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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.