On this episode, Rick cracks on three of our most entertaining interviews from on the road! First, Rick and the guys visit Grammy winning artist Ricky Skaggs from the Barter Theater in Abingdon Virginia. After some sleep, they trek down to Bristol Virginia to interview Carl Jackson, Larry Cordle and jerry Salley at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum! Lastly Nashville, here we come to make an appearance on the Huckabee Show and visit with Governor Huckabee!

Florida's Americana ensemble Remedy Tree has achieved notable success, securing second place at the prestigious SPBGMA National Band Championship. They've sold out most of their summer tour and have hit ticket sales milestones. Following their signing with Mountain Fever Records in 2024, the band has performed internationally, showcasing their talents at Ireland's Westport Folk and Bluegrass Festival, and they're headed to England later this year as well. Remedy Tree has shared the stage with legendary artists such as Peter Rowan, The Steeldrivers, Ricky Skaggs, Town Mountain, Rhonda Vincent, and Della Mae. As a selected 2023 IBMA Ramble Showcase band, they have demonstrated their prowess within the industry. Midway through 2025, with a new album and larger shows on the horizon, Remedy Tree is experiencing a breakout year.

Remedy Tree, founded by Gabriel and Abigail Acevedo in 2015, had a strong indie-folk sound in its inception. As time progressed, Remedy Tree added a banjo player and was subsequently thrust into a bluegrass trajectory. Gabriel Acevedo was born in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, and was raised in rural Umatilla, Florida. His Puerto Rican heritage and upbringing provide an outsider’s approach to the genre. Abigail was raised in folk and old-time music circles and traveled with her family band throughout her teen years. The addition of Isaac Taylor and Nathan Beaumont, along with their deep roots in bluegrass tradition, elevates and bonds the music closer, further blossoming the Remedy Tree sound. An original music band at heart, Remedy Tree combines the love for bluegrass, an Appalachian old-time spirit, and the folk melodies that started it all, creating a truly unique Americana experience that provides a fresh perspective into where bluegrass is headed in the future.

"The future for this band will not look like anything you've seen to date because they are cutting their own path to success" .

Orlando Weekly said "They are a string band that manage sweet, strolling folk songs and greased-lightning bluegrass burners with equal aplomb.

On the heels of two Grammy-winning albums in succession, with her band Golden Highway—2022’s Crooked Tree and 2023’s City of Gold—plus a nomination for Best New Artist, Molly Tuttle returns with a solo album that’s her most dazzling to date: So Long Little Miss Sunshine. 

Recorded in Nashville with producer Jay Joyce (Orville Peck, Miranda Lambert, Lainey Wilson, Eric Church, Cage the Elephant), the fifth full album from the California-born, Nashville-based singer, songwriter, and virtuoso guitarist features twelve new songs—eleven originals and one highly unexpected cover of Icona Pop and Charli xcx’s “I Love It.” 

  Tuttle’s career, which began at age fifteen, has charted a course between honoring bluegrass and stretching its boundaries. On this album—a hybrid of pop, country, rock, and flat-picking, plus one murder ballad—she goes to a whole new place. Her stunning guitar work is more up-front on this album than ever before. (One of the most decorated female guitarist alive, Tuttle was the first woman to win the prestigious International Bluegrass Music Award’s Guitar Player of the Year in 2017, at age twenty-four, and won again the following year, with nominations nearly every year since; she has also won Americana Music Association’s Instrumentalist of the Year award.) So Long Little Miss Sunshine also features Tuttle playing banjo, something she’s never done on one of her albums before. 

   The album was recorded with a group of musicians that includes drummer/percussionists Jay Bellerose and Fred Eltringham, bassist Byron House, and Joyce on multiple instruments. Ketch Secor (Old Crow Medicine Show) also plays banjo, fiddle, and harmonica, as well as singing harmony. 

 Tuttle also conceived the artwork for So Long Little Miss Sunshine, which features multiple Mollys, each wearing a different wig except for one with nothing on her head at all. (“I probably own as many wigs as I own guitars,” she says.) Tuttle has been bald since she was three years old due to the autoimmune condition alopecia areata; she acts as a spokesperson for the National Alopecia Areata Foundation.  

 One album track, “Old Me (New Wig),” is “about leaving all these things behind that don’t serve you anymore,” she says. “Parts of yourself that really aren’t in your best interest, like low self-esteem, anxieties, and not feeling confident. Learning to own these different aspects of my personality but not letting them control me is another theme of the record that inspired the album title and the cover art. Those are all things I’ve struggled with through the years—just feeling like an impostor, like I wasn’t good enough. I like singing this song because there are days when I still have to tell myself to leave that stuff behind.’”  

 Most of the So Long Little Miss Sunshine songs were co-written with Secor, who is also Tuttle’s partner. “We spend so much time together, we live together, and anytime I have a song idea, or he has one, it’s just so easy to transition from whatever we’re doing into writing a song.” 

 Earlier this year, Tuttle played guitar and sang on Ringo Starr’s new country album, Look Up. She also played with him and a host of other stellar musical guests at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium and Grand Ole Opry as part of his televised Ringo & Friends shows. She was inspired by his fearlessness in following his passion for country music. “It is cool to see someone like that who has done everything you could imagine doing in a music career and he’s still just so psyched and still has a list of things that he wants to accomplish,” Tuttle says. Looking back on her own career,

“It has never been a cookie-cutter thing where I’m just going down a straight road. I always had this crooked path.” 

Josh Williams is a highly skilled and accomplished musician. Over the years, Josh has earned a well-deserved reputation as one of the finest musicians of his generation. He has shared the stage with many renowned artists, including Rhonda Vincent & the Rage, Special Consensus, and Tony Rice. Josh has released a total of five solo albums, all of which have been critically acclaimed. He has also recorded four records with Rhonda Vincent & the Rage, including the Grammy award-winning album ‘All the Rage-In Concert Volume 1’, which was released in 2018. He has also won SPBGMA Guitar Player of the Year an incredible 17 consecutive years in a row and also been named the IBMA Guitar Player of the Year for three consecutive years.

Don Rigsby is a highly acclaimed bluegrass musician, known for his tenor vocals and who has been making waves in the music industry for several years now. He first made his debut as a professional with the legendary country artist Vern Gosdin, famously know as the “The Voice”. Since then Don has collaborated with some the biggest names in music, including Ralph Stanley, John Fogerty, Alan Jackson, Larry Cordle, Tony Rice, JD Crowe & The New South, The Bluegrass Cardinals, The Lonesome River Band, Peter Rowan, The Seldom Scene, and many others. Don Rigsby is undoubtedly one of the most talented and highly sought-after bluegrass musicians of our time, and his contributions to the genre are immeasurable.

Ron Block is an accomplished and celebrated banjo and guitar player who was exposed to a diverse range of musical genres. Throughout his illustrious career, he has recorded several solo albums and performed on several well-known albums by prominent artists such as Dolly Parton, Clint Black, Brad Paisley, and Bill Frisell. Additionally, Block is a prolific songwriter, having written songs for Union Station and his own solo albums. His compositions have been recorded by numerous artists such as Randy Travis, Rhonda Vincent, Michael W. Smith, and The Cox Family and many others. Block has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards throughout his career, including multiple Grammy awards for his work with Union Station and Alison Krauss. In addition, he has won several International Bluegrass awards, Country Music Association awards and Gospel Music Association awards.

Steve Thomas is a masterful and accomplished entertainer based in Nashville. Steve is a true multi-instrumentalist, a virtuoso who can play fiddle, guitar, mandolin, bass, and banjo with absolute precision and finesse. His professional career began in 1982, and over the next three decades, he worked with the biggest names in Nashville’s music scene, establishing himself as one of the most sought-after session musicians in the industry. His list of collaborators is impressive to say the least, and includes The Osborne Brothers, Jim and Jesse, The Whites, Aaron Tippin, Barbara Mandrell, Kenny Chesney, Brooks and Dunn, John Michael Montgomery, Montgomery Gentry, Lee Ann Womack, and Lorrie Morgan among others. In 1985, Steve, alongside band mates Jerry Douglas and Neil Worf, received nominations for Vocal Group of the Year by Country Music Association, as a member of The Whites.

Mike Anglin is a highly acclaimed musician, known for his dynamic bass playing skills, near-perfect timing, and intense feel, making him one of the most sought-after bass players in the industry. He began touring professionally at the age of 15 and his career has taken him around the globe with some of the most prominent names in Bluegrass music. During his career he has recorded over 50 albums with Continental Divide, Lonesome River Band, Larry Cordle, & many others. He has shared the stage various artists such as Dave Evans, David Parmley, Continental Divide, Ronnie Bowman, 3 Fox Drive, Melanie Cannon, Tony Rice, Larry Cordle & Lonesome Standard Time, The Lonesome River Band, Alex Miller and many others.

History and heritage naturally go hand in hand, and the desire to preserve the former is generally maintained by preserving the latter. Singer, songwriter and musician Marty Falle knows that all too well. His connection to the traditional music of Appalachia was spawned from spending much of his time after graduating from college living in Kentucky, the place where bluegrass was born. Now living on a farm in Eastern Kentucky, he’s thoroughly absorbed the music, culture and influences of that storied region, and in the process, made them his own.
Falle’s producer, Grammy winner Jonathan Yudkin, sums it up succinctly. “Marty seeks stories, history, legends, and paths in creativity… His fresh sound comes from the fact that he is not trying to emulate bluegrass bands of the past or present. Instead, he is creating his songs out of his love of music, unfettered by the influence of other artists. That’s what I enjoy the most about working with him. His songs are always unpredictable and surprising…”
That, then, is the essence of an artist who’s not only impacted by history and heritage, but one who effectively moves those foundations forward as well. He’s an Appalachian original and a dedicated contributor to Americana music in general.

GRAMMY nominated fiddler and vocalist Laura Orshaw has toured throughout North America and Europe with Danny Paisley and the Southern Grass, Alan Bibey & Grasstowne, and The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys. With her first solo recording receiving significant attention and airplay, Orshaw’s highly anticipated sophomore album with Dark Shadow Recording is expected to be release in early 2026.  In 2020 Laura won in two categories at the prestigious International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) Awards Show, and in 2019, the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music in America (SPBGMA) named Laura the Fiddle Performer of the Year, making her the first woman to win the award.  Laura has performed with Del McCoury, Ricky Skaggs, John Scofield, Mike Compton, Sarah Jarosz, Tony Trischka, Becky Buller, and Darol Anger among others. Her music has been featured on SiriusXM’s Bluegrass Junction, and in Bluegrass Today, No Depression, Sing Out!, and Dirty Linen. According to Bluegrass Unlimited, “Laura Orshaw has firmly established herself as a significant emerging artist in the arena of traditional American music... [she is] an extremely talented musician with unlimited potential.” Laura is also a highly sought-after instructor who has taught numerous camps, workshops and kids' academies, and started teaching weekly lessons to adults when she was just 12 years old.

Few bands have made as lasting an impact on bluegrass music as The Grascals. From the very beginning, their blend of modern traditional bluegrass, gospel, and country influences, matched with world-class musicianship and an unshakable love for the genre, has earned them a spot among the most respected and enduring groups in acoustic music. Formed in 2004 in Nashville, Tennessee, The Grascals are a band built on friendship, shared roots, and a common vision to create bluegrass music that honors tradition while forging its own identity. Their breakout moment came fast—within months of forming, they were hand-picked by Dolly Parton to serve as her opening act and backing band on tour. That early endorsement set the tone for the band’s trajectory: respected by legends, loved by fans, and celebrated by the industry. Their debut album, The Grascals announced their arrival with authority. It won IBMA’s Emerging Artist of the Year and Album of the Year and included a duet with Dolly Parton on “Viva Las Vegas” that showcased their versatility and crossover appeal. From there, the accolades kept coming with two IBMA Entertainers of the Year awards, three GRAMMY nominations, a Dove Award nomination and a host of other awards and recognition. Now with thirteen albums, performances all over the world and for two United States Presidents, The Grascals can truthfully say they have the best of both worlds — the steadiness of a veteran group that knows who they are and where they’re going, and the excitement and energy of an ensemble that knows it still has something to prove. The band’s collaborative spirit is another hallmark of their career. In addition to Dolly Parton, The Grascals have recorded and toured with artists including Charlie Daniels, Vince Gill, Kenny Rogers, Hank Williams Jr., George Jones, The Oak Ridge Boys, Patty Loveless, Dierks Bentley, Brooks & Dunn, Brad Paisley, Joe Nichols, Steve Wariner, The Jordanaires, Tom T. Hall, and more. Their respect for their musical heroes and peers has allowed them to build bridges between bluegrass and other genres, expanding their reach without compromising their sound. The Grascals are known for their ability to balance traditional drive with contemporary flair along with their authenticity, humility, and showmanship, The Grascals are a fan favorite on the festival circuit and are regular performers on the Grand Ole Opry with over 200 guest appearances. Their live shows combine technical excellence with emotional storytelling and a dose of humor, making every performance memorable. Now more than two decades into their career, The Grascals remain at the top of their game—honoring the past, embracing the present, and helping shape the future of bluegrass music. With a renewed spirit and zeal to continue to create and blaze new music trails, be on the lookout for much more to come from The Grascals.

“I started singing before I could talk,” says Roberts. “Singing was just something I always did.” As a child of Music City, Jaelee Roberts was raised on bluegrass. She spent her formative years alternating between watching her dad make music on stage and watching her mom make music happen behind-the-scenes.

By her teenage years, Roberts was pursuing her goals with single-minded focus. She switched to homeschooling to give herself the time and flexibility to play music professionally, joining Rebekah Long’s touring band at just 16 years old as a mandolinist and supporting vocalist. A year later, she released her debut single “All My Tears,” to critical acclaim, earning effusive praise from 2023 Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Patty Loveless, who said of Roberts, “She brings a vocal performance [...] that touches the core of what fires me up about music.”

Jaelee Roberts couldn’t be stopped. She signed a recording contract with Mountain Home Records, beginning work on her debut full-length album. Not long after, she was invited to audition for reigning IBMA “Entertainer of the Year” and recent GRAMMY Award-nominated band, Sister Sadie. Her first show just so happened to be the Opry’s “75 Years of Bluegrass” concert, commemorating the famous December 8, 1945 show where the “Big Bang” lineup of Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys introduced the world to the unique and compelling sound that would come to be called “bluegrass.” It was a dream come true. She was invited to join the band full-time and has been playing guitar and singing lead vocals for them for nearly three years. This role has earned her international recognition. In 2021, she was awarded Vocalist of the Year at the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) Momentum Awards, a presentation dedicated specifically to recognizing and rewarding the talents of emerging artists and up-and-coming industry professionals Although the global COVID-19 pandemic slowed some things.

By 2022, she had released her debut full-length album Something You Didn’t Count On which became an immediate commercial and critical success. The album debuted in the Top Ten on the Billboard Bluegrass Album chart and peaked at #2 on the Bluegrass Unlimited album chart. Multiple singles from the album—including “Think Again”, “You Can't Stop Me From Staying”, “Sad Songs”, and “The Best of Me”—appeared on the Bluegrass Unlimited singles chart, and “Still Waters” and “I Owe Him Everything” have made appearances on multiple gospel music charts. The album and the musicianship behind it earned Roberts a nomination for IBMA New Artist of the Year in 2022. Not even six months later, she was awarded Female Vocalist of the Year at the 2023 Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music in America (SPBGMA) awards show, and Something You Didn’t Count On took home the title of Album of the Year. And she’s only just getting started. “It’s been a lifelong dream and I’ll never stop chasing it,” says Roberts. “I’ll keep chasing it until I can’t chase it anymore.”

Jaelee Roberts is an internationally recognized vocal performer, multi-instrumentalist, recording artist, and songwriter. She has performed with Ashley McBryde and alongside Ricky Skaggs on the Grand Ole Opry with bluegrass supergroup, Sister Sadie, as well as recording with Vince Gill. She has played such historic and hallowed halls as the Station Inn, The Bluebird Cafe, and the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse. She has received numerous awards and nominations, including a 2023 nomination for IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year. She has also been recognized as a member of bluegrass’ preeminent all-female band, Sister Sadie, with a 2021 win for IBMA Vocal Group of the Year and 2023 IBMA nominations for Vocal Group of the Year and Song of the Year (“Diane”). 

Referred to by Billboard Magazine as “One of Music Row’s greatest veteran tunesmiths,” Jerry Salley has had an exceptionally successful, multi award-winning songwriting career.  Nominated in 2019 for the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Salley is the 2018 & 2019 IBMA (International Bluegrass Music Association) Songwriter of the Year and was named the 2003 SESAC Country Music Songwriter of the Year.  An Ohio native, his home state honored his long, illustrious career in 2024 by inducting him into the Ohio Country Music Hall of Fame.  Salley has had over 560 different songs recorded and his songs have sold in excess of 19 million records worldwide.  Writing and singing in Nashville since 1982, he has written multiple hits in country, bluegrass, and gospel music and may well be the most successful songwriter to have earned equal recognition from all three genres of music. Jerry was a 2020 GRAMMY nominated producer in the Gospel Roots category for producing the multi-artist project, Gonna Sing, Gonna Shout, on Billy Blue Records.  He also produced the popular Dolly Parton single, a new version of the old Gospel Hymn, “In The Sweet By And By”, released as part of the Country Faith Bluegrass project in 2021, which received two 2022 IBMA Awards (Gospel Recording of the Year and Collaborative Recording of the Year), and the 2022 Dove Award for Bluegrass/Country/Roots Song of the Year.  He currently has a popular song, “It Takes A Woman”, on the new Chris Stapleton album Higher.

Jerry’s country music successes began in the late 1980s when the group Wild Rose recorded “Breakin’ New Ground”.  Since then, countless country music stars have recorded his songs, including Reba McEntire (“I’m Gonna Take That Mountain”,  “Close To Crazy”), John Anderson (“I Fell In The Water”), Wade Hayes (“How Do You Sleep At Night”) , Chris Stapleton (“Outlaw State Of Mind” on the Grammy award winning quadruple-platinum album Traveller), Toby Keith, Sara Evans, Patty Loveless, Joe Nichols, Darryl Worley, Travis Tritt, Tracy Lawrence, Neal McCoy, Mark Chesnutt and many, many more.  Internationally, he has penned no less than nine #1 Country hits in Australia.

As part of a trio with friends Larry Cordle and Carl Jackson, Jerry recorded the song “You’re Running Wild” on the Louvin Brothers Tribute on Universal South Records. Entitled Livin’, Lovin’, Losin’ – Songs of the Louvin Brothers, the album features numerous country music stars singing songs made famous by the legendary duo. The project won the 2003 GRAMMY for Country Album of the Year.

In the bluegrass genre, Jerry was named the 2018 and 2019 IBMA Songwriter of the Year and has had hundreds of songs, including numerous chart-toppers, recorded.  He was thrilled to have co-written three songs on The SteelDrivers GRAMMY award winning album, The Muscle Shoals Recordings (“A Long Way Down”, “The River Runs Red”, “6 Feet Away”), and a song on the Del McCoury Band GRAMMY winning album The Streets of Baltimore (“The Butler Brothers”).  Other bluegrass groups who have recorded Jerry’s songs include The Osborne Brothers, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, Rhonda Vincent, Lonesome River Band, Balsam Range, Seldom Scene, Flatt Lonesome, IIIrd Tyme Out, Larry Stevenson, Donna Ulisse, Dave Adkins and many others.  Salley is a multiple IBMA Song of the Year nominee, and his song “All Dressed Up”, recorded by Joe Mullin and The Radio Ramblers, won the IBMA Gospel Recorded Song Of The Year award in 2016.  Jerry is an eight-time IBMA Award winner, which includes receiving the 2006 IBMA Album of the Year award for his contribution (as an artist) to the Celebration Of Life album. 

Jeremy Garrett has been playing music since he first picked up the fiddle at the age of three, encouraged by his father, a guitarist steeped in Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys and its guitar/banjo duo of Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs. The two formed a band together, the Grasshoppers, and that helped launch Jeremy’s 45-year – and counting — career as a musician.

Born in California, Garrett grew up in Idaho, before moving to Nashville in 1998, co-founding the Infamous Stringdusters when a musician friend, dobro player Andy Hall, approached his bandmate in a group named the Ronnie Bowman Committee (along with ex-mandolin player Jesse Cobb) to join forces with his Berklee College of Music classmates, banjo player Chris Pandolfi and former guitarist Chris Eldridge, in the group’s first iteration in 2005. The band’s current lineup includes double-bassist Travis Book, who came aboard in 2005, and guitarist Andy Falco, who replaced Eldridge in 2007. Since that time, the Stringdusters have garnered a Grammy Award in 2018 for Best Bluegrass Album (Laws of Gravity) and two nominations, the most recent in 2022 in the same category (A Tribute to Bill Monroe).

Since that time, Garrett has released seven solo albums, with his latest, Storm Mountain, his first since 2022’s well-received River Wild. Now living “off the grid” in a cabin on 12 acres with his wife and eight-year-old daughter in a remote section of Theodore Roosevelt National Forest outside of Drake, Colorado, Garrett recorded the album in a one-room studio outside of Fort Collins, CO, at the foothills of the mountains, before he added his parts at his own Storm Mountain home studio.

Storm Mountain deals with such serious topics as a fall from grace (“Son of Perdition”), the bitterness of fate (“The Cold Hard Truth”), lost love (“Fly Away”), the meaning of life (“Anchor in the Deep”) and hopes for his daughter (“You’re Gonna Fly”). In addition, there are playful stabs at modern phenomena from social conventions (“Don’t Ask’) to UFOs (“Rosewell”).

“I’m interested in World Music and how the fiddle has been played around the globe,” said Garrett, whose previous albums have explored a wide range of fiddle effects, including loops and pedals, showing the instrument can be as eclectic as the guitar. “It’s been integrated in all forms of music as one of the most versatile instruments on the planet. There’s something about fiddle players that’s unique.”
“I wanted to draw on something a little different than what I do with the ‘Dusters, by touching on my more traditional lineage in gospel, country and blues. These are songs that don’t quite fit in with the crowds we usually play for. When I go back to the band, I’m way better and more fulfilled for having done these solo records.”

At 48 years old, Garrett is relatively young for a bluegrass veteran and looks forward to performing his music live for audiences. “When I write songs now, it’s from the standpoint of someone who’s been through some life experiences over the past 20 years. My goal is for this record to be uplifting at the same time as it’s more reflective in terms of healing."

With the Dusters about to celebrate their 20th anniversary next year with a new album, Garrett looks forward to finding time for the occasional solo performance along with his “day job.”

His ultimate inspiration are guys like Larry Sparks (“Slow Train” on the new album is a tribute to him), Del McCoury and the late Ralph Stanley, who have performed into their 70s, 80s and 90s.

“I want to play this music forever,” said Jeremy. With Storm Mountain, he continues on that path.