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.
What is this musical composite, this chimera? We’ve been asking and answering that question as a community and fanbase for more than a quarter century, and it’s been the most engaging and rewarding cultural conversation of my lifetime. Music heritage dies without conversation, including the disputes and differences that inevitably arise. We’ve seen communities of color rightly challenge the scope of the format and seen the format react and evolve, because the questions raised were core to the story of American roots music, which is what this is all about to me. Americana is the preservation and evolution of blues-based folk, traditional country, bluegrass, soul, R&B, gospel, and old-school rock and roll. When I hear that DNA in a record, I hear Americana.
In the past few years though, I’ve seen more artists and sounds welcomed into the Americana tent (through radio play, conference showcases, and awards appearances) that don’t code as roots to me. Though it may be quality music, it comes from the adjacent, overlapping format of AAA radio, which has had a significant, some say misleading, influence on the public face of Americana. Because many AAA stations report to the Americana chart, and because those stations have shorter playlists that generate more spins for given records, crossover artists can have an institutional advantage on the Americana chart. Thus, we’ve seen more indie rock and alternative pop in our mix. Of course those terms are perhaps even more loose and subjective than Americana, so let me name some names.
Caamp is a good band, and I’m happy to see them thrive. They released an excellent album, but to my ears, they sing with the affects of indie rock, despite some touches of folk instrumentation. So Copper Changes Color isn’t on my list. Likewise with Molly Tuttle’s surprising and excellent So Long Little Miss Sunshine. It’s nominated for the Americana Album Grammy, but I think it’s written and produced more in the lineage of Taylor Swift than Mother Maybelle Carter. And that’s well and good. Molly has worlds to explore and years to do so, and I’ll be along for the ride. I also can’t personally shoehorn recent hotshots M.J. Lenderman or Medium Build into the esthetic or historic context that’s made Americana magical for me. To prove it’s nothing personal, I’m also passing on Aces, perhaps the best album yet by my favorite contemporary singer-songwriter Madison Cunningham. Even though we played it a bit, Aces is an art pop and rock album, one I’ll cherish for years. (You should listen to all of these projects.)
Where my Americana ears and judgement led me this year more than any other was into a marvelous wave of soul and blues-rock, where the legacy of the Allman Brothers and Little Feat is alive and well - including through the current, amazing iteration of Little Feat! I spotlight dynamic, timeless LPs by Larkin Poe, Samantha Fish, Mike Farris, Marcus King, Southern Avenue, and Robert Randolph because they channel the soul of the road house and the church house, even as some of them play arenas. I also am personally protective of the bluegrass and string band side of Americana, and on Friday I will be publishing the latest annual Old Fashioned Dozen, to spotlight the best in that lineage.
You may disagree with some of my takes, and I relish that. The dialogue is what keeps the scene moving forward. Tell me what you think at craig@wmot.org.
Releases that I covered in 2025 are linked to their features or interviews.
Robert Plant with Suzi Dian - Saving Grace
The handbook for rock gods trying to age with dignity and integrity should start with a chapter about Robert Plant. His wide explorations since his glory days have been sincere and exuberant, from participating in North African music to his brilliant two-album collaboration with Alison Krauss. Now he’s shuffled his deck in the most charming way, teaming up with little-known folk musicians who live near him in the west of England. Suzi Dian co-bills here as a beguiling lead and harmony vocalist in the vein of the late Sandy Denny. Plant’s taste for the mythic comes through here beautifully, as does his savvy song collecting, from old blues and folk tunes like their stately “Soul Of A Man” and contemporary material, including a stunner by North Carolina songwriter Sarah Siskind, “Too Far From You.” (Which reminds me, Siskind released her own lovely album this year, a gorgeous solo acoustic opus called Simplify.)
I’m With Her - Wild And Clear And Blue
Some supergroups are so super they must be reunited, especially I’m With Her, the instantly beloved, Grammy Award-winning trio of Sarah Jarosz, Sara Watkins, and Aoife O’Donovan. Their busy careers reconverged for a personal catch-up that led to a hugely fruitful cowriting retreat. As I noted in a conversation with Watkins this year, these songs feel too precise, too masterfully drawn, and too personal to be the work of a hive mind. Yet here they are. Poetically rich numbers like “Ancient Light,” the title track, and my favorite, “Rhododendron,” bloom and twine together into a perfectly paced collection. In-demand producer Josh Kaufman of Bonny Light Horseman conjures textures and ambient harmonies that carry these immaculate voices along, as if through levitation.
Tyler Childers - Snipe Hunter
I made the mistake of getting too comfortable with the Tyler Childers we met on those early records Purgatory and Country Squire. I did not foresee that he’d be so mercurial, but like his ally and co-phenom Sturgill Simpson, Tyler is restless and ornery, even a bit avant-garde. Here, famed producer Rick Rubin helps Childers ascend to a new sonic astral plane, and yet the record stays country, chiefly through vivid Southern fiction told in run-on sentences disguised as verses. “Nose On The Grindstone” is a stark and fierce lament. “Bitin’ List” is weird and whimsical, and we don’t know whether to be amused or scared. Childers is a volatile and visceral artist with unusual risk tolerance and willingness to provoke and challenge his audience. A snipe hunt is of course a fool’s errand; this album is anything but.
Ashley Monroe - Tennessee Lightning
They say surviving cancer inspires one to live and love abundantly, and East Tennessee native Ashley Monroe, one of Nashville’s best pure country songwriter/singers (and a powerhouse member of Pistol Annies), channeled her survivor’s energy into a 17-song, hour-long, personal statement. It earns every minute of our attention with sonic creativity and seductive emotions. In fact, longing may be the album’s core theme - longing for golden years of youth, for a lover’s touch, for salvation. It reminds me of last year’s ambitious Consequences of the Crown by Shelby Lynne, and that album’s producer Karen Fairchild leaves her mark here as well. Between T Bone Burnett’s spectral guitar opening and Monroe’s tear-jerking closer pulled from her girlhood church hymnal, you’ll be living in Ashley’s world, a place of lightning, thunder, and rainbow signs.
Samantha Fish - Paper Doll
This blues singing, guitar slinging femme fatale has worked her ass off for 15 years to burst out of Kansas City to the international stage and scads of awards. On Paper Doll, her fourth album for Rounder Records, Samantha’s thrilling voice puts a bullseye on the listener with its forward and focused presence. It needs to be loud, because half this 37-minute ride is made of thundering blues rock that’s perfect for vinyl playback on a 1970s stereo system. There’s some blazingly confident and crafty songwriting here too. AllMusic calls this “Fish’s masterpiece.” Bonus points for the graphic design.
Shawn Camp - The Ghost Of Sis Draper
We’ve heard several of these songs on projects by both Shawn Camp and the late, great Guy Clark over many years, but at last, Camp, one of our priceless pure country artisans, found a way to release this body of co-written work the way it was intended - as a song cycle. Camp told Clark years ago about a larger-than-life woman from his Arkansas youth who fiddled and talked so well she made his grandmother fear for her marriage. “There’s your song,” Clark said, and they were off, frequently revisiting the character and the setting, all the while weaving the melodies of old fiddle tunes into the songs. Thus does Sis Draper become the quintessential “Arkansas Traveler,” and a Civil War flashback song invokes “Soldier’s Joy.” It was released on Truly Handmade Records, a welcome new non-profit label caretaking Guy’s legacy and launching other, spiritually related projects as well.
The Devil Makes Three - Spirits
The Americana establishment doesn’t shoot enough salutes toward Pete Bernhard, Cooper McBean, and bass player MorganEve Swain, the SoCal-born, black leather folk trio known as The Devil Makes Three. Like a compact and more earnest Old Crow Medicine Show, they’ve built something distinct and legitimately popular out of deep roots traditions - especially pre-war blues and old Appalachia - with a salting of punk rock. On Spirits, Bernhard works through grief and disorientation that resulted from the death of several loved ones in a short spell, not to mention the American political/economic polycrisis. The title track traffics with “Spirits,” and the album closes with the superb new folk song “Holding On,” a co-write with regular band contributor Boaz Vilozny. For an album that dwells on death, it’s full of life.
Adam Wright - The Nature of Necessity
Wright came to town from Atlanta as a newlywed in a too-good-for-radio country duo with his wife Shannon. When that artist career no longer felt productive or satisfying, he leaned into songwriting, and years later he’s a respected, Grammy-nominated Music Row composer. His solo albums have been strong, but this year’s 18-song, chapter-based release is his masterpiece. Nashville’s music business - hell, even Americana - doesn’t know what to do with songs this smart and this loaded with allusion and layers. My take after talking to him in March was this: “I don’t know of any Nashville writer who’d so boldly take on subjects as varied and research heavy as the 1890’s California gold rush, Leonardo DaVinci’s notebooks, and the inner life of an oil change tech nursing a broken dream. It also sounds fantastic, with Adam’s crafty and precise acoustic guitar complemented live on the floor by the world-class rhythm section of bass player Glenn Worf and drummer Matt Chamberlain.”
Margo Price - Hard Headed Woman
Margo Price was never going to be hemmed in by the heartland country that defined her rise on 2016’s Midwest Farmer’s Daughter. But after the glimmery LA poet-pop of That’s How Rumors Get Started (2020) and the garage rocking double feature of Strays I and II (2023), I was craving some edgy twang from one of America’s most interesting singers and people. Hard Headed Woman brings it, with steel guitar, lovelorn blues, and attitude. The sauce and sass starts with the opening line (“I’m a hard-headed woman, and I don’t owe you shit…”) and holds up through the brilliant recasting of a Kris Kristofferson line into the new outlaw anthem “Don’t Let The Bastards Get You Down.” She also sings duets with Jesse Welles and Tyler Childers and a funny Waylon Jennings kiss-off that was made for Margo to sing. I first enjoyed HHW on a drive through the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina, and it’ll always take me back there.
Marty Stuart and the Fabulous Superlatives - Space Junk
We are so lucky that Americana patriarch Marty Stuart has remained creatively alive and unfailingly cool. His Swiss watch of a band has, over 23 years, recorded country and western, gospel, bluegrass, and more. But the instrumental album remained an unexplored frontier for Stuart, who grew up loving Dick Dale and Chet Atkins. His historic 1954 Telecaster (formerly Clarence White’s) with its exotic string bender has never sounded more lush and chiming. Beside Stuart we have Cousin Kenny Vaughan, master of twang and taste. The interplay between their historic instruments and the engaging, cinematic composing, makes this a dream for guitar lovers, and an album that might inspire more of them.
Kristina Train - County Line
Nashville-based Kristina Train launched her career on a parallel track with Norah Jones, having been signed by Blue Note Records in the 2000s. Her smoky and lustrous voice has also been compared to Dusty Springfield, but that doesn’t fully convey her dynamic and emotional fusion of jazz and pop, best heard on her landmark album Dark Black from 2012. County Line, her first country project, has classic lines and arrangements that echo those serene Glen Campbell/Jimmy Webb collaborations of yore. The opening title cut, one of her seven originals, sets a tone that’s both pastoral and melancholy. “Hard Road To Travel” brings more snap, while “What Does That Make Me” has a seductive Memphis simmer. Her voice plays it cool before bursting into its full force with strings on the Wayne Carson song (via Waylon) “(Don’t Let The Sun Set On You) In Tulsa.” Other covers include a smoky blue take on Kristofferson’s “Just The Other Side Of Nowhere” and a rethink of Cher’s famously quantized “Believe,” without an ounce of autotune. Artifice is not a factor in Train’s art.
Tulsa songwriter Ken Pomeroy knows how to make a sad song glow and inspire. The 23-year-old has been honing her craft and singing everywhere she could for more than five years. Then a slot for her song “Cicadas” on the TV series Reservation Dogs sparked the creative motivation that led to this mostly home-made national debut. Rounder Records picked it up and had in-house audio sorcerer Gary Pacosza tweak the tracks produced by Pomeroy’s partner Dakota McDaniel. So the album sounds lovely and moving, setting Pomeroy’s melancholy poetry and entrancing voice in a fine light. Opener “Peredolia” is Song of the Year material. Tulsa icon John Moreland joins her on the lonesome “Coyote.” Radio loved “Flannel Cowboy,” even though she told us it is more ironic than folks understand. This complex, engaged, Native American Gen Z artist will be a force in Americana for as long as she keeps writing and singing like this.
Alison Krauss and Union Station - Arcadia
One can’t ignore the import of AKUS’s first album in 14 years, especially one that called in best-in-class bluegrass singer Russell Moore (on loan from IIIrd Tyme Out) to lay down the male leads once handled by Dan Tyminski. Arcadia is of course impeccably written, played, sung, and recorded by some of the best acoustic musicians and producers in the world. And yet if I were to make this list chiefly on the basis of enjoyability, I confess I’d have left Arcadia off. Its 10 tracks traffic in gloom and doom, 90% minor keys, and fatalities of many kinds. Death is of course a key theme in bluegrass, but so are life and love, right? After so many years in production, we might have hoped for two or three more songs with some of the bluesy jump and spirit of JD McPherson’s “North Side Gal” (sung on the album by Moore). Alison Krauss has made some emo-grass in her time, but that’s about all I hear on this elegant but too parsimonious project.
The Herculeons - The Herculeons
John Cowan (New Grass Revival) and Andrea Zonn (James Taylor’s band) are old friends who happen to have two of the most beautiful voices in Music City. After a satisfying vocal session during the fading pandemic, they vowed to collaborate. So they brought in a host of ace session players, rounding out a band named as a nod to a common idol, Leon Russell. For more than two years they were a live draw at 3rd & Lindsley but a long-planned album finally came out in March. On a suite of deftly selected songs, the vocals soar and tug the heart. The real stunners here are Lowell George’s “Face Of Appalachia," Gregory Porter’s “Take Me To The Alley,” and Susan Werner’s “Barbed Wire Boys.” There’s not a dull moment on this testament to why so many of us moved to Nashville - to be near this kind of roots music talent.
Galactic & Irma Thomas - Audience With The Queen
When this came out in April, I couldn’t understand why the whole Americana world wasn’t stopping everything to hold this recording up as an exemplar of why we’re all doing this. Where was the parade? The airplay? Maybe by now you’ve heard it, and you should. Irma is well into her 80s yet sounding like a colossus on what is a kind of song cycle about her life. “Where I Belong” affirms her love of the stage and the songs in her heart after a long and extraordinary life. She confronts injustice head-on in the funky “Lady Liberty.” “Peace In My Heart,” set to a silky slow jam, is a life plan, helping us answer the question What Would Irma Do? Let’s all do that.
Jason Isbell - Foxes In The Snow
We’ve probably all dreamed of attending a house concert with Jason Isbell and his acoustic guitar, and his 2025 release comes as close to that as most of us are going to get. Perceived as a break-up record, I feared it might grow dull or self-important, but as usual, his elegantly fractal storytelling and layered language take hold and build a world that includes us. Extreme vulnerability was all but inevitable (the man is nothing if not candid), and he could have offered a version of that with his band in support. But on this record and the solo tour that attended it, he gets nigh on to naked, with glances at the crashed marriage he left behind and deeper discussion of a new relationship taking root. His new partner is ever-present, from the New York and Nashville dates evoked in song - to her painting on the cover. It’s more subtle and approachable than Amanda Shires’s woozy pop counter-suit of an album Nobody’s Girl, which was released in September.
Sierra Hull - A Tip Toe High Wire
Alongside her girlhood hero Chris Thile, Sierra Hull is one of the two best mandolin players in the world. Her current live band is as good as any in today’s hot string band scene. And now, she’s synched up all of her skills - her writing, singing, picking, and bandcraft - into the most mature and complete album of her career, as well as her first indie release after her breakout run on Rounder Records. Hull’s title image of stepping out with a mix of control and danger is lifted from the track “Spitfire,” an ode to her grandmother. Every song has its own specific grace and energy, but I’ve come to love “Let’s Go” with Aoife O’Donovan, and the two killer instrumentals, which bear the mark of her recent long tours playing with Béla Fleck, who joins as a guest.
Ketch Secor - Story The Crow Told Me
After 25 years of Old Crow Medicine Show’s hijinks and hillbilly showmanship, frontman and fiddler Ketch Secor writes and sings his own story on his first solo album, and it’s a revelation. His voice is calmer, making it more rich in nuance and reflection. The music takes more stylistic and subtle turns than with his band. And his experiences make for an American epic. OCMS gets discovered by their folk hero in “Talkin’ Doc Blues.” “Dickerson Road” is a swiftly rapped tableaux of images and characters from the ramshackle East Nashville strip where he and his band lived their hungry years. On the closer “What Nashville Was” he more or less co-writes with Bob Dylan (again!) with the chords and melody from “Girl From The North Country” as a backdrop for a hillbilly hip-hop flow about time and change in a city many of us love and sometimes grieve. He’s accomplished so much, and with this new view on him, it’s easy to believe that the 47-year-old will keep us on our toes for years to come.
This was my favorite surprise and favorite debut of the year. Not that Leslie Jordan is a newcomer. She’s just turning to secular Americana after years touring and recording in a successful Christian music duo. And man does she come with a story to tell - not her own, but her grandfather, a ne’er do well beatnik poet and writer who basically abandoned her mother’s family in the 1950s to chase his own dream. Working from a crate of journals and documents found by a family member, Jordan writes this fellow back into the family’s lore with honesty, moral clarity, and grace. The music, organized in Los Angeles by Milk Carton Kid Kenneth Pattengale, is glorious and rhythmically involving. Jordan sings and writes beautifully, and she sets herself up well here for whatever’s next.
Jesse Welles - Middle
In the 30 years I’ve been paying attention to the dynamics of Americana music, I’ve not seen anything like the virality and verbosity of Jesse Welles. Presenting as an old-school, gravel-voiced protest singer, he touched a bunch of nerves with his online “fast folk” broadsides on hot and timely topics. He built a huge follower base with his clever and often wickedly funny command of language, rhythm and rhyme, delivered from an undisclosed wooded area (and anthologized on two Under The Powerlines collections). Lately, he’s grown controversial. Some have heaped lavish praise on his witticisms and criticisms, while noted national critic Grayson Haver Currin recently took Welles down a few pegs on his Substack, calling him essentially a hack who punches down and who lacks the requisite empathy and nuance of a true folk hero. Interesting, but probably unfair. I’m somewhere in the middle, believing he writes very well and edits way too little, as evidenced by the hard-to-fathom four studio LPs he issued in 2025 alone. And Middle is the title of an album he released in February that seems to be his most consistent statement as an artist, evidenced by three Americana Grammy Award nominations, including Best Album. I’ve enjoyed this LP on its own terms, with its flow of well-crafted songs that are about a wider range of human concerns than the latest news hook. I think Welles is spraying and praying a little, but this album is a worthy document of the year Jesse Welles broke big, albeit with an uncertain future.
Mike Farris - The Sound of Muscle Shoals
Mike Farris doesn’t know why it took him so long to cut an album in Alabama’s burning heart of soul music. The vocal dynamo has fans and friends down there at the landmark FAME Studio, and for his first album since 2018, he finally made it happen, in collaboration with the area’s great session players. The style is pure throwback, but could there be a better frame for Mike’s Grammy-winning pipes and his original songwriting? He surveys a lot of personal chapters here: his rustic Tennessee upbringing in opener “Ease On,” living as a singing star who’s still chasing a feeling in the sweet country soul reflection “Bright Lights,” and pure love for his longtime soulmate Julie on several beauties. Also of note, especially right now, is “Slow Train,” a come-to-glory song by William Bell and the recently departed Steve Cropper.
Robert Randolph - Preacher Kids
Musical journeys and stories don’t get more American or intriguing than that of the sacred steel guitar, and Robert Randolph has spread its steely gospel farther and with more exuberance than anyone. On Preacher Kids, the commanding improvisor and assured songwriter comes back from the pandemic on a revitalized Sun Records with a hearty, rocking collection produced with exposed nerves by Shooter Jennings. Margo Price joins for the country soul “King Karma.” The can’t-miss, showstopping track is “When Will The Love Rain Down,” sung by star LA session singer Judith Hill.
Little Feat - Strike Up The Band
The timeline of Little Feat, one of the greatest American bands, is confusing, and they’ve endured a lot of loss and change to remain rocking today. Keyboard player and singer Bill Payne is the longest-serving musician (since the original in 1969) plus two cats from 1972 and one from a big late 80s revival. After all that, they are absolutely on fire, live and on record, propelled by the two new guys. They are drummer Tony Leone and masterful singer Scott Sharrard, a veteran of the Gregg Allman Band. Last year’s Sam’s Place, the first new album in 12 years, was a promising set of blues standards. This one is a band-written triumph. They slip effortlessly into the greasy Delta-meets-New Orleans poly-shuffle that brought them to the dance, and the songs have verve and even wit, as in the single “Too High To Cut My Hair.”
Nobody’s carrying the torch for heritage Memphis soul into the modern era like this well-established band, and now they’re more family than ever, since guitarist Ori Naftaly married lead singer Tierinii Jackson and her sister Eva joined on harmony vocals and fiddle. Here they sing of their personal trajectories and remarkable lives, the sheltered upbringing of the girls (including sister/drummer Tikyra) and Ori’s international journey from his native Israel with only his love of the guitar to guide him. After the wonderful sonic excursions of 2021’s Be The Love That You Want with producer Steve Berlin, Southern Ave. has turned back to the sound of the Memphis night, recording with local icon Boo Mitchell. They set out to tell a story with love and heart, and they tell it in the funkiest imaginable way.
Larkin Poe - Bloom
It’s been a little more than a decade since the Georgia-raised sisters Megan and Rebecca turned in the bluegrass instruments that got them started in music as two of three Lovell Sisters. Their chosen road of big amps, feedback and fatback blues has been great for them, because they blend passion and down home grit with just enough sizzle and polish to attract big audiences. Bloom is a palace of riffs, usually led by Megan’s icy cool electric slide guitar. Rebecca shines through the squall with her force field voice. This October, they released a deluxe edition with six of the songs done unplugged, so you can hear echoes of the high lonesome country they came from.
Cody Jinks - Cody Jinks Sings Lefty Frizzell/In My Blood
I find Lone Star native Cody Jinks fascinating because he reaches a working-class, chain-wallet, heavy-metal-crossover crowd that few other Americana stars (save for Billy Strings) connect with. And he’s a big damn deal, with buses and crew and hundreds of dates per year. He released two albums in 2025 that tickle my country music and Southern rock bones. The Lefty Frizzell songs let us hear Cody’s tanned hide voice sounding vulnerable and reverent. His central release of the year, In My Blood, is power-outlaw, written, played and sung with earthy soul.
Brennen Leigh - Don’t You Ever Give Up On Love
I should give someone else a turn, but darn it, Leigh is to my mind the finest traditional country singer and songwriter in our business, and she’s prolific on an annual basis, so here she is again. This time it’s a collection of honky tonk lovin’ and breakin’ up songs, and once again, it’s her subtle insight and clever wordplay that win the day. The stab of irony and inventive melody of “How’s The Getting Over Me Going” should win some kind of Cindy Walker songwriting prize.
The most soulful band from the rocking edge of bluegrass hit their 20th year at full speed in 2025, releasing Outrun on the revived Sun Records. They’ve been through a few lead singers since the Chris Stapleton era, but Matt Dame is crushing it with a versatile voice that uplifts songs written these days mostly by founding fiddler Tammy Rogers, including gothic tales of death, prison and heartbreak. In other words, their wheelhouse.
Kathleen Edwards - Billionaire
Our favorite roots-rocking, songwriting, coffee-shop owning Canadian badass is back with her first LP since 2020. This time (are you sitting down?), Kathleen Edwards co-produces with Jason Isbell and in-demand engineer Gena Johnson. With some of the 400 Unit on loan, this collection couldn’t sound more nervy or provocative. The title track completely undercuts expectations, because the currency is grief, and being a billionaire is ultimately the saddest, loneliest thing one could be. “Need A Ride” stands out for me too, because she’s fed up with whining and exclusion and code-talking from both sides of the political divide. And it wasn’t Kathleen’s only release of the year either. She’ll blow you away interpreting songs by Tom Petty, John Prine, and Supertramp on Covers, released in March.
Marcus King Band - Darling Blue
This list spotlights the finest male soul/blues singers in Americana music - Mike Farris and John Cowan - and rounding out today’s titanic three is Marcus King, who’d be a star I think even if it wasn’t for his famously scintillating lead guitar. On Darling Blue, the 30-year-old ramblin’ man snaps back from the gloomy self-investigation of 2024’s Mood Swings with a variety of vibes and superb songwriting about hometown memories, recovery, and new love.
