Arts and Entertainment

The grown-up musical game of Choose Your Own Adventure that is Americanafest has come and gone for 2025, and I for one feel like a winner. I paced myself, hydrated, and kept mileage and traffic to a minimum. Maybe I’m learning something at last, after 25 of these carnivals. If there was an overarching theme, I didn’t sense it. I saw hundreds of artists keeping it real, working hard, and making new fans and allies. Here’s some of what I saw and loved.

The 24th Americana Music Honors & Awards took place Wednesday night at the Ryman Auditorium. Powerhouse vocalist and songwriter Nathaniel Rateliff won a surprise Album of the Year. Sierra Ferrell accepted Artist of the Year in absentia. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings returned to the winner’s circle. And Lifetime Achievement Awards went to Darrell Scott, Joe Henry, the Old 97’s, and the McCrary Sisters, who delivered the most emotional performance of the night.

Rodney Crowell let it slip in the middle of this interview that it was the eve of his 75th birthday. One of America’s greatest (and most commercially successful) songwriters is now three quarters of a century old, a steady patriarch. He continues to do excellent work, evidenced by two fine albums in a row, 2023’s The Chicago Sessions and the brand new Airline Highway. In both cases he collaborated with younger producers and musicians, spreading his wisdom around and drawing on their ideas and spirit. In his second appearance on The String, Crowell talks about maintaining his writing discipline, working with Jeff Tweedy and Tyler Bryant, and waking up to Louisiana R&B music as a teenager.

With Americanafest 2025 roaring through Nashville this week like the streamlined mad dog cyclone train in Guy Clark’s “Texas 1947,” our music journalist Craig Havighurst looks past the proven stars to the upstarts, newcomers, change agents, returning veterans, and fun stuff as an alt-alt-guide to the festivities ahead.

Watch the Official AmericanaFest Day Stage presented by WMOT, NPR Music and World Cafe Sept. 10-12 from 12p to 6p

After 12 years in Raleigh, NC, the International Bluegrass Music Association is moving its long-running World Of Bluegrass industry convention to the East Tennessee city of Chattanooga, where it will take over the convention center, music venues, and city parks between Sept. 16 and 20, just one week after Americanafest. Ask the IBMA, and they’ll say there are no big shifts or surprises in the structure and nature of the convention. It’s the same idea in a new town. Except there is a big new dynamic, and his name is Billy Strings.

It’s been 30 years since three music business renegades created a radio chart for an emerging alt-country, roots music wave they called Americana. Now that it’s a mature format and movement, we’re seeing books emerge on the history of this idea. Poets And Dreamers: My Life In Americana Music is Tamara Saviano’s contribution, a warm and affectionate, people-driven story about a community and a big bold commitment to art over commerce. As publicist/tour manager for Kris Kristofferson and biographer of Guy Clark, she’s had an insider’s view, and it comes out in this fun romp of a read. She’s also my old friend, so this is a cozy and fascinating talk.

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.