Search results for

Featuring Jabe Beyer, Caitlin Canty & Miss Tess

Since arriving in Nashville in 2007, cellist Larissa Maestro has built a rich and varied life as a studio and stage musician, with a long list of live and recorded credits that includes Margo Price, Brandi Carlile, Kyshona Armstrong, the Lone Bellow, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, and Eric Church. She’s been part of high profile recording sessions for John Legend, Mickey Guyton, Wanda Jackson, and Ms. Lauryn Hill. And in recent years she’s had a particularly strong bond working with Allison Russell, last year’s three-time Grammy nominee - who calls Maestro “one of the most extraordinary musicians it has ever been my privilege to know - and one of the best people.”

She sounds like she was born into a country music family, but Sunny Sweeney was actually a late and somewhat reluctant bloomer as an artist. Her friends had to beg her to record her first album when she was playing bars in Austin. Then that record got picked up by a Nashville label and got her to the Grand Ole Opry. The major label system was a bad fit, but Sunny has pursued an exemplary indie career in the years since. Her mix of smarts, sass and lonesome blues infuses her latest album Married Alone.

Featuring Wylie & The Wild West, Jeff Plankenhorn and Erik Vincent Huey

Emily Nenni didn't fall in love with country music and then move to Nashville. She did the reverse, using the city's honky tonks and local haunts like a country music college. And instead of chasing the allure of the CMA Awards, the Bay Area native dove fully into the traditional end of the pool. Her sparky voice and detail-rich songs grabbed the attention of New West Records, which released her breakout album On The Ranch late last year.

In Old Fashioned #2, Craig and Amy spin new singles by the Po Ramblin’ Boys and Hogslop String Band, an a cappella number from Sad Daddy and Della Mae’s 2021 back-to-bluegrass album Family Reunion. Female bluegrass pioneer Alice Gerard is here, as produced by Hiss Golden Messenger’s M.C. Taylor. The voice of Sierra Ferrell is heart-stopping in a waltz-time ballad. And we get two sides of Vivian Leva and Reiley Calcagno, as a duo and a quartet in their old-time project The Onlies.

In Old Fashioned #3, we kick off with new music from East Nash Grass, the collective that holds down Monday evenings at Dee’s Lounge in Madison. The song comes from their 2021 self-titled debut. We also feature the band’s national champion fiddler Maddie Denton from her first solo debut Playin’ In This Town. Elsewise, you’ll hear music from the understated new duo project by Nashville’s Kieran Kane & Rayna Gellert, Justin Moses duetting with Blue Highway’s Shawn Lane and vintage Black string band music from Walter Jacobs and Lonnie Carter. Stick around to the end to hear one of the greatest bluegrass harmony duets of the 1990s.

We've visited so far this year with the Infamous Stringdusters and Greensky Bluegrass about their journeys to top billing slots in the acoustic hybrid scene known as jamgrass. In Episode 202, Craig interviews Adam Aijala and Ben Kauffman, founding members of Yonder Mountain String Band, possibly the dominant jamming bluegrass band of the past two decades.

We were able to fit in quite a few legendary figures into Episode 4, because many of them are alive and well and releasing new music. Larry Sparks put out the album New Moon Over My Shoulder just before the pandemic, almost exactly 50 years after his first release. Danny Paisley and Dale Ann Bradley, both IBMA vocalists of the year, joined forces for the fine song “One By One.” And we’ve got Roland White collaborating with a young Jim Lauderdale on the lost then found tapes that gave us Jim’s earliest recorded album, which was newly released in recent years. Also here, thrilling vocals from High Fidelity and Appalachian Road Show.

Joan Osborne became a star on the strength of a controversial song and a Grammy-nominated major label debut album in 1995, but when you scan her catalog, it becomes quickly clear that she has one of the most powerful and nuanced voices in popular music. Her range and intimacy is quite clear on her new release Radio Waves, which compiles radio station performances and demos she found in her closets during the pandemic. It becomes a great vehicle to talk about her rich and varied vocal pursuits.