Arts and Entertainment

Hayes Carll is such an admired veteran of the Texas songwriting tradition that his visage is painted on a sign along with Townes Van Zandt at the Old Quarter Cafe in Galveston. Over ten albums, he’s matched cleverness with insight and tenderness with roadhouse rock and roll. In this self-effacing interview, Carll talks about his apprentice years at that storied bar, his adjustments after being signed to a Music Row label, and his vulnerable new album We’re Only Human.

After a three-year tutelage with Old Crow Medicine Show, multi-faceted Appalachian artist Mason Via has set out on his own road. He was raised in bluegrass festival campgrounds and at picking parties hosted by his dad, songwriter and musician David Via. Bluegrass royalty hung out at his home near the North Carolina/Virginia border, and it’s rubbed off. After trying a few musical directions, Via’s self-titled album of this year shows range, depth, and a command of bluegrass and country moods. Meet a 28-year-old you’ll be hearing a lot more about if you follow acoustic roots.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops changed roots music history between forming in 2005 and disbanding about a decade later. In Don’t Get Trouble in Your Mind: The Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Story, independent filmmaker John Whitehead bears witness to every stage of their journey, including their first meeting, their tutelage with fiddler Joe Thompson, their rise to Grammy-winning fame, and their dissolution amid different priorities and personal strife. It is newly available to stream free on several platforms.

WMOT’s Americanafest Day Stage has a new home for 2025. We’ve just announced that our largest-ever slate of artists will perform live on the air from the stage of Riverside Revival, WMOT’s home-away-from-home in East Nashville, at 1600 Riverside Drive. It’s a change provoked by an earlier-than-usual Americanafest, but our time-tested approach remains - some of the most notable names in roots music performing live on the air between noon and six, Wednesday to Friday, Sept. 10-12 in the serene old church sanctuary. Click through to see our daily lineups!

These doggy days of July and August invite us to stay indoors, and I’m fine with that, because I can listen to records. With so many good albums arriving and with so much noise and nonsense out there to sift through, I felt inspired to pause and recognize some of the best recent and local music being released in our Americana space, especially those that might be off the popular radar. We’ll all have opinions about the new Tyler Childers album soon enough. Ketch Secor’s new one is a major statement that I’m working on covering in depth. But here are profiles of eight recent records with Nashville origins and originality. I’m grateful to our Local Brew host Ana Lee for suggesting some of these titles.

Few fully independent artists in any genre have been able to grow to the scale and influence that Cody Jinks has pulled off in the outlaw country space. He sells out iconic venues like Red Rocks in Colorado with a sound that layers his boyhood influence from Lefty Frizzell with the edge of the thrash metal rocker he once was. The Fort Worth native “put in the reps” for countless years in bars and honky tonks, nearly going broke, before albums like I’m Not The Devil and Lifers vaulted him to the big time in the years before the pandemic. He’s now out with In My Blood, an album that basks in his newfound sobriety and a new focus on himself and his family, making this a very candid and fascinating interview with a self-made country star whom mainstream radio virtually overlooks.

While it’s one of the great music cities in the world, the story of Memphis, TN is generally told as one about Elvis, BB King, Isaac Hayes, and possibly Justin Timberlake - artists from the history books or well on in their careers. Roots music fans might know more contemporary talents like songwriters Amy LaVere and John Paul Keith. Many others simmer along in that city’s bars and clubs, but one has to go there to get up to speed on the talent pool. Southern Avenue is different - a breakout band from Bluff City with national acclaim, a renowned record label, and a musical voice grounded in native soil and native soul. It’s the band today’s Memphis has needed.

Superstars Alison Krauss and Billy Strings stand out among this year’s IBMA Award nominations, which were announced on Wednesday morning. But a coincidentally timed show at Tuesday’s Bluegrass Nights At The Ryman series went at least as far in telling the story of where the genre is going in 2025. The co-bill featured AJ Lee & Blue Summit and East Nash Grass, artists enjoying their national breakouts and who are both now in the running for major awards in September when the International Bluegrass Music Association brings its World of Bluegrass convention for the first time to Chattanooga.

To hear Mike Farris sing - an experience a bit like being pinned to the seat of an accelerating Porsche Taycan - is to believe that he was born to the stage, motivated from childhood, and destined for soul/gospel glory. Yet in Episode 327 of The String, we learn that A) Mike is lucky to be here at all and B) that a singing career was not remotely on his own radar until he was approaching his 20th birthday. And the two are related. In his teens, Farris almost died from drug abuse. Music was part of his rescue. And I’ve never heard him go as deep on these subjects as he does in this hour. His newest album is a powerful, secular record recorded at FAME Studios called The Sound Of Muscle Shoals.

Andrea Zonn and John Cowan have a few years under their belts as co-lead vocalists in the Nashville supergroup The HercuLeons, and now they have a debut album to complement their regular shows at 3rd & Lindsley. Given that they have significant touring commitments with superstar bands The Doobie Brothers (Cowan) and James Taylor (Zonn), they’ve done well to corral this assembly of musicians and songs. They’re both Music City veterans with rich stories to tell, so we’ve given them each their own episode of The String.