The String
300 episodes · showing the newest 200
58 min
Episode 375: Over more than 20 years Pieta Brown has quietly built one of the most esteemed careers in the singer-songwriter space. She's quiet in conversation as well, but there's no mistaking her depth. As she reflects on her luminous new album Dreamin' Of, Brown speaks about the indirect influence of her famous dad Greg Brown, about her relationship with roots rocker Bo Ramsey, and about how her Iowa home in the midwest has led to some of her richest collaborations.
59 min
Episode 374: The Deslondes, named for the street in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans where they lived back in the day, has been one of Americana's most impressive and creative bands for more than a decade. While fully committed to that ongoing project, their gravel-voiced baritone singer and writer Riley Downing has taken his most impressive step yet as a solo artist with Landfill Poetry on Oh Boy Records. He speaks with The String about his late break into folk music, record collecting, and yes, that job he had on a garbage truck.
59 min
Episode 373: Laurelyn Dossett, contemporary folk singer and songwriter from North Carolina, has had her songs recorded by Levon Helm and the Carolina Chocolate Drops. But her work as an artist over the past 20 years has been more regionally bound. Now with the new album How Many Moons, produced in Durham with Hiss Golden Messenger's MC Taylor, Dossett emerges as one of the best veteran songwriters you may not have heard of.
1 hr 1 min
Episode 372: In the late 1990s, Bryan Sutton was a young phenom who dropped jaws across the country as the lead guitarist in Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder. And he was more than a flash in the pan, becoming the most in-demand studio session acoustic guitar player in Nashville and a ten-time IBMA Guitar Player of the Year. The latest in his string of solo recordings is an anthology of guitar duos with friends, peers, and heroes that he's recorded on his own over two decades.
58 min
Episode 371: Buddy Miller is the most awarded musician in the history of the Americana Music Association, with two Artist of the Year trophies, three Albums of the Year, and the lifetime achievement Wagonmaster Award. That's a lot of attention on one humble man. But he's worn his ambassador status for the format with distinction as a singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer. On the eve of Americanafest 2026, Miller released his first solo album in fifteen years. The self-titled set made a perfect occasion to bring Buddy on The String for a lifetime-spanning chat.
59 min
Episode 370: A decade after her national breakout as a top alt-country visionary, more than two decades after her move to Nashville and her long, grueling apprenticeship in Music City, Margo Price is one of Americana music's leading stars and cultural voices. She's sung protest songs at Newport with Joan Baez and joined the board of Farm Aid, where she's a veteran performer. Now she's released the first political album of her career. Craig sits down with Margo to talk about her life in Nashville and her new Days Of Unrest.
58 min
Episode 369: In his almost 20 years of recording Americana music in Nashville, 39-year-old Sean Sullivan has earned a reputation for impeccable recording and mixing of quality instruments, be they antique acoustic or classic electric. Working since the pandemic out of the Tractor Shed in Goodlettsville, he's accumulated five Grammy Awards and immense respect in the bluegrass and Americana communities. We talk about the art of capturing great musicians and about working with Sturgill Simpson, Del McCoury, Molly Tuttle and others.
59 min
Episode 368: He's one of Music City's most respected "multi-hyphenate" music-makers - an artist-singer-songwriter-picker-producer who's had his hand in scores of hit records while releasing much-admired albums of his own over a 20 year career in town. Craig regards him as a "Music Row whisperer," a guy with his finger on the pulse of the industry and a well-rooted point of view in the music he makes. He returns to the String with the new album Once Upon A Second Time Around and, though he didn't know it at the time, a new Grand Ole Opry member trophy.
58 min
Episode 367: One of the stars of Nashville's recent honky tonk boom first found her muse playing in late night jazz clubs of New York and Paris. That set Sweet Megg apart when she moved here just after the pandemic - a flair for early blues and hot club swing. In Music City, she's also developed as a songwriter releasing stylish Americana fare, but she continues to mine the catalog for golden nuggets she can make her own, as on her latest Massive Negroni.
59 min
Episode 366: In The Hour Of Chaos, Allison Russell's third solo album, brings the power of harmony and solidarity into a time of division and fear. In an interview days before its release, the songwriter says her "rainbow coalition" of collaborators has grown since her breakout album Outside Child of 2021, and many of them, including Brittany Spencer, Norah Jones, and Kashus Culpepper, sing duets with her. She also gets into her foundations in folk music during her pre-Nashville years.
58 min
Episode 365: His biography sounds like several different people: accomplished jazz guitar player, New York City glam rocker, progressive Americana songwriter in Nashville. That's why Aaron Lee Tasjan comes across as a true American original. Over 13 years in Music City, Tasjan's been prolific and acclaimed, releasing half a dozen albums touching many colors of pop music. His latest came after a time of discouragement and personal re-building, so it's called Get Over It, Underdog.
59 min
Episode 364: As Avery Hellman came of age in California, she took advantage of her good fortune of being from the family that established the game-changing Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco. It exposed her to standard-setting songwriting and artistry in folk and roots music, and with a bit of reluctance, she became an artist too under the name Ismay. Her two albums, Desert Pavement and the new Half Truth, are alive with a poet's ear for language and eye for landscape, plus a crafty marriage of melodies and chords. She's also the filmmaker behind the exploratory documentary Finding Lucinda, about Lucinda Williams.
59 min
Episode 363: Devon Gilfillian has been a key artist fulfilling the promise of a New Music City - a Nashville that's been welcome to the widest-ever range of genres, influences and innovations. He came to town with no contacts and a job with AmeriCorps in 2013. But before very long he'd landed a major label deal and national radio hits - all with an iconoclastic take on soul, funk and Americana. His newest album - his second for the prestigious Fantasy Records - is a beautiful grooving swirl called Time Will Tell.
59 min
Episode 362: Songwriter and artist Tenille Townes is a certified star in Canada where she's won heaps of awards and seen her moving songs top the country charts. In over a dozen years in Nashville, she's been an impressive songwriter with one foot in major label country and another in Americana. Now with a lovely self-produced acoustic album called The Acrobat, Townes points to an independent future with a unique vision and a renewed sense of self.
59 min
Episode 361: Folk rocker John R. Miller can be dry and understated, but get beneath the surface and you'll find an artist keen to write music that helps people be better people. Inspired by John Prine and others, the Nashville based West Virginian has earned widespread acclaim and released three albums for the prestigious Rounder Records, the latest being the sweeping and fiery The Great Unknowning. He spoke with Craig at his Madison home studio.
59 min
Episode 360: Andy Leftwich was a Tennessee string picking prodigy who crushed it at fiddle competitions and was working by his late teens. Then, before he turned twenty, he was offered a job (on stage no less) by legend Ricky Skaggs. For 15 years with Kentucky Thunder, he built a reputation as one of the most complete and technically gifted musicians in bluegrass, sharing in numerous IBMA and Grammy Awards. Now, after a few years of being independent, he's fired up his solo career with two enthralling instrumental albums.
59 min
Episode 359: We love it when great things happen to good people, especially when the story is a total surprise, and that's what's been going on with Alabama-raised singer and songwriter Kashus Culpepper. He'd never been on a stage or played the guitar before 2020, but a confluence of free time, an encouraging group of friends, and a timely instrument helped Kashus find his voice and his calling. He's been celebrated by the media and stars like Elton John, and his debut album Act 1 has surprised many with its depth and power.
58 min
Episode 358: Fifteen years into their close and literally harmonious relationship, Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale sound as satisfied and enriched as ever by the audience and aura they've established in Americana music. The Milk Carton Kids name was a self-effacing joke about how quickly they expected to be forgotten, but it's been quite the opposite. They've earned four Grammy nominations and an Americana Award as Duo/Group of the Year. Audiences still lean in to hear the nuances of their quiet and thoughtful sound. Their seventh album Lost Cause Lover Fool is the latest iteration of their less-is-more approach to folk artistry.
58 min
Episode 357: Liam Duncan grew up in the small city of Brandon, Manitoba and moved to the provincial capitol and musical hotbed of Winnipeg as soon as he could, thinking he might be a session musician and sideman. But post pandemic, he's been Boy Golden, a quirky, neo-romantic persona making some of Canada's most compelling folk rock. During a swing through Nashville, Boy Golden talked about shifting focus from Canada to the US, his tight band of old friends, and his new album Best Of Our Possible Lives.
58 min
Episode 356: Brit Taylor came to town from eastern Kentucky chasing the US Route 23 dream that brought us Loretta Lynn and Patty Loveless - and wound up working with Cowboy Jack Clement and Sturgill Simpson. Adam Chaffins grew up one or two counties over and ensconced himself, as a bass player and singer, in the East Nashville bluegrass scene. Eventually, a friend was smart enough to introduce them, and they became a super-talented Americana couple. But not a duo. Taylor has four albums out, including two produced by her husband. Chaffins dropped a debut LP in 2020 and a soulful EP last year, with Taylor's harmony vocals. Craig visited their homestead near Mt. Juliet to hear their story around their kitchen table.
59 min
Episode 355: Nearly 12 years ago, an informal arrangement between the caretakers of a down-on-its-luck American Legion Post and a handful of young honky tonk musicians led to the creation of Honky Tonk Tuesday Nights, one of the most vibrant residency music series of the past two decades. It's been a haven for people who love to dance, for East Nashville community, for visits from stars, and for talent development in roots/Americana music. Craig spends time with the event's founders and takes you to the scene, now moved to Eastside Bowl in Madison.
59 min
Episode 354: The Infamous Stringdusters emerged out of Nashville's world-class but somewhat undiscovered bluegrass scene of the 2000s. Six guys with different professional pathways into the music and wide ranging tastes in other genres got to know each other at gigs, picking parties, and the IBMA World of Bluegrass. And their first gesture as a band - the 2007 album Fork In The Road - was a triumph, winning three IBMA Awards. Since those days and after a couple of early personnel changes, today's quintet has become a huge force in jamgrass music with a fierce and in-demand live show. Yet they turn back to some of the simpler and more blues-based elements of their core heritage on their new 20th anniversary release, 20/20. Craig speaks with Chris Pandolfi (banjo), Jeremy Garrett (fiddle), and Andy Falco (guitar).
59 min
Episode 353: He was an East Tennessee country guitar prodigy who was invited on the Grand Ole Opry at age 11 by Marty Stuart, and Trey Hensley has made good on that promise by emerging as one of the finest singers and pickers in contemporary roots music. His national profile took shape after forming a super-flexible duo with dobro master Rob Ickes around 2016. Now, after four albums, collaborations with Taj Mahal and a Grammy nomination, Hensley has revved up his songwriting and made Can't Outrun The Blues, which is not his first solo album but the one he regards as his true artistic debut.
59 min
Episode 352: When Emily Scott Robinson released Appalachia, her fifth album in a 10-year career and her third for Nashville boutique Oh Boy Records, it spiked up into the Americana airplay top ten, something that had never happened to her before. But she had set the table through quality songwriting, ambitious touring, and a luminous voice that embraces the dark and the light with a rare alchemy. At WMOT's Eastside studio, Craig and Emily speak about her newest work with super-producer Josh Kaufman and the hard work that led to it.
59 min
Episode 351: Justin Townes Earle, blazingly gifted and deeply troubled, died of an accidental drug overdose in 2020 at the age of 38, after a life beset by addiction. Six years later, two coincident projects expand on what we knew about the songwriter with a mix of compassion and regret. Sammy Brue, Earle's much younger friend and protegé, has written a song cycle based on Justin's private notebooks, shared by his widow. Rolling Stone journalist Jonathan Bernstein recently published the first definitive biography of Steve Earle's son. Both join Craig in this hour of remembrance and appreciation.
59 min
Episode 350: Since breaking out with his 1989 major-label album How Did You Find Me Here, North Carolina's David Wilcox has been a consistently excellent practitioner of the new folk, fingerstyle guitar arts. The songwriter, known for his empathic writing and audience-embracing shows, is now 67 and still thinking deep thoughts about the world, compassion, art, and the arc of life. He stopped through Nashville last November to talk about maintaining a "visionary attitude" over time and his latest album The Way I Tell The Story.
59 min
Episode 349: For its 38th annual conference, Folk Alliance International returned to New Orleans, home of their largest-ever event (2020's draw of 3,600 people) and the epicenter of one of the nation's great regional roots music legacies. Besides a slate of Louisiana talent in blues, Cajun and zydeco, FAI was once again distinguished by diversity of style, genre, and nationality. Craig captured conversations with showcasing artists Joy Clark, Tyler Ramsey & Carl Broemel, Sparrow Smith, Maisy Owen, and Rachel Sumner & Traveling Light.
59 min
Episode 348: Kristina Train is a singer and songwriter who should be on more people's radar. Her remarkable resume was built in the jazz world (Blue Note Records and touring with Herbie Hancock), but the Savannah, GA native has always shown mastery for a seductive strain of country soul. That goes explicit on the powerful yet subtle 2025 album County Line. Craig speaks with Train about her critically acclaimed albums of the 2010s and her decade or so as a Nashvillian.
59 min
Episode 347: Rachael Price became an American fixture as the dynamic and flawless lead singer of roots/pop phenomenon Lake Street Dive. Long before she and the Dive were headlining Madison Square Garden, she was a Hendersonville, TN native pursuing a career in classic jazz, after her girlhood idol Ella Fitzgerald. This is the story of how a music school friend - guitarist, singer, and songwriter Vilray - helped her build a parallel life pursuing her first musical love. They have incredible chemistry on and off stage, as you'll hear in this fascinating interview.
59 min
Episode 346: To say that a lot has happened since Molly Tuttle last appeared on The String in 2019 would be an understatement. She's won two Grammy Awards and been nominated for two more. She won her first IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year Award, to go along with her two groundbreaking Guitar Player trophies. But most important, she's been through two entire stylistic swings in her musical vision and recording career. And she got engaged to Ketch Secor. So we cover a lot of ground in our latest conversation.
59 min
Episode 345: Last year, The String got a new opening theme tune. "Vera" comes from New York based mandolin virtuoso, composer and band leader Jacob Jolliff. The Oregon native came East when he got a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music and joined a cadre of future acoustic stars clustered in the Boston area. He's worked for some big-league bands including Joy Kills Sorrow and Yonder Mountain String Band, but in this decade he's pursued his own four-piece Jacob Jolliff Band. We talk about building the audience for instrumental, improvisational acoustic music and about select pieces from Jake's fascinating discography.
59 min
Episode 344: Ashley Monroe moved to Nashville just after 10th grade from East Tennessee with a single-minded drive to sing and write country music. Her career would be the envy of many - Grammy nominations, several major label albums, and Pistol Annies, an influential supergroup - and yet many in roots music haven't recognized her as among the greats of our time. Following recovery from blood cancer, Monroe dove into her most ambitious and daring project yet, Tennessee Lightning.
59 min
Episode 343: Her name is made of flowers. And she's been spreading bouquets of joy and open-hearted country and rockabilly for more than 50 years. She is Rosie Flores, sounding great and enjoying the stage as much as she ever has as she cruised past her 75th birthday during Americanafest 2025. A couple days after that, we sat down to talk about her (outstandingly) supportive parents, the Los Angeles alt-country scene of the 1980s and 90s, and her new album Impossible Frontiers.
59 min
Episode #342: Daniel Donato became one of Nashville's more revered electric guitar players during his three years playing four nights a week at Robert's Western World on Lower Broadway. When he lost that gig in 2015, he had to start from scratch as a working musician and songwriting artist. In his second appearance on The String, Donato talks about landing some touring band gigs that sustained him while he developed his Cosmic Country concept. The band and his repute grew, and ten years after leaving Broadway, he headlined the Ryman Auditorium. Also on the table here, his two recent albums, Reflector and Horizons.
59 min
Episode 341: Since co-founding the history-making, history-preserving North Mississippi Allstars almost 30 years ago, Luther Dickinson has taken his guitar, his deep blues repertoire, and his Memphis soul around the world and into all kinds of collaborations. In his latest return to The String, we talk about the nature of improvising and some of his recent experimental and instrumental projects, plus the 2025 Allstars album Still Rollin', marking the 25th anniversary of the band's debut album.
59 min
Episode 340: Robert Randolph had no plans or dreams to take his fiery talents on the pedal steel guitar beyond the New Jersey church where he grew up and the network of pentecostal Black churches around the country that made the "sacred steel" a core part of their services. But his passionate sound and his joyful improvisational spirit were a perfect match for the jam/rock scene of the early 2000s. He's been a steady contributor ever since, through wide collaborations and a string of albums with his "Family Band." Now he's leading the band under his own name and he has a fabulous new record on the revitalized Sun Records.
59 min
Episode 339: South Carolina guitar wizard and powerhouse singer Marcus King has come through the valley of shadows, breaking self-destructive habits and arriving at a place of contentment and love on his latest album Darling Blue. In a career-spanning conversation, King talks about his unique path to finding his voice on the guitar, his collaborations with a series of very different world-class producers, and his place in the shifting ecosystems of jam band and Americana music.
59 min
Episode 338: North Carolina songwriter Tift Merritt became an instant star of Americana music when she emerged in the early 2000s with Bramble Rose (2002) and Tambourine (2004), but only with time have we learned that her relationship with her prestige record label - Lost Highway Records - was tumultuous and dispiriting. After a period of relative quiet on the music front, she's re-issued Tambourine on vinyl for the first time and put out a collection of demo/kitchen tapes that contextualize that classic. From her home in Raleigh, Tift lets us in on her diversified creative life. And we round out the hour catching up with Texas songwriter Tony Kamel, who's released We're All Gonna Live, his second in a row made with master Bruce Robison.
59 min
Episode 337: Ken Pomeroy, who turned 23 days after this interview, is a fresh voice not just from the Oklahoma lineage of great roots songwriting and musicianship, but also from a new generation of Native American voices in popular music. She talks about her Cherokee heritage and the stewardship that comes with it, plus her emotional bond to music in this introspective hour. You'll also hear incisive and sometimes sad songs from her acclaimed national debut Cruel Joke, out this spring on Rounder Records.
59 min
Episode 336: In a time when bluegrass is surging with young talent and mainstream dreams, Danny Burns and Shelby Means offer two profiles in making the string band business work in 2025. Burns is an Irish immigrant who brought his trad training and hearty work ethic from his native County Donegal. Even before releasing North Country in 2018, he'd made a name and reputation among roots music elites, and he shows his flair for cover songs on the new Southern Sky. Shelby Means played bass for Della Mae during their breakout years and became stylishly famous working with Molly Tuttle's Golden Highway Band. When that came to an end this year, she had her debut solo album ready to go.
58 min
Episode 335: Leslie Jordan, the Nolensville, TN-based songwriter not the late comic actor and singer, makes a major statement in her pivot from a robust career in Christian folk/pop to storytelling Americana with The Agonist. It's a song cycle that fleshes out the story of her late grandfather, a conflicted and complex man who left his family in Indiana when Leslie's mother was four years old. Through a unique collaboration with a collection of his posthumous journals and writings, she builds a world and a character, holding him accountable while investing his story with dignity. It's beautifully produced with Kenneth Pattengale and is one of the most impressive albums of 2025.
57 min
Episode 334: Shawn Camp arrived in Nashville almost 40 years ago as a 20-year-old guitar picker and fiddle player hoping to find a niche. As he graduated from touring sideman to songwriter to respected recording artist, he found himself working with his heroes. He quietly became an avatar of traditional country music and bluegrass done right. His work with Guy Clark was especially potent, and at long last, their song cycle about a fascinating character from Camp's youth, has been released on the new concept album The Ghost Of Sis Draper.
59 min
Episode 333: Rodney Crowell let it slip in the middle of this interview that it was the eve of his 75th birthday. One of America's greatest (and most commercially successful) songwriters is now three quarters of a century old, a steady patriarch. He continues to do excellent work, evidenced by two fine albums in a row, 2023's The Chicago Sessions and the brand new Airline Highway. In both cases he collaborated with younger producers and musicians, spreading his wisdom around and drawing on their ideas and spirit. In his second appearance on The String, Crowell talks about maintaining his writing discipline, working with Jeff Tweedy and Tyler Bryant, and waking up to Louisiana R&B music as a teenager.
59 min
Episode 332: It's been 30 years since three music business renegades created a radio chart for an emerging alt-country, roots music wave they called Americana. Now that it's a mature format and movement, we're seeing books emerge on the history of this idea. Poets And Dreamers: My Life In Americana Music is Tamara Saviano's contribution, a warm and affectionate, people-driven story about a community and a big bold commitment to art over commerce. As publicist/tour manager for Kris Kristofferson and biographer of Guy Clark, she's had an insider's view, and it comes out in this fun romp of a read. She's also my old friend, so this is a cozy and fascinating talk.
59 min
Episode 331: Hayes Carll is such an admired veteran of the Texas songwriting tradition that his visage is painted on a sign along with Townes Van Zandt at the Old Quarter Cafe in Galveston. Over ten albums, he's matched cleverness with insight and tenderness with roadhouse rock and roll. In this self-effacing interview, Carll talks about his apprentice years at that storied bar, his adjustments after being signed to a Music Row label, and his vulnerable new album We're Only Human.
59 min
Episode 330: After a three-year tutelage with Old Crow Medicine Show, multi-faceted Appalachian artist Mason Via has set out on his own road. He was raised in bluegrass festival campgrounds and at picking parties hosted by his dad, songwriter and musician David Via. Bluegrass royalty hung out at his home near the North Carolina/Virginia border, and it rubbed off. After trying a few musical directions, Via's self-titled album of this year shows range, depth, and a command of bluegrass and country moods. Meet a 28-year-old you'll be hearing a lot more about if you follow acoustic roots.
59 min
Episode 329: Few fully independent artists in any genre have been able to grow to the scale and influence that Cody Jinks has pulled off in the outlaw country space. He sells out iconic venues like Red Rocks in Colorado with a sound that layers his boyhood influence from Lefty Frizzell with the edge of the thrash metal rocker he once was. The Fort Worth native "put in the reps" for countless years in bars and honky tonks, nearly going broke, before albums like I'm Not The Devil and Lifers vaulted him to the big time in the years before the pandemic. He's now out with In My Blood, an album that basks in his newfound sobriety and a new focus on himself and his family, making this a very candid and fascinating interview with a self-made country star whom mainstream radio virtually overlooks.
59 min
Episode 328: While it's one of the great music cities in the world, the story of Memphis, TN is generally told as one about Elvis, BB King, Isaac Hayes, and possibly Justin Timberlake - artists from the history books or well on in their careers. Roots music fans might know more contemporary talents like songwriters Amy LaVere and John Paul Keith. Many others simmer along in that city's bars and clubs, but one has to go there to get up to speed on the talent pool. Southern Avenue is different - a breakout band from Bluff City with national acclaim, a renowned record label, and a musical voice grounded in native soil and native soul. It's the band today's Memphis has needed. Craig speaks with the married couple out front in the band, guitarist Ori Naftaly and singer Tierinii Jackson.
59 min
Episode 327: To hear Mike Farris sing - an experience a bit like being pinned to the seat of an accelerating Porsche Taycan - is to believe that he was born to the stage, motivated from childhood, and destined for soul/gospel glory. Yet in Episode 327 of The String, we learn that A) Mike is lucky to be here at all and B) that a singing career was not remotely on his own radar until he was approaching his 20th birthday. And the two are related. In his teens, Farris almost died from drug abuse. Music was part of his rescue. And I've never heard him go as deep on these subjects as he does in this hour. His newest album is a powerful, secular record recorded at FAME Studios called The Sound Of Muscle Shoals.
59 min
Episode 326: Andrea Zonn has been on my list of possible Music City star musicians to be a guest on the show for some time, but her new project the HercuLeons and their debut album of the same name sealed the deal. She's been a leading studio and road musician since the 1990s, when she sweet talked her way into a touring spot with burgeoning country star Vince Gill. Her background is in classical violin, so she's respected in town for her versatility and her gorgeous voice. She's also a songwriter and recording artist with two fine albums to her credit. Now, working with her old friend John Cowan (my guest last week in Episode 325), she's part of a nimble top-flight band that draws from soul, jazz, the blues, and Nashville roots music for one of the year's best albums. We cover her whole journey, up to her breathtaking vocals on songs like "Face Of Appalachia."
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