We’re halfway between Americanafest 2024 and 2025 - the Roots Music Equinox if you will. And we bring that up because we’ve recently posted the last in a long string of performance videos from last Fall’s famous WMOT Day Stage. It’s our carefully curated showcase at East Side Bowl, with lineups so good that many folks bring a chair and post up for entire days or even the entire three days of the annual festival-within-a-festival. And we’re hoping that this collection of performances takes you back - or brings to your attention - to the superb music we’ve been sharing this winter.

WMOT isn’t the only Nashville radio station that opened a new studio in 2024. The other one is twice as old and changed American music history. WSM 650 AM, known since the 1930s as the Air Castle of the South, conceived and built the Grand Ole Opry, oversaw a massive, multi-genre live music apparatus, launched the business environment known as Music Row, and even gave Music City its identity and name. And this coming Oct. 5 will be its 100th birthday. So it was due to get some gifts, including a new broadcast studio and museum.

Sierra Hull brings a measure of small-town delight and innocence to roots and bluegrass that perfectly compliments her innate gifts and her formal schooling in high level music-making. The mandolinist, songwriter, singer, and band leader has emerged, since her youthful debut in 2008, as a star of her field and an inspiring figure in Americana. Her four IBMA Mandolin Player of the Year awards are part of the story. But so is her composing, her collaborating and her records. The first in five years - and her first independent release - is A Tip Toe High Wire, coming March 7. This episode complements a bio-oriented show in 2018, emphasizing Hull’s recent work with Béla Fleck, Cory Wong and others, and of course the thought behind and production of her newest release.