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Kristina Train is a singer and songwriter who should be on more people’s radar. Her remarkable resume was built in the jazz world (Blue Note Records and touring with Herbie Hancock), but the Savannah, GA native has always shown a seductive strain of country soul. That goes explicit on the powerful yet subtle 2025 album County Line. Craig speaks with Train about her critically acclaimed albums of the 2010s and her decade or so as a Nashvillian.

Featuring Mic Harrison, Mark Erelli & Connor Daly.

Featuring Michael Reynolds, Andy Sydow & Bryan Simpson

Featuring Certainly So, Randall Bramblett & Cyrena Wages

This week on The String, Molly Tuttle is the link in common between two of the exceptional breakout artists during an exciting era of bluegrass music. Bronwyn Keith-Hynes is the electrifying fiddle player in Tuttle’s band Golden Highway and a two time IBMA Fiddle Player of the Year. We get into her journey from Charlottesville, VA to school at Berklee to Nashville and the latest chapter in her solo life, the wonderful album I Built A World. AJ Lee and Tuttle go back even farther, to the family band they shared growing up in the fertile bluegrass community of California. AJ Lee, an exceptional and original singer, has led her own band Blue Summit for nine years, and their newest album City Of Glass is one reason they were nominated as IBMA New Artist of the Year for 2024.

Featuring Eliza Thorn, Mabilene & Amber Rubarth & Jake Etheridge

Featuring Mac Leaphart, Avocado Sundae & The Deltaz.

It’s an immigrant story like no other. JesseLee Jones pined for something bigger growing up in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He got glimpses of American music and a guitar, and with that a long journey began. After landing in the states, and getting robbed by the way, he found his way to a family in the midwest who took him in and helped him build a life. In the early 90s, destiny brought him to Nashville and a ramshackle honky tonk and boot store that he would help turn into Robert’s Western World, the pivotal and most famous honky tonk in Nashville. On the 25th anniversary of owning and running this legendary club, Jones tells his story, including the formation of his own long-running band, Brazilbilly.

Losing fiddler Bobby Hicks on Aug. 16 at the age of 91 may have been the biggest passing in bluegrass music since last summer when Jesse McReynolds and Bobby Osborne died close together. Hicks, a Bluegrass Hall of Famer, is among the greatest fiddlers in the music’s history. He grew up in the 30s and 40s in Greensboro NC and won his first state fiddle championship at age 12. He became a Blue Grass Boy for Bill Monroe in 1953, and we can hear him in show #121 playing on the legendary “Wheel Hoss.” We hear from his time with the Bluegrass Album Band supergroup, and with Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, a tenure that lasted from 1981 to 2004. He’ll be missed! Also this hour, new album releases from East Nashville’s Greenwood Rye, blues man Jontavious Willis, and labor-friendly songwriter Si Kahn.

For show #122 we lead off with Sister Sadie from the new multi-artist Bluegrass Sings Paxton album that’s finally out from Mountain Home. Artists including Alice Gerrard, Claire Lynch, Danny Paisley, and Tim O’Brien sing Tom Paxton songs, which have long found their way to bluegrass artists’ repertoires. The Sadie ladies offer perhaps his most famous, “Last Thing On My Mind.” Then we let the Earl Scruggs Festival inspire us for a block. From the Labor Day festivities in Rutherfordton, NC, we pulled tracks by artists the Earls of Leicester, Darrell Scott and his string band, The Steeldrivers, and young mando player Wyatt Ellis. Plus a bit of the immortal Flatt & Scruggs from their Carnegie Hall album, which the Earls and friends played at the festival in this year’s classic album hour. Also this show, blues from Jerron Paxton, new old time from Chris Coole, and a pretty folk anthem from Kentucky’s Sam Gleaves.