Craig Havighurst

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.

Russ Carson didn’t just have a father who played the banjo; he had a father who made them. So yeah, music was in his Pennsylvania home, and he began playing at age 10. He did time with several bands, including Gold Heart and Audie Blaylock’s Redline, before joining one of the elite units of our time, Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder. He recently released what appears to be his third solo album Songs That Birds Don’t Sing through the Engelhardt Music Group, and it’s a wonderful ride that mixes styles and classics with Russ’s original tunes. We spin “Look Me Up By The Ocean Door,” written by the Cox Family, with Ron Block on lead vocals. Also new this week, a rich socially provocative song from the Del McCoury Band, a beauty from our favorite dulcimer player Sarah Kate Morgan and fiddler Leo Shannon. The new Laurie Lewis song is a blazer too.

For nine years here at WMOT, I’ve been proud and privileged to select and remark on thirty albums from the closing year that meet several criteria. Some made national news and did well on the Americana radio chart or at the various roots music awards. Some were critically and popularly acclaimed and just obviously excellent. And others have been records I felt were under-rated but special and worthy of more attention. Typically here in these remarks, I’ve dwelt on what I mean by Essential and Outstanding. This year, I want to go deeper on that other key element: Americana.

Blue Highway is going strong more than thirty years into their award-winning bluegrass journey. Their most recent album was last year’s Lonesome State Of Mind, but they’ve been busy this year with new singles, including this week’s Shawn Lane-penned “Muddy Shoes.” I also noticed a new side from the band New Found Road (a highway song as it happens) written by Thomas Cassell and Blue Highway co-founder Tim Stafford. Another timely connection arrived with the single “Honey Babe Blues” by Blue Highway banjo player Jason Burleson. So I put them all together in a set and rounded out the new music with a song from East Tennessee’s Beth Snapp, a friend and frequent collaborator with the BH boys. Other new music comes from Appalachian Road Show, with a truly thrilling song “Won’t Be Long” featuring Victor Furtado on clawhammer banjo and a show-opening collab between Tony Trischka and The Steeldrivers. Finally, check out the old Opry-style Tennessee string band picking from Sumner County old-time band The Luggnutts, who claim descendants of the early WSM band the Possum Hunters.

Her name is made of flowers. And she’s been spreading bouquets of joy and open-hearted country and rockabilly for more than 50 years. She is Rosie Flores, sounding great and enjoying the stage as much as she ever has as she cruised past her 75th birthday during Americanafest 2025. A couple days after that, we sat down to talk about her (outstandingly) supportive parents, the Los Angeles alt-country scene of the 1980s and 90s, and her new album Impossible Frontiers.

Raul Malo, perhaps the finest singer to ever champion Pan-American roots music, has died at age 60 following a brutal battle with cancer. The Mavericks, formed in Miami in 1989, shook up the country music business in the 1990s with its classic influences and timeless songwriting. And despite two breaks, they came back as one of the greatest live acts of the last 20 years. Malo also made more than a dozen solo albums and contributed to key projects. Craig Havighurst filed this appreciation.

What Chet Atkins was to Nashville country, what Jerry Garcia was to West Coast rock, Steve Cropper was to Memphis and the foundations of Southern soul - a key architect of an American sound that changed the world. The legendary guitar player - a member of the Roll Hall of Fame, the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Musicians Hall of Fame - died Wednesday at age 84.

Daniel Donato became one of Nashville’s more revered electric guitar players during his three years playing four nights a week at Robert’s Western World on Lower Broadway. When he lost that gig in 2015, he had to start from scratch as a working musician and songwriting artist. In his second appearance on The String, Donato talks about landing some touring band gigs that sustained him while he developed his Cosmic Country concept. The band and his repute grew, and ten years after leaving Broadway, he headlined the Ryman Auditorium. Also on the table here, his two recent albums, Reflector and Horizons.

Since co-founding the history-making, history-preserving North Mississippi Allstars almost 30 years ago, Luther Dickinson has taken his guitar, his deep blues repertoire, and his Memphis soul around the world and into all kinds of collaborations. In his latest return to The String, we talk about the nature of improvising and some of his recent experimental and instrumental projects, plus the 2025 Allstars album Still Rollin’, marking the 25th anniversary of the band’s debut album.