Craig Havighurst

Della Mae has been on a heck of a journey since Boston fiddler Kimber Ludiker assembled a band of women to play bluegrass that shreds and defies limits in 2010. The cool thing is that their freshly rebuilt website acknowledges this with a crisp account of the band’s phases and stages – getting signed by Rounder Records, the global touring by way of the U.S. State Department, the IBMA Awards. Now, they say “Della Mae can boast their strongest lineup yet. Founders Kimber Ludiker and Celia Woodsmith are joined by guitarist and songwriter Avril Smith and vocalist and two-time IBMA Bass Player of the Year Vickie Vaughn.” And they’re coming in hot on Jan. 23 with their newest album Magic Accident, which “explores the complexity of being human and the drive to seize joy and possibility amid the sheer improbability of being here at all.” We spin the single “Family Tree” to launch this episode. Also, a special song cycle album from Valerie Smith and I play a batch of 1980s and 90s bluegrass I picked up over the holidays on CD at Nashville’s used record stores.

Rachael Price became an American fixture as the dynamic and flawless lead singer of roots/pop phenomenon Lake Street Dive. Long before she and the Dive were headlining Madison Square Garden, she was a Hendersonville, TN native pursuing a career in classic jazz, after her girlhood idol Ella Fitzgerald. This is the story of how a music school friend - guitarist, singer, and songwriter Vilray - helped her build a parallel life pursuing her first musical love. They have incredible chemistry on and off stage, as you’ll hear in this fascinating interview.

For our first show of 2026, we take one last look over our shoulder at 2025’s coolest and most newsworthy bluegrass, old-time, and folk music. There was a lot of fine music, but for me, there were a few standouts, as outlined in my Dec. 19 feature The Old Fashioned Dozen. The collaboration in which Po’ Ramblin’ Boy CJ Lewandowski coaxed his friend and mentor Bobby Osborne into the studio for one more set of recordings – including “Rocky Top” – before his passing was both beautiful to listen to and one for the history books. Jason Carter and Michael Cleveland showed why they’re the state of the art in bluegrass fiddling and song curation on their IBMA Album of the Year. My favorite discovery of 2025 was The Wild Shoats, an exciting young band from WV and PA. Billy Strings and Bryan Sutton paid Doc Watson the highest homage with their live album and tour. And Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson really surprised us with an al fresco old-time album from the historic Piedmont of North Carolina. Onward to the new year!

Our holiday special features (we think) tracks that we’ve never played on the show, even though we have our favorites from years past. Molly Tuttle and Ketch Secor set the scene for the season with their new single “Fairytale of New York.” The obligatory “Christmas Time’s A Comin’” comes this year from the amazing trio of Doc Watson, Mac Wiseman, and Del McCoury. Particularly interesting is Bela Fleck’s solo holiday medley. There’s just about nothing he can’t play. Sorry this is going up in the archive so late! But perhaps it will bring you a memory of a good Christmas 2025.

To say that a lot has happened since Molly Tuttle last appeared on The String in 2019 would be an understatement. She’s won two Grammy Awards and been nominated for two more. She won her first IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year Award, to go along with her two groundbreaking Guitar Player trophies. But most important, she’s been through two entire stylistic swings in her musical vision and recording career. And she got engaged to Ketch Secor. So we cover a lot of ground in our latest conversation.

Last year, The String got a new opening theme tune. “Vera” comes from New York based mandolin virtuoso, composer and band leader Jacob Jolliff. The Oregon native came East when he got a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music. He’s worked for some big-league bands including Joy Kills Sorrow and Yonder Mountain String Band, but in this decade he’s found an audience for his own four-piece Jacob Jolliff Band. We talk about building the audience for instrumental, improvisational acoustic music and about select pieces from Jake’s fascinating discography.

I’m reading the new biography Doc Watson: A Life In Music by Eddie Huffman, and it’s such a pleasure to get a close-up, beat-by-beat, account of Doc’s heroic, era-shaping career. As much as I’ve studied his music and read many liner notes (I even got to interview him once), there are details that only a devoted researcher could elucidate, and Eddie does a wonderful job. One of the areas he’s broken the most ground in is the dynamic between Doc and his son Merle, who truly comes alive in this chronicle. With that, I point you to Doc and Merle’s version of the Delmore Brothers song “Brown’s Ferry Blues” from the 1971 album On Stage. Also this week, new music from the Burnett Sisters, Andy Leftwich, and Oakland mandolinist Jesse Appelman from his new LP Where We Go. By the way I mis-speak in the episode in crediting the song Anna Lee. It was cut by Levon Helm, as I note, but it was written by NC’s great Laurelyn Dossett. I regret the error.

As we get started with 2026 and wait for the new musical delights it will bring, we consider some unfinished business from last year. For example, Los Angeles country singer and songwriter Grey DeLisle had a big 2025. Last spring, she released her ambitious double LP The Grey Album. Then in October came an album she conceived and executive produced. It’s All Her Fault: A Tribute To Cindy Walker is a magical collection of songs by the Country Music Hall of Famer, recorded by some of today’s finest female country voices. Before the holiday rush, she spoke with WMOT about both projects and her highly varied career.

Ashley Monroe moved to Nashville just after 10th grade from East Tennessee with a single-minded drive to sing and write country music. Her career would be the envy of many - including Grammy nominations, several major label albums, and Pistol Annies, an influential supergroup - and yet many in roots music haven’t recognized her as among the greats of our time. Following recovery from blood cancer, Monroe reached deep into herself, producing her most ambitious and daring project yet, Tennessee Lightning.

Duos and special projects dominate our list of favorite traditional acoustic Americana in 2025. Of course I mean Amy Alvey and myself, hosts of The Old Fashioned on WMOT. Just as we love collaborating on our show and on this annual list, collaboration is a hallmark of string band culture. So topping off our Old Fashioned Dozen are four projects that brought artists with interesting histories together, in some cases in unique and historically significant locations.