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Featuring Minor Gold, Lynn Taylor & the Barflies and Andy Sydow

Atlanta native Kristina Murray moved to Nashville in 2014 with a fresh and original debut album and steely determination. The country singer and songwriter carved out a respected space at honky tonks like Santa’s Pub and the American Legion. When hard work and critical acclaim for her two releases didn’t launch her career to a new orbit, it felt like defeat. That, plus the pandemic, fueled some challenging times and emotions that inspired her new one, Little Blue, a lovely, lament-filled album on New West’s Normaltown imprint. Murray is due for new waves of attention, and we talk about how hard that is to manifest in this edition of The String.

Featuring Afton Wolfe, Shelby Means & Johnson Jay

The Devil Makes Three has been one of roots music’s outstanding if quiet success stories of the past twenty years. Formed in Santa Cruz, CA in 2001, they got out ahead of the O Brother phenomenon and built a unique, crowd-pleasing sound through a renegade admixture of early blues, hard country and gospel. In this hour, founding singer and songwriter Pete Bernhard reflects on a career that’s surprised him and the joyful process behind the rather dark and candid album Spirits, their tenths as a band.

Featuring Goldpine, The Band Loula & King Margo.

Molly Payne, Vinnie Paolizzi & Dustin Brown.

As the new year dawned, the first emerging artist that started buzzing on our radar was a California native living in Nashville with an emotional country-noir debut album called Silver Rounds. She was Olivia Wolf, and now months later, her album has proven its staying power, with critical acclaim and a long run on the Americana chart. She’s no youngster, so our conversation dives into her background and her long, patient journey to fully committing herself as a songwriter/artist. That story includes coming of age at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival and a tragic event in her life that inspired many of her best songs.

Featuring Webb Wilder Scott Cook & Gold Coast.

Eddie Adcock grew up in rural Virginia, left home at age 14 to evade farm work, and wound up boxing and playing music with regional bands. He sold a calf to buy his first banjo and learned to play the instrument in a couple of weeks before his first gig. That’s just part of Eddie’s amazing story, whose most famous chapter is his decade-plus with the classic lineup of the Country Gentlemen. The beloved musician died in March at 86 years old, and we pay tribute to the bluegrass hall of famer this hour with a couple of jaw dropping instrumentals included in a special set. Also this week, the first single on Sun Records for the Steeldrivers and new sides by Mason Via, Ashby Frank, and Special Consensus. Amy’s own Golden Shoals duo has a new one featuring Mark Kilianski’s masterful guitar picking as well.

Susto is a popular indie folk and rock collective from Charleston, SC founded and led by songwriter Justin Osborne. Holler Choir is a progressive bluegrass and folk band from Asheville, NC led by the voice of songwriter Clint Roberts. Through what they call serendipitous connections, these creative forces joined up to spawn the Susto String Band. Not only are they touring around, they made a dynamic album on New West that they called Vol. 1, the most optimistic title one can lend to a project. We play the jaunty opening track “Mt. Caroline” in this show, but there are more great songs we’ll be visiting in future weeks. Also new this week is a collaborative single from Missy Raines and Allegheny that includes west coast bluegrass legends Laurie Lewis and Kathy Kallick. Balsam Range dropped a powerful single featuring vocals by new part-time collaborator Don Rigsby. And Alison Brown and Steve Martin are back at it with a song by Steve and a vocal by Tim O’Brien. It's about the road life that Amy Alvey knows so well: “Five Days Out, Two Days Back.” Oh yeah, and we have the new Seldom Scene singing Bob Dylan, so not bad!