Search results for

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.

In another conversation with a prominent musical couple, Craig visits the home of Rachael and Dominic John Davis, artists who work together and apart, always enhancing the Nashville ideal with their attention to detail and timeless musicianship. He's most famous for years playing bass in various projects with his boyhood friend Jack White, but he's also an in-demand sideman and record producer. Rachael is a singer's singer, raised on folk and roots music in small town Michigan. She's released several fine albums on her own and collaborated with numerous other artists, notably her recent trio called the Sweet Water Warblers.

The April 1 release of Molly Tuttle’s first-ever full-length bluegrass album is a cause for celebration in the roots music community and an excuse for us to play a block of music telling the story of her new record Crooked Tree and her influences. Besides her Woody Guthrie-style frolic “Big Back Yard” and the haunting ballad “The River Knows,” we spin a track from Tuttle’s California mentor Laurie Lewis and her girlhood friend and bandmate AJ Lee, whose band Blue Summit actually includes Molly’s brother Sullivan Tuttle. Also new is “Once Again,” a lonesome honky tonk number sung masterfully by Del McCoury. And we feature some of the hippest string bands going – The High And Wides fro Baltimore, The Wooks from Lexington, KY and Nashville and Fireside Collective from western NC. Nokosee Fields stands out in our old-time music as a young star bringing a bit of his Native American culture to traditional music.

Luther Dickinson, founding brother of the North Mississippi Allstars reflects on the band's 25 years evolution and two important albums. Up And Rolling contained the story of the band in words and photographs. The new Set Sail finds the venerable hill country band in new sonic terrain with some special guests.

We’ve been eagerly waiting for the release of Hurricane Clarice, the second album by the duo of Allison DeGroot (banjo) and Tatiana Hargreaves (fiddle), so we were pleased to drop their version of “Each Season Changes You,” a song from the catalog of the Osborne Brothers that gets a truly unique treatment here. Also in the show, rising star fiddler Laura Orshaw of the Po’ Ramblin Boys sings Hazel Dickens’s feminist anthem “Ramblin’ Woman,” which just had to happen. We offer up a pair of Cajun numbers and throwback favorites from JD Crowe, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, O Brother Where Art Thou? and Peter Rowan.

In Episode 204 of The String, Craig sits down with bluegrass patriarch and Hall of Famer Del McCoury, backstage at the Grand Ole Opry. With his warm voice and always twinkling humor, Del talks about joining Bill Monroe's band in 1963, finding national renown after 50 years old, and the pandemic-inspired song scouting on his new record Almost Proud.

New discoveries abound in this week’s Old Fashioned. Nashville mandolin man and hat-maker Scott Simontacchi slipped us the most recent album by his friend and collaborator David Long, whose project called Public Record: Songs and Stories sounds like a true 1950s throwback with its vintage recording gear and timeless songwriting. David’s played with Mike Compton and Karl Shiflett among others and he’s got a true swing. Also emerging is Eli West, a guitarist and song-singer from Seattle. His “Johnny Wombat” here features fiddler Christian Sedelmyer and mandolinist Andrew Marlin. Full Cord Bluegrass was new to us out of Grand Haven, MI, but not new to the ROMP festival, where they won 2021’s band contest. Jake Xerxes Fussell is garnering buzz out of Durham, NC for his folkloric song interpretation, and this one’s a special reading of “Handsome Molly” called “Breast of Glass.” Also in the hour, new hits from Molly Tuttle and Del McCoury, plus Tex Mex from Belen Escobedo and hearty a cappella gospel from the Fairfield Four.