The String

The String launches a new year with a conversation with Rodney Crowell, one of the legit icons of Americana music. The Texas born, Nashville based songwriter was one of the artists around whom the format was created 20 years ago, and indeed he won the Americana Music Association's lifetime achievement award for songwriting in 2006. He’s a valued collaborator, earning a Grammy Award for his recent work with his longtime friend and colleague Emmylou Harris. He became an acclaimed author with his memoir Chinaberry Sidewalks in 2011. Recently he's released a first-ever Christmas album and a volume of stripped down "Acoustic Classics" from his extensive catalog. We cover a range of times and topics. Also in the hour, Maya de Vitry talks about her difficult but necessary departure from the beloved acoustic trio The Stray Birds. She's set out on her own with the album Adaptations. 

How and why this humble collection of towns hugging the Tennessee River in northern Alabama became a historic musical hot spot is an improbable, wonderful American story. But I grew interested in Muscle Shoals of today. More and more, roots and rock and roll musicians have been traveling there to record. A string of remarkable bands and songwriters, including Jason Isbell, John Paul White, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Dylan LeBlanc and The Secret Sisters, has emerged from the area in recent years. A half dozen studios are in demand and busy. It's became clear that Muscle Shoals is no museum. It's a scene. So the only thing to do was to go there and listen.

How and why this humble collection of towns hugging the Tennessee River in northern Alabama became a historic musical hot spot is an improbable, wonderful American story. But I grew interested in Muscle Shoals of today. More and more, roots and rock and roll musicians have been traveling there to record. A string of remarkable bands and songwriters, including Jason Isbell, John Paul White, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Dylan LeBlanc and The Secret Sisters, has emerged from the area in recent years. A half dozen studios are in demand and busy. It’s became clear that Muscle Shoals is no museum. It’s a scene. So the only thing to do was to go there and listen.

This week, an evenly split hour with very different artists who have a lot to say about change and growth. The Gibson Brothers took their experience from two decades in bluegrass and poured it into a radically different project written and produced with Dan Auerbach. Ruby Boots has been "shedding her skin" regularly through a life on at least three continents. She's now a mainstay in the East Nashville scene and her 'Don't Talk About It' is a masterful album.

This week, an evenly split hour with very different artists who have a lot to say about change and growth. The Gibson Brothers took their experience from two decades in bluegrass and poured it into a radically different project written and produced with Dan Auerbach. Ruby Boots has been "shedding her skin" regularly through a life on at least three continents. She's now a mainstay in the East Nashville scene and her 'Don't Talk About It' is a masterful album.

Bob Dylan's transition from solo folk troubadour to electric roots rocker was as important a precursor to the idea of Americana music as any other. And that transition reached its apex with the 1966 masterpiece Blonde On Blonde. We devote this whole episode to the album. My featured guest is longtime Nashville music journalist Daryl Sanders who's just published That Thin Wild Mercury Sound, the first book to carefully track how and why Dylan came to Music City to work with young and creative session musicians such as Charlie McCoy, Wayne Moss, Mac Gayden and Kenneth Buttrey. The companion interview features songwriter Robyn Hitchcock who talks about how Blonde on Blonde changed his life and gave him a lifetime's benchmark of artistry.

Bob Dylan's transition from solo folk troubadour to electric roots rocker was as important a precursor to the idea of Americana music as any other. And that transition reached its apex with the 1966 masterpiece Blonde On Blonde. We devote this whole episode to the album. My featured guest is longtime Nashville music journalist Daryl Sanders who's just published That Thin Wild Mercury Sound, the first book to carefully track how and why Dylan came to Music City to work with young and creative session musicians such as Charlie McCoy, Wayne Moss, Mac Gayden and Kenneth Buttrey. The companion interview features songwriter Robyn Hitchcock who talks about how Blonde on Blonde changed his life and gave him a lifetime's benchmark of artistry.

Episode 74: Kathy Mattea's new album Pretty Bird is her first release in six years. In the time between, she's struggled through some problems with her voice and in so doing reached outside of her musical comfort zones. After a couple of albums dedicated to exploring her Appalachian heritage, this one's more eclectic. She calls it a journey back to singing for the sheer joy of it. Mattea has always been a gifted interpreter from her younger days as a Music Row demo singer through her years as CMA Female Vocalist of the Year in 1989 and 90. Here she sings "Ode To Billie Joe," Bobbie Gentry's mesmerizing hit from 1967, and an old traditional Irish ballad and Mary Gauthier's new gospel Americana anthem "Mercy Now." But the title track, which closes the album, declares her continued allegiance to the old music of West Virginia. It's by Hazel Dickens, herself a WV Music Hall of Famer and one of the most influential and powerful women to ever work in folk and bluegrass music. She's a hero to Mattea and many others for her undiluted mountain sound and her down to earth feminism. Later in the show we're going to hear the late great Hazel Dickens on tape from a biographical interview.

Episode 74: Kathy Mattea's new album Pretty Bird is her first release in six years. In the time between, she’s struggled through some problems with her voice and in so doing reached outside of her musical comfort zones. After a couple of albums dedicated to exploring her Appalachian heritage, this one’s more eclectic. She calls it a journey back to singing for the sheer joy of it. Mattea has always been a gifted interpreter from her younger days as a Music Row demo singer through her years as CMA Female Vocalist of the Year in 1989 and 90. Here she sings "Ode To Billie Joe," Bobbie Gentry’s mesmerizing hit from 1967, and an old traditional Irish ballad and Mary Gauthier’s new gospel Americana anthem "Mercy Now." But the title track, which closes the album, declares her continued allegiance to the old music of West Virginia. It’s by Hazel Dickens, herself a WV Music Hall of Famer and one of the most influential and powerful women to ever work in folk and bluegrass music. She’s a hero to Mattea and many others for her undiluted mountain sound and her down to earth feminism. Later in the show we’re going to hear the late great Hazel Dickens on tape from a biographical interview.

What is tradition in music? It turns out that's a tricky but illuminating question, and this week Craig puts it to a range of folks at the World of Bluegrass in Raleigh, NC. CJ Lewandowski of the hot new Po' Ramblin' Boys (pictured) want to build bridges between fans of the inside and outside. Doyle Lawson applies it to the atmosphere he's set at his 39-year-old festival in Denton, NC. John Showman describes how the Lonesome Ace String Band produces traditional sounding music without thinking like preservationists. Multiple IBMA Award winner Becky Buller knows how to write songs from across the trad/rad spectrum. Jordan Laney brings her scholarly background to the question. East Tennessee State bluegrass music program director Dan Boner says he's seen tradition take many forms in his students. Asheville fiddler Natalya Weinstein and her husband John Miller tap their respective family histories in their music. And string music educator Happy Traum has helped pass down tradition via video lessons. It's a fascinating ramble, with music throughout.