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The Creative Freedom Behind Leyla McCalla's 'Sun Without the Heat'
Artist of the MonthJan 22, 2024

Stripping away convention, honing in on narrative, and keeping complex melodies afloat with her ethereal vocals, Sarah Jarosz is a superlative presence in the roots music landscape. The daughter of two schoolteachers hailing from Wimberley, Texas, she began learning to play the mandolin at age 9. By the time she turned 12, Sarah was already…

The Creative Freedom Behind Leyla McCalla's 'Sun Without the Heat'
Artist of the MonthJan 19, 2024

Perspective. A universal concept, but also something which bears the potential to be entirely different from one person to the next. How one person views a setting, an experience – or even something as simple and innocent as a Polaroid picture – can set the tone for how they come to hold onto and look…

The Creative Freedom Behind Leyla McCalla's 'Sun Without the Heat'
Artist of the MonthJan 4, 2024

The songs of Sarah Jarosz have always been snapshots. Each, whether literally or obliquely, is a tableau – a window into a moment in time, an attempt to capture but never contain the intangible present. Whether demonstrable story songs or abstract, poetic text paintings, Jarosz's catalog of material shows a ubiquitous skill – a writerly…

The Creative Freedom Behind Leyla McCalla's 'Sun Without the Heat'
Artist of the MonthDec 27, 2023

To complete our Dawg in December Artist of the Month series, we asked several musicians who have worked with and made music with the inimitable David Grisman what it’s like to really know him. A mythological figure in American roots music, the Dawg remains remarkably accessible and embedded in the scene, despite his unofficial role…

The Creative Freedom Behind Leyla McCalla's 'Sun Without the Heat'
Artist of the MonthDec 22, 2023

In early 1993, David “Dawg” Grisman, Jerry Garcia, and Tony Rice gathered around a few microphones in Dawg’s Mill Valley, California recording studio. It was a casual, after-hours jam session during the recording of Tone Poems (Grisman and Rice), but engineer David Dennison kept the tapes rolling, capturing and preserving one of the most significant…

The Creative Freedom Behind Leyla McCalla's 'Sun Without the Heat'
The Creative Freedom Behind Leyla McCalla's 'Sun Without the Heat'