South Carolina guitar wizard and powerhouse singer Marcus King has come through the valley of shadows, breaking self-destructive habits and arriving at a place of contentment and love on his latest album Darling Blue. In a career-spanning conversation, King talks about his unique path to finding his voice on the guitar, his collaborations with a series of very different world-class producers, and his place in the shifting ecosystems of jam band and Americana music.

North Carolina songwriter Tift Merritt became an instant star of Americana music when she emerged in the early 2000s with Bramble Rose (2002) and Tambourine (2004), but only with time have we learned that her relationship with her prestige record label - Lost Highway Records - was tumultuous and dispiriting. After a period of relative quiet on the music front, she’s re-issued Tambourine on vinyl for the first time and put out a collection of demo/kitchen tapes that contextualize that classic. From her home in Raleigh, Tift catches us up on her diversified creative life.

Happy Public Radio Music Day to all who celebrate! To celebrate PRMD 2025, WMOT asked listeners to help curate the essential list of songs about radio, and WOW you understood the assignment! Y'all came up with an eclectic list of 237 songs ranging from bluegrass to 90's grunge! Listen from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. on 89.5 FM and WMOT.org as WMOT hosts and staff play back your favorite radio songs.

We’ll never get bored of revisiting September’s Americanafest Day Stage for 2025, whether via the complete livestream archive or through John Partipilo’s magnificent photos. This was our first year in Riverside Revival, and John, one of Nashville’s greatest-ever documentary photographers, captured the beauty of the space, the focus of the artists, and the joy among our wonderful crowd.

For years, various musicians and instigators have dreamed of a festival to showcase Nashville’s hometown jazz talent, and it’s finally coming to pass this weekend at 3rd & Lindsley with a distinguished and varied lineup. Both days of The Inaugural Nashville Jazz Festival are technically sold out, but if you can’t finagle a ticket, both days will be streamed on a donate-what-you-can basis. Either way, it’ll be high energy and historic.

Ken Pomeroy, who turned 23 days after this interview, is a fresh voice not just from the Oklahoma lineage of great roots songwriting and musicianship, but also from a new generation of Native American voices in popular music. She talks about her Cherokee heritage and the stewardship that comes with it, plus her emotional bond to music in this introspective hour. You’ll also hear incisive and often sad songs from her acclaimed national debut Cruel Joke, out this spring on Rounder Records.

In a time when bluegrass is surging with young talent and mainstream dreams, Danny Burns and Shelby Means offer two profiles in making the string band business work in 2025. Burns is an Irish immigrant who brought his trad training and hearty work ethic from his native County Donegal. Even before releasing North Country in 2018, he’d made a name and reputation among roots music elites, and he shows his flair for cover songs on the new Southern Sky. Shelby Means played bass for Della Mae during their breakout years and became stylishly famous working with Molly Tuttle’s Golden Highway Band. When that came to an end this year, she had her debut solo album ready to go.

Analog on West End Ave., nested in the Hutton Hotel, barely had a chance to forge an identity before the pandemic shut it down. Its renewal and growth as one of Nashville’s coziest showrooms has been presided over by its director of marketing and programming Meredith DiMenna. Craig Havighurst visited to learn about the vision that has led to its eclectic success, including powerful roots, Americana, and jazz shows.

Leslie Jordan, the Nolensville, TN-based songwriter not the late comic actor and singer, makes a major statement in her pivot from a robust career in Christian folk/pop to storytelling Americana with The Agonist. It’s a song cycle that fleshes out the story of her late grandfather, a conflicted and complex man who left his family in Indiana when Leslie’s mother was four years old. Through a unique collaboration with a collection of his posthumous journals and writings, she builds a world and a character, holding him accountable while investing his story with dignity. It’s beautifully produced with Kenneth Pattengale and is one of the most impressive albums of 2025.

The dust has settled from a busy September in and beyond Nashville, so we thought it was a good time to revisit Americanafest through the lens of photographer John Partipilo. He’s one of the greatest photojournalists in the South, and when he’s not putting himself in harm’s way to get shots of high-pressure events, he sometimes joins our production family to make memories for the artists and the fans - on stage and backstage, as you’ll see. We’ll bite off a day at a time as we cover the great artists who graced the stage of Riverside Revival between Sept. 10-12.