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Last week’s featured fiddler with a solo album was McCoury brother from another mother Jason Carter. This week it’s Andy Leftwich, whom most of us got to know during his nearly twenty years with Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder. Now he’s moved on and is spending more time producing gospel music, playing sessions and rolling out new material. His new album is The American Fiddler and we’ve got the title cut. Fellow fiddle maestro Michael Cleveland has something new on the way, and we’re teasing that with a guest vocal tour de force featuring Dan Tyminski and Jeff White. Also in the hour, new music from Theo & Brenna, Sam Bush and Jake Blount.

Folk singer Willi Carlisle is one of the most compelling and disarming young troubadours in the country. On his superb 2022 album Peculiar, Missouri, he’s empathetic, insightful, poignant and a little profane. On stage, he’s boisterous and whimsical and tender, a songster and raconteur in the lineage of Steve Goodman and Utah Phillips and Woody Guthrie.

The last time Gary Nichols cut a studio album was in 2014 when he recorded a Grammy Award-winning project with The Steeldrivers in his native area of Muscle Shoals, AL. But he quietly stepped away from that fantastic group in 2017 without much explanation. Now he’s gone public to say he was confronting substance abuse issues and that he’s back with a clear vision for what’s next. So it’s gratifying to spin his first single for RBR Entertainment “Fire In The Dark” by Billy Droze, Eddie Wilson, and Chris Myers. Also this week, a new single for Chris Jones, who’s on a hot streak of #1 songs at bluegrass radio and one from Jaelee Roberts’s superb 2022 debut album. We throw back with Claire Lynch, the Wildwood Valley Boys and Charles Sawtelle.

If I were to praise Joe Henry’s resume, you’d be justified in asking which one? On one hand he’s an acclaimed recording artist with more than 15 albums to his credit, including collaborations with folk icon Billy Bragg and jazz genius Ornette Coleman. At the same time, his life as a record producer has been at least as extraordinary, having steered albums by Bonnie Raitt, the Carolina Chocolate Drops and the historic pairing of Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint. It’s hard to think of any musician in American roots music who’s been as prolific on both sides of the studio glass as he has. He’s also a writer and thinker of great depth, as we find out in Episode 239 of The String.

Featuring Jim Salestrom, William Prince & Hanna Bethel

Episode #47 arrived soon after the 2023 Grammy Awards, so it became yet another great excuse to play music from Nashville’s Molly Tuttle after her remarkable Crooked Tree was named Best Bluegrass Album of the year. But that wasn’t the only music getting us through sloggy February. We discovered the new all-star band known as Wood Box Heroes, featuring Josh Martin, Matt Menefee, Seth Taylor, Jenee Fleenor and Barry Bales. They’re all respected figures from the bluegrass circuit, so we’re anticipating their first album together later this year. Also new this week, tracks from Carly Arrowood and Jason Barrie. And we throw it back with the immortal duo of David Grisman and Doc Watson, plus our latest historic obsession, Red Smiley and the Bluegrass Cutups.

Nashville can’t claim many national-scale, native-born musical stars. Second generation music legends don’t count. I’m talking about townies like Kitty Wells or Bobby Hebb. Yet with a move back to Tennessee during the pandemic, Sunny War joins the list. She’s back in the city where she was born and spent more than a decade with a huge story to tell and a new album that’s being celebrated nationally and in Europe. Anarchist Gospel is a one-of-a-kind record with the most imaginative textures and potently delivered lyrics of this new year in roots music. It’s a rock and roll record drawn from California punk and pop, mixed with a girlhood fascination with Chet Atkins and the blues.

Featuring Slowforce, Stella Prince & Jobi Riccio.

Featuring Stevie Redstone, Rob Ickes & Trey Hensley and Alex Mabey

Ron Sexsmith's brilliant solo debut album of 1995 - the one with the song "Secret Heart" - was on the verge of being overlooked and forgotten when Elvis Costello endorsed it as one of his favorite projects in a major magazine. It changed the conversation about the young balladeer, and he was soon recognized as one of Canada's finest songwriters. Now a dozen great artists have covered "Secret Heart" and Ron is 17 albums in to a rewarding and esteemed career. We talk about those tenuous early days, about his move from Toronto to the country and the resulting album The Vivian Line.