Arts and Entertainment

A few years ago, Colorado’s Tyler Grant was twanging an electric guitar and touring with his band Grant Farm. After the pandemic, he joined the world of river guiding and entertaining customers on trips through some of the West’s most beautiful and important canyons. Now Grant has circled back to the music that propelled him into the spotlight as guitar player in the Emmitt-Nershi Band - bluegrass guitar. His new album Flatpicker is a mix of instrumentals and songs, but they’re all about the places and stories of the western land he cherishes.

Over a 15-year career that began in Boston’s jazz and old-time scene, Nashville-based Miss Tess has distinguished herself with a hybrid blend of contemporary songwriting and vintage, swinging Americana. On her newest, the widely traveled artist taps a long love affair with Cajun country in Louisiana, yet it’s her own blend rather than a traditional homage. Our conversation spans her upbringing in Maryland, her passion for early blues and jazz, her fascinating musical relationships and her annual immersion in the Blackpot festival in Lafayette, where she made the new Cher Rêve.

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.

Last year, the biggest-ever study of the health of Nashville music venues found a scene full of challenges. “Real estate and other costs are becoming increasingly expensive, making new venues hard to start,” it said. But you can’t keep a good Music City down, and recent months have seen several openings, conspicuously Skinny Dennis in East Nashville and The Pinnacle downtown, with more in the planning. Others have considered moving. With all the flux and rumors, we decided to take our own survey of the venues that feature roots music on a regular basis and that have a fresh story to tell.

Sean McConnell was born to do this. His parents were working songwriters who helped him get started as a teen in Atlanta. He landed a long-term song publishing deal while still in school at MTSU and earned cuts by Tim McGraw, Martina McBride, Brett Young, and the TV show Nashville. Over 15 recordings - his latest is the lovely and agonizingly honest Skin - McConnell has become a beloved troubadour on the indie folk circuit and an honorary red dirt Texas poet through extensive touring there. Now he’s grown as a producer working out of his unique studio in Nolensville. I made a trip down there to interview Sean in his cozy working habitat.

Adam Wright is one of the most thoughtful wordsmiths in the Nashville songwriting community, one who’s seen all sides of the Music Row machine. Working for a dozen years with Carnival Music, he’s carved a niche for himself, scoring a couple of Grammy Award nominations and landing cuts by Lee Ann Womack, Alan Jackson, Garth Brooks, Brandy Clark and Bruce Robison, among others. When he sets aside time to write songs purely for himself as an artist, remarkable things happen, and now he’s releasing an epic 18-song collection called Nature Of Necessity, a masterwork that could only have been realized in Music City.

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.

We’re halfway between Americanafest 2024 and 2025 - the Roots Music Equinox if you will. And we bring that up because we’ve recently posted the last in a long string of performance videos from last Fall’s famous WMOT Day Stage. It’s our carefully curated showcase at East Side Bowl, with lineups so good that many folks bring a chair and post up for entire days or even the entire three days of the annual festival-within-a-festival. And we’re hoping that this collection of performances takes you back - or brings to your attention - to the superb music we’ve been sharing this winter.

WMOT isn’t the only Nashville radio station that opened a new studio in 2024. The other one is twice as old and changed American music history. WSM 650 AM, known since the 1930s as the Air Castle of the South, conceived and built the Grand Ole Opry, oversaw a massive, multi-genre live music apparatus, launched the business environment known as Music Row, and even gave Music City its identity and name. And this coming Oct. 5 will be its 100th birthday. So it was due to get some gifts, including a new broadcast studio and museum.

Sierra Hull brings a measure of small-town delight and innocence to roots and bluegrass that perfectly compliments her innate gifts and her formal schooling in high level music-making. The mandolinist, songwriter, singer, and band leader has emerged, since her youthful debut in 2008, as a star of her field and an inspiring figure in Americana. Her four IBMA Mandolin Player of the Year awards are part of the story. But so is her composing, her collaborating and her records. The first in five years - and her first independent release - is A Tip Toe High Wire, coming March 7. This episode complements a bio-oriented show in 2018, emphasizing Hull’s recent work with Béla Fleck, Cory Wong and others, and of course the thought behind and production of her newest release.