really can travel back in time by simply going to Galax, Virginia and seeing Dori Freeman play music with her husband Nicholas Falk and her father and grandfather. Three generations of musicians in a family is extraordinary today, but in centuries past in the South, it was p…
Episode 210: Over the past ten years, Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors have become one of the most successful and beloved bands in Nashville, a kind of nice guy finishes first story in Music City. Thing is, the band is also huge in Knoxville, where he went to college and Memphis, where he grew up. And around the nation too. It's just hard to remember…
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Painting a Portrait of 23 Years With Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show
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How long is the average lifespan for a band? That could be hard to pin down, but it is surely a lot shorter than the time we have witnessed Old Crow Medicine Show do their thing. Starting out as strict revivalists of old-time string band traditions, they did not even believe in writing original songs. To Ketch Secor’s thinking back at Old Crow’s in…
Episode 209: The Po' Ramblin' Boys, probably the hottest young band in bluegrass, started as a house band at a distillery in East Tennessee, where they were able to hone their sound over years of daily performing. Balancing that polish with the raw and earthy sound of traditional bluegrass music has become a signature of the band, says founder C.J.…
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Amanda Anne Platt plus Valorie Miller Pt. 2
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Episode 208: Western North Carolina has a long history in roots music, but Amanda Anne Platt and the Honeycutters have been one of the defining sounds of the scene for the last decade or more, a no-frills, highly musical country band fronted by an exceptional singer and songwriter. On my recent trip to Asheville, I caught a Honeycutters show and th…
