Nashville-raised and New York based since the 1980s, Laura Cantrell’s plaintive, sincere voice has been a vital part of Americana for more than two decades. In 2020, her plans for a collaborative album celebrating her 20th anniversary of recording were deferred but not defeated by the pandemic. Cantrell comes back to Music City to mark the imminent release of the luminous new album Like A Rose with a 1 pm set at Roots On The Rivers.

It may seem mildly surprising that a guy who made famous punk/pop out of Minneapolis with The Replacements in the 1990s would, years later, be releasing a twangy album with a run of appearances in Music City including Saturday’s sundown 7:25 set for WMOT's Roots On The Rivers. But Stinson’s resume is aggressively diverse and adventuresome. He's been in Guns N' Roses, Soul Asylum and now leads a stripped down country rock outfit called Cowboys In The Campfire.

Alison Brown found her life's work early when she started playing banjo as a pre-teen growing up in southern California. But it took some time and real life experience - a Harvard degree, an MBA and a couple of years in banking - before she finally gave herself permission to chase a music career. She toured with Alison Krauss in her early days and then formed her own bands, earning her rep as an innovative, jazz-oriented virtuoso player. She's released about a dozen albums of her own composing, including the latest On Banjo, featuring guests Stuart Duncan, Steve Martin and Anat Cohen. We sat down in the studio of Compass Records, which she co-founded with her husband more than 25 years ago, for a wide-ranging talk about her instrument, her destiny, and her latest music.