Arts and Entertainment

Justin Townes Earle, blazingly gifted and deeply troubled, died of an accidental drug overdose in 2020 at the age of 38, after a life beset by addiction. Six years later, two coincident projects expand on what we knew about the songwriter with a mix of compassion and regret. Sammy Brue, Earle’s much younger friend and protegé, has written a song cycle based on Justin’s private notebooks, shared by his widow. Rolling Stone journalist Jonathan Bernstein recently published the first definitive biography of Steve Earle’s son. Both join Craig in this hour of remembrance and appreciation.

Clay Street Unit, an eclectic roots band formed in 2021, blazed up the ladder of venues in their home town of Denver, CO before hitting the road. In just over two years, they’ve graduated to full-sized rock clubs, choice festival bookings and opening dates at Red Rocks. They recently swung through Nashville to play a sold-out Basement East and the Grand Ole Opry. On the go as they are, lead singer Sam Walker and mandolinist and co-songwriter Scottie Bolin stopped by WMOT to talk about their journey so far.

Since breaking out with his 1989 major-label album How Did You Find Me Here, North Carolina’s David Wilcox has been a consistently excellent practitioner of the new folk, fingerstyle guitar arts. The songwriter, known for his empathic writing and audience-embracing shows, is now 67 and still thinking deep thoughts about the world, compassion, art, and the arc of life. He stopped through Nashville last November to talk about maintaining a “visionary attitude” over time and his latest album The Way I Tell The Story.

For its 38th annual conference, Folk Alliance International returned to New Orleans, home of their largest-ever event (2020’s draw of 3,600 people) and the epicenter of one of the nation’s great regional roots music legacies. Besides a slate of Louisiana talent in blues, Cajun and zydeco, FAI was once again distinguished by diversity of style, genre, and nationality. Craig captured conversations with showcasing artists Joy Clark, Tyler Ramsey & Carl Broemel, Sparrow Smith, Maisy Owen, and Rachel Sumner & Traveling Light.

Nashville musicians comprise a brotherhood and sisterhood like no other, and on Sunday, hundreds of them and their loved ones gathered at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum to remember and pay respect to pedal steel guitar player and music scholar Pete Finney, who died on Feb. 7 at 70 years old. They packed the 215 seats in the Ford Theater while at least another hundred people listened to music and memories over speakers in the Hall’s atrium.

Kristina Train is a singer and songwriter who should be on more people’s radar. Her remarkable resume was built in the jazz world (Blue Note Records and touring with Herbie Hancock), but the Savannah, GA native has always shown a seductive strain of country soul. That goes explicit on the powerful yet subtle 2025 album County Line. Craig speaks with Train about her critically acclaimed albums of the 2010s and her decade or so as a Nashvillian.

Mavis Staples and the folk supergroup I’m With Her were validated as the class of the Americana field at the Grammy Awards on Sunday, while the prime time broadcast sidelined roots music just when Americans need it most. Interest in folk, hard country, and bluegrass seem on the rise in the marketplace, but you wouldn’t know it from the almost eight hours of ceremony split between an afternoon online segment and what’s now known to be CBS’s final network broadcast of the Recording Academy’s signature event.

Just over two hours from Nashville, the north Alabama town of Muscle Shoals and its nearby communities became an unlikely but ultra-rich musical wellspring in the 1960s. And seems to have made history in every decade since, right up to today. A new exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and a huge new book offer fans of American music two ways into this dynamic and soulful story.

Rachael Price became an American fixture as the dynamic and flawless lead singer of roots/pop phenomenon Lake Street Dive. Long before she and the Dive were headlining Madison Square Garden, she was a Hendersonville, TN native pursuing a career in classic jazz, after her girlhood idol Ella Fitzgerald. This is the story of how a music school friend - guitarist, singer, and songwriter Vilray - helped her build a parallel life pursuing her first musical love. They have incredible chemistry on and off stage, as you’ll hear in this fascinating interview.

To say that a lot has happened since Molly Tuttle last appeared on The String in 2019 would be an understatement. She’s won two Grammy Awards and been nominated for two more. She won her first IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year Award, to go along with her two groundbreaking Guitar Player trophies. But most important, she’s been through two entire stylistic swings in her musical vision and recording career. And she got engaged to Ketch Secor. So we cover a lot of ground in our latest conversation.