Arts and Entertainment

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings introduced themselves to the world 30 years ago with their seminal Americana recording Revival. Now, they’re tapping their shared youthful love of the Grateful Dead on an extensive tour celebrating the 45th anniversary of the live acoustic album Reckoning. In between, the duo/couple has made an indelible mark on American roots, with Grammy Awards and an Americana lifetime achievement award for songwriting. Just before the tour’s launch with a pair of Brooklyn Bowl shows last weekend, Craig caught up with Gillian Welch for this Q&A.

The Infamous Stringdusters emerged out of Nashville’s world-class but somewhat undiscovered bluegrass scene of the 2000s. Six guys with different professional pathways into the music and wide ranging tastes in other genres got to know each other at gigs, picking parties, and the IBMA World of Bluegrass. And their first gesture as a band - the 2007 album Fork In The Road - was a triumph, winning three IBMA Awards. Since those days and after a couple of early personnel changes, today’s quintet has become a huge force in jamgrass music with a fierce and in-demand live show. Yet they turn back to some of the simpler and more blues-based elements of their core heritage on their new 20th anniversary release, 20/20.

He was an East Tennessee country guitar prodigy who was invited on the Grand Ole Opry at age 11 by Marty Stuart, and Trey Hensley has made good on that promise by emerging as one of the finest singers and pickers in contemporary roots music. His national profile took shape after forming a super-flexible duo with dobro master Rob Ickes around 2016. Now, after four albums, collaborations with Taj Mahal and a Grammy nomination, Hensley has revved up his songwriting and made Can’t Outrun The Blues, which is not his first solo album but the one he regards as his true artistic debut.

Just days after one of his storied shows at the Station Inn with some of the leading lights of bluegrass music, singer and songwriter Ronnie Bowman was killed in a motorcycle accident, leaving music-lovers and music-makers across Nashville and the national bluegrass community shocked and saddened. He died on Sunday afternoon at 64 years old.

The soundtrack to the Depression-era movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? came out in the final weeks of 2000 and was certified Platinum by February of 2001, making this the 25th anniversary of the year that the multi-artist masterpiece shook up country music and became the biggest boost for old-time folk, blues, and bluegrass in decades. With a recent Grand Ole Opry special celebration as a backdrop, Craig Havighurst revisits the album’s story, its songs, and its impact on American culture.

When Emily Scott Robinson released Appalachia, her fifth album in a 10-year career and her third for Nashville boutique Oh Boy Records, it spiked up into the Americana airplay top ten, something that had never happened to her before. But she had set the table through quality songwriting, ambitious touring, and a luminous voice that embraces the dark and the light with a rare alchemy. At WMOT’s Eastside studio, Craig and Emily speak about her newest work with super-producer Josh Kaufman and the hard work that led to it.

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.