Craig Havighurst

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.

Meredith Moon isn’t new to folk music or to America, but she’ll be meeting a lot of American fans for the first time through her debut on Compass Records, From Here To The Sea, which arrived during AmericanaFest, where she showcased and played at our String Band Throwdown. Here, however, we build up to that release with her take on “Soldier’s Joy” from her prior album Constellations of 2022. Moon, an Ontario native, started her musical life in punk and grunge but turned to performing and recording folk music 10 years ago, building her name in the Toronto scene and developing into a lovely singer and banjo player. “Banjo’s sort of where I can put my energy and half lose my mind on stage, and it’s really fun,” she told me at Americanafest. But guitar and piano are my home instruments.” Also bringing the old tunes, Tony Trischka offers “Little Liza Jane.” Nicholas Edward Williams of Chattanooga makes his first appearance on the show.

In Chattanooga, TN last week, Billy Strings wrapped up an intimate duo tour with guitar hero Bryan Sutton and launched another stretch of his ongoing mega-tour with his versatile jamgrass band. Amid that, he delivered a keynote address to the IBMA World of Bluegrass that solidified his position as a leader and an ambassador of the music’s core traditions. Craig Havighurst was there and has this analysis.

Arena-filling guitar star Billy Strings won his fourth Entertainer of the Year prize at the 36th annual IBMA Awards, which were held for the first time in Chattanooga, TN. While fiddlers Michael Cleveland and Jason Carter’s collaborative album took three trophies. Women enjoyed historic success in the night’s instrumentalist of the year categories.

The grown-up musical game of Choose Your Own Adventure that is Americanafest has come and gone for 2025, and I for one feel like a winner. I paced myself, hydrated, and kept mileage and traffic to a minimum. Maybe I’m learning something at last, after 25 of these carnivals. If there was an overarching theme, I didn’t sense it. I saw hundreds of artists keeping it real, working hard, and making new fans and allies. Here’s some of what I saw and loved.

The 24th Americana Music Honors & Awards took place Wednesday night at the Ryman Auditorium. Powerhouse vocalist and songwriter Nathaniel Rateliff won a surprise Album of the Year. Sierra Ferrell accepted Artist of the Year in absentia. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings returned to the winner’s circle. And Lifetime Achievement Awards went to Darrell Scott, Joe Henry, the Old 97’s, and the McCrary Sisters, who delivered the most emotional performance of the night.

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.

East Nash Grass, born at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge in East Nashville, is one of the primary reasons we created The Old Fashioned three and a half years ago. We’ve seen them through two album releases now, including their third LP, All God’s Children, now out from Mountain Fever Records. They’ve made some subtle shifts since Last Chance To Win came out in 2023. Jeff Partin replaced Jeff Picker on bass, and dobro master Gaven Largent, while playing on the new one, is now more of a sometime member. But the core remains: James Kee on guitar, Cory Walker on banjo, and Maddie Denton on fiddle. We fire up Show #170 with two songs – the title track and the Harry Clark-led road song “Hill Country Highway.” Keep it between the ditches, friends. The other new album release this week worth your notice is Joseph Decosimo’s Fiery Gizzard, a mesmerizing collection of deftly enhanced banjo instrumentals. Also here, new songs from Danny Burns, Conrad Fisher, the Tennessee Bluegrass Band, and Becky Buller.

With Americanafest 2025 roaring through Nashville this week like the streamlined mad dog cyclone train in Guy Clark’s “Texas 1947,” our music journalist Craig Havighurst looks past the proven stars to the upstarts, newcomers, change agents, returning veterans, and fun stuff as an alt-alt-guide to the festivities ahead.

After 12 years in Raleigh, NC, the International Bluegrass Music Association is moving its long-running World Of Bluegrass industry convention to the East Tennessee city of Chattanooga, where it will take over the convention center, music venues, and city parks between Sept. 16 and 20, just one week after Americanafest. Ask the IBMA, and they’ll say there are no big shifts or surprises in the structure and nature of the convention. It’s the same idea in a new town. Except there is a big new dynamic, and his name is Billy Strings.