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Just as we were pulling this week’s show together, the new album by Billy Strings arrived, and it’s quite a different deal than his Grammy-nominated Renewal or his Grammy-winning prior album Home. This is called Me/And/Dad, featuring his father Terry Barber playing the songs that defined Billy’s growing up with his best musical friend and mentor. It’s an amazing story and a wonderful traditional album with a killer guest band. We help Billy celebrate his dad and Doc Watson with “Way Downtown.” Also new this week, singles from the serene-voiced Marija Droze, some clever wordplay from Nashville’s Charlie Treat, a classic from The High & Wides and a barn burner from Appalachian Road Show. We also start a two-week nod to the Grammy bluegrass nominees this year with selections by Peter Rowan and the Infamous Stringdusters.

Todd Snider walked out alone on the stage of the Ryman Auditorium in late September looking radiant. The guy has great teeth for one thing, along with the ease and confidence earned from more than 30 years on stage. He was bolstered and beloved by the loyalist lifer fans that hang on his every word, spoken or sung. He told the one about his first open mic and the one about East Nashville character Skip Litz who loved Train Songs. Todd’s mother was on hand and it was her birthday, so we all sang for her. Two days later we sat down for a delightful, rambling conversation.

The Gibson Brothers, twice named IBMA Entertainers of the year, have taken some interesting musical sojourns on their recent albums, especially the R&B-flavored Mockingbird made with Dan Auerbach in 2018. And that’s great because Eric and Leigh have always deftly woven diverse influences into their harmonic convergence. But the release of “Dust,” the first single from a promised 2023 release, suggests a return to bluegrass form with a rolling banjo flow. It’s also a very well written song, so we’re proud to feature it this week. Also up, a new one from the Kody Norris Show, more from Frank Solivan’s Hold On album and legay tracks from Lynn Morris and the Johnson Mountain Boys. Bluegrass. What a good idea!

The Grammy Awards launched the Best Bluegrass Album category in 1989. Bill Monroe won for Southern Flavor. A young banjo player named Bela Fleck was nominated for his album Drive. More than three decades later, Mr. Fleck won in 2022 for his epic My Bluegrass Heart instrumental masterwork. Just before we put together this show, the nominees were announced for the February 5, 2023 awards and the nominees included artists we love and albums we’ve been playing: the Infamous Stringdusters, Molly Tuttle, Peter Rowan, Del McCoury and Yonder Mountain String Band. We’ve sprinkled music from those nominees, not necessarily from the new recordings, in to shows #36 and 37. Yonder launches us this week with “I Just Can’t” from their 2022 album Get Yourself Outside, which is not hard advice to those from their Colorado mountain home base. Also in the hour, new music from Colorado’s Jake Leg and Breakin’ Strings from Maine. And we remember what it sounded like when Chris Stapleton was an original Steeldriver.

The voice is the most important instrument in folk and country music, but most singers in the roots genres don’t push or prod or manipulate that instrument all that hard. Simplicity and clarity is generally more admired and desired than creativity or contrivance. So I’m interested in folk singers who do craft and sculpt their voice, because it’s risky. Too much affect or too much vibrato can break faith with the listener. Courtney Marie Andrews stands out in Americana for the artfulness of her voice, with its deliberate phrasing and graceful warble. It dovetails with her lyrics in a way that’s clearly behind her considerable success. So when we sat down for Episode 230 of The String, I asked her about it first.

The tenth Big Ears Music Festival would have been a landmark for 21st century music even with a lineup half as large, even without some of its biggest-drawing stars of jazz and indie folk. That an event this radically eclectic and this demanding in its curation could survive and thrive over more than a decade suggests something encouraging about our highly distracted and fractured 2020s culture. In Episode 242 of The String, I take a field trip to Knoxville, TN to share the story of the Big Ears idea, my impressions of some outstanding performances, and the voices of important creators who span the roots/jazz bridge – bassist and broadcaster Christian McBride, banjo innovator Béla Fleck, throwback country singer Sierra Ferrell, folk song collector and interpreter Jake Xerxes Fussell, and ambient jazz bandleader Rich Ruth.

San Francisco-based Miko Marks hit brick walls when she made her first run at country music in the mid 2000s, when the industry was systemically impenetrable to independent artists and even more so to artists of color. After taking more than a decade away from her passion, Marks was inspired to reconnect with her band and producers, and this time, she found a lane, made possible by excellent music. She's released three recordings in two years, each more interesting than the last, culminating in the country soul album Feel Like Going Home of late 2022. She's now been on the Grand Ole Opry and is touring the nation. Also in the hour, an archived moment with Shemekia Copeland, an artist working a similar fusion of southern roots and contemporary message.

Featuring Lauren Morrow, Jake Ybarra & Eddie 9V

This week’s opening number takes us way back with one of the more innovative bands in bluegrass, because the Infamous Stringdusters have released the classic “Down The Road” from their upcoming album-length tribute to Flatt & Scruggs. Due April 21, the album follows up on the band’s Grammy-nominated tribute to Bill Monroe. Also new in Episode 53 is a hard rolling take on Uncle Dave Macon’s “Railroadin’ and Gamblin’” from their sophomore album expected this summer and a new track from alt-country hero Robbie Fulks who has announced a full bluegrass album on Compass Records on April 7. What a year for new releases! We’re super fond of The Fly Birds cover of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe” and we’ve got a block of train songs inspired by Thomm Jutz and Tim Stafford.

New singles are budding out like spring flowers, including the first traditional music since 2001 from Chicago’s bluegrass ambassadors the Henhouse Prowlers. And it’s called “My Little Flower,” so take a sweet whiff and enjoy it as a kickoff to another eclectic hour. We were excited to get a new album from Nicole Christianson, wife of fiddler Brian, and we had a hard time picking among the tasty originals and covers on this self-titled, self-released debut. She won the old-time vocal category at the 2022 Tennessee Valley Old Time Fiddlers Convention, so expect to hear more from her. Also new and exciting is Fireside Collective’s take on Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” I was unsure how this would work, but the NC gang nails it. Looking back, you’ll hear Don Reno and the Osborne Brothers with Mac Wiseman on a Bill Monroe song.