Craig Havighurst

By design or coincidence, this week's Finally Friday features two major names in contemporary bluegrass music. Darin & Brooke Aldridge will be releasing their tenth album, a landmark in a career that's seen them win multiple awards and earn the admiration of the genre with a sound that draws as much on gospel and country music as it does on straight ahead bluegrass. Becky Buller (who once played fiddle with the Aldridges) is the industry's triple-threat with IBMA Awards for her instrumental chops, her singing, and her songwriting. She's tackling some of the most serious and vulnerable subject matter of her career on her upcoming album Jubilee. Check out Craig's preview of this Friday's talent-packed revue.

Carley Arrowood was a touring fiddle player before she was a band-leading artist, so we’re celebrating the release of her second album Colors with her crack fiddling in the original tune “Molasses Ridge.” Young and ready for her time in the spotlight, Arrowood is a western NC native who did five years pulling the bow for Darin & Brooke Aldridge before throwing her mix of musicianship, singing and songwriting into 2022’s debut Goin’Home Comin’ On. Meanwhile she’s won IBMA Momentum Awards for her fiddling and singing. Watch for her on the charts and on the road. We’ve got more albums dropping as well, from Cris Jacobs, Adam McIntosh, and Authentic Unlimited. What a year so far. Bask as well in historic tracks from the Bluegrass Album Band, Cajun fiddler Luderin Darbone, Doc Watson, and the iconic Jim & Jesse.

In January, the newly energized Nashville Blues and Roots Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to cultivating blues careers and spreading its history through public schools, held its first-ever local competition to nominate contestant artists at the 2024 International Blues Challenge in Memphis. And in a nice Music City surprise, the NBRA’s delegate in the band category, Piper & The Hard Times, went to Memphis during the coldest week of the year, put on several sizzling sets, and came away with the grand prize. In this hour of The String, we meet Al "Piper" Green and his bandmate/guitarist Steve Eagon to talk about their game changing win. Up first, Gulf Coast blues and R&B icon Marcia Ball talks about fifty years of rocking roadhouses and the occasional blues cruise.

Greg Blake grew up in West “By God” Virginia and quietly assembled one of the most distinguished careers in today’s bluegrass scene. He proved his picking acumen by winning the Winfield Flatpicking Championship. He spent ten years with the progressive band Jeff Scroggins and Colorado. And for the past three years, he’s been the big lead voice in the iconic Chicago-based band Special Consensus, with whom he’s won or shared numerous awards. He’s also maintained a solo career as a songwriting recording artist, and we grabbed a semi-recent single to single him out with “Tennessee Rain.” Also this hour, the first new music in a while by superb guitarist and singer Rebecca Frazier and a new artist TOF premiere to kick things off as Kentucky’s Kenny D. Thacker sings of “Hillbilly Dreams.”

Suzy Bogguss started playing and performing on a hand-me-down guitar from her sister in small-town Illinois. After almost a decade making a living out west playing at ski lodges and smaller venues, she moved to Nashville, where she carved out a special place in 1990s country music. Amid a time of diversity and vibrancy in the format, her sweet, folky voice took flight when she found the right songs, including the career-makers “Someday Soon” and “Outbound Plane.” She’s toured steadily ever since, though recordings have been selective since 2000. During the pandemic though, she took on her first album of new material with last fall’s Prayin’ For Sunshine, the first where she’d written all of the songs. In this hour, we cover every key stage of this award-winning career.

Look at us! 100 episodes of The Old Fashioned, done and dusted. And as we approached this self-congratulatory landmark and thought about how to mark it, we got struck by the idea of celebrating bluegrass and old-time in an even more focused way – by spinning selections from the GOATs of the string band genres – or at least one impulsive stab at the greatest of all time. We start of course with Bill Monroe and then we check out the first great fiddler of the Grand Ole Opry, Arthur Smith. Flatt & Scruggs and the Stanley Brothers had to be here, as did Jimmy Martin and the Osborne Brothers. Amy pulled in Hazel and Alice, and Ola Belle Reed and John Hartford. I needed to play Bela Fleck’s “Whitewater” as a way to get into the era of bluegrass that seduced me. And we end with Ricky Skaggs, the dominant bluegrass patriarch of our time. Of course we missed other legends and another attempt at an hour of GOATs might look quite different. But that’s the beauty of it. We’re back next week with all the latest releases!

The Wonder Women of Country, a side project of busy Americana songwriter/artists Brennen Leigh, Kelly Willis and Melissa Carper, started in 2021 as a touring vehicle for three friends with compatible visions of country music. Fans have been loving it, and naturally they started asking if there was a recording to take home. The WWOC have made good on that desire with a self-titled EP, released on March 15.

After more than a decade helming her progressive acoustic band The New Hip, bass player Missy Raines has reconfigured and turned back to the music she was raised on and the genre for which she’s been named Bass Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association ten times, most recently in 2021. Her new band is called Allegheny, and her new album Highlander finds her singing about the lonesome wind, fast-moving trains, and more weighty and contemporary subjects in the old school style.

As we approached our 100th show, I got the goofy idea of festooning our 99th episode of The Old Fashioned with songs about Nines. After all, bluegrass seems to bring that number up often, starting with “Nine Pound Hammer,” so I pulled Tony Rice’s iconic version from the great Manzanita album. Then we were off to the races with the “Wreck Of The Old No. 9” by Doc and Merle Watson, a great version of “99 Year Blues” from the Rock Hearts and Amy’s pick, the hard driving band Hard Drive with “49 Cats in a Rain Barrell.” Because why not? There IS new music, from Thomas Cassell and Crandall Creek, plus a show-closing block of great banjo led bands featuring Cory Walker, Alan Munde, Jeremy Stevens and Kristin Scott Benson.

Few pickers have toured harder or traveled farther than jamgrass veteran Vince Herman, who co-founded the iconic Leftover Salmon 34 years ago in Colorado. Yet there are always new things to try, so he’s added the band The High Hawks to his list of collaborations. Our sit-down visit was sparked by that band’s album Mother Nature’s Show doing so well on the Americana chart and by his own recent move from Colorado to Nashville, where he’s become a hub of the picking scene and an avid co-writer. We cover a lot of ground from his origins in Pittsburgh and West Virginia to the everlasting desire to play the next show. Also in the hour, progressive banjo player Kyle Tuttle calls in from a fishing trip to talk about his years with Molly Tuttle and his new solo album Labor Of Lust.