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It’s an immigrant story like no other. JesseLee Jones pined for something bigger growing up in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He got glimpses of American music and a guitar, and with that a long journey began. After landing in the states, and getting robbed by the way, he found his way to a family in the midwest who took him in and helped him build a life. In the early 90s, destiny brought him to Nashville and a ramshackle honky tonk and boot store that he would help turn into Robert’s Western World, the pivotal and most famous honky tonk in Nashville. On the 25th anniversary of owning and running this legendary club, Jones tells his story, including the formation of his own long-running band, Brazilbilly.
  • About every two years it seems, the community and family around the late John Hartford and his artistic legacy make a move that gives me an opportunity to talk about a Nashville legend and a hero to nearly everyone in today’s string band music scene. On Monday night, dozens of fiddle aficionados gathered at the funky American Legion Post 82 in East Nashville for Hartford’s Mammoth Marathon, a performance of all 176 fiddle tunes collected in a Mammoth anthology, which was published in 2018.
  • One might think that Artificial Intelligence has no place in musical genres grounded in authenticity, but so-called progress has a way of influencing areas of creativity, even where many don’t welcome it. In a special report from Americanafest 2024, MTSU student and Sidelines Editor Kailee Shores investigates the threats and opportunities of AI in the human act of music creation in the roots world.
  • Kris Kristofferson, a man who seemingly could have been successful at just about anything he tried, turned his cathedral-like mind and working man’s heart to the arts. He was a scholar, a soldier, a pilot, an athlete, an actor, and, as most people know, one of America’s greatest songwriters. He was a member of several exclusive societies, including Oxford University’s Rhodes Scholars and country music’s epochal Outlaws, as well as a free thinker and activist across decades. On Saturday, that exceptional life came to an end when Kristofferson died at home in Maui, HI at age 88.
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