Tag: BGS Podcast Network

The Working Songwriter: David Shaw of The Revivalists

Posted on by Cindy Howes

Our guest this week is David Shaw, the lead singer and principal songwriter of the rock band The Revivalists.

Originally hailing from Hamilton, Ohio, Shaw moved south to New Orleans after college graduation. A chance encounter with guitarist Zack Feinberg helped launch The Revivalists in 2007. After years of relentless touring, the band broke through nationally with 2015’s Men Amongst Mountains and the single “Wish I Knew You,” which went to number one at alternative radio and has since been certified triple platinum. The band has since amassed more than 1.6 billion streams worldwide.

Along the way, The Revivalists have opened for The Rolling Stones, The Black Crowes, and Dr. John. They’ve appeared at Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, the New Orleans Jazz Fest. They’ve also performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Austin City Limits.

“Wish I Knew You” earned an iHeartRadio Music Award nomination for Alternative Rock Song of the Year, while the band was nominated for Best New Rock/Alternative Rock Artist. Rolling Stone described their sound as “a Crescent City-rhythm spin on jam-band jubilee,” and Billboard has called them “a compelling blend of musical ingenuity and heart.”

I got a chance to catch up with David a few weeks ago to hear about his musical journey so far.

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Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen

Basic Folk: Jacob Sharp

Posted on by Cindy Howes

A founding member of the beloved North Carolina bluegrass-ish band Mipso, Jacob Sharp has always loved a team. He attributes this to being a middle child, which is the basis for his debut solo album, Middle Kid. Born and raised in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Jacob not only loved being on a team but also radiated towards musical collaboration on guitar and mandolin. He studied at UNC Chapel Hill where he met his bandmates and formed Mipso in 2012. He ended up moving to Brooklyn after school where he fell into a musical community with folks like Courtney Hartman, The Brother Brothers, and Sarah Jarosz. From there, he and his wife moved to Los Angeles, then to Altadena, until the tragic wildfires of 2025. They eventually made their way back east and now reside once again in North Carolina. Their young daughter is named after Jacob’s mother, who died when he was 21 years old, just weeks before Mipso’s first concert.

Jacob is such an interesting and gentle person to be in conversation with in ways that make you want to know his whole story, which is vast! He speaks about his early life as well as the loss of his mother and what that feels like in tandem with becoming a parent himself. He is actively sharing music and surrounding his young daughter with music; we talk about what that looks like and how she’s responded. Jacob is also very passionate about wine and shares where that came from and how it intersects with music. We also discuss the possible future or non-future of Mipso, who announced an indefinite hiatus on May 7, 2025, and wrapped up their final shows from October 8–9, 2025. I’m thrilled Jacob released his solo album! I have loved all the solo songs he has dropped so far and the new record does not disappoint.

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Photo Credit: Jude Zazadski

The Other 22 Hours: Richard Thompson

Posted on by Cindy Howes

Richard Thompson was a teenager when he co-founded the influential British folk-rock band Fairport Convention. In the six decades since, he wrote “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” (one of Time magazine’s greatest songs ever written), was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II, and landed among Rolling Stone’s 100 greatest guitarists. Yet when we asked what holds a working life together, his answers were small and practical: creative mornings before noon, a pile for every song that doesn’t fit, and an imaginary horse he starts catching at ten o’clock on show day. It’s a warm, wry conversation about sobriety since 23, the practice he keeps coming back to, and why “all the good songs are written in the margin.”

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In This Episode:

Go Deeper:

Watch: View this entire conversation above or on YouTube.
Explore: Find similar conversations in these themed playlists.
Connect: Join the conversation on Instagram.

The Other 22 Hours is hosted by Aaron Shafer-Haiss (producer, mixer, musician) and Michaela Anne (songwriter, artist, creative coach). More about Aaron’s work. More about Michaela Anne’s work.

Produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss. Original music written, performed and produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss.

Photo Credit: Paul Clampin

The Other 22 Hours: Charlie Worsham

Posted on by Cindy Howes

Charlie Worsham has spent twenty years becoming the guitar player Nashville calls first. He’s played in the bands of Vince Gill and Dierks Bentley, toured with Miranda Lambert and Taylor Swift, and been named CMA Musician of the Year and 2x ACM acoustic guitarist of the year. In August 2026, twenty years to the day after moving to town from Mississippi, he was invited by Vince Gill to join the Grand Ole Opry. He has also just released his first independent record after two solo records and two EPs for Warner Music.

And still, the end of a tour is a hard place to land. In this conversation, Charlie talks openly about coming home, the question he asks himself before he reaches for anything that numbs, and what it took for a lifelong A+ student to make peace with a C-. Plus, we talk about his tools and approaches to balancing mental health both at home and on the road. He also tells us about playing alongside a band of incarcerated men at Parchman Farm in Mississippi, and why those were some of the most important shows he’s ever played.

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In This Episode:

Watch: View this entire conversation above or on YouTube.
Explore: Find similar conversations in these themed playlists.
Connect: Join the conversation on Instagram.

The Other 22 Hours is hosted by Aaron Shafer-Haiss (producer, mixer, musician) and Michaela Anne (songwriter, artist, creative coach). More about Aaron’s work. More about Michaela Anne’s work.

Produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss. Original music written, performed and produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss.

Photo Credit: PJ Brown

Don’t Call Me Darlin’ Joins BGS Podcast Network

Posted on by Editor

The BGS team is excited to announce yet another addition to the BGS Podcast Network lineup for 2026, after Folk Files, The Other 22 Hours and the Working Songwriter came on board earlier this year. On October 19, 2026, a new podcast titled Don’t Call Me Darlin’ will join the BGS family. This makes the 16th show to partner with or be produced or distributed by the BGS Podcast Network. (Hear Episode One.)

Before social media, the women of bluegrass had a bright blue newsletter that showed up in the mailbox and said what no one would say out loud. In Don’t Call Me Darlin’, host Carolyn Kendrick and co-creator Tristan Scroggins hit the road to find the women Murphy Henry profiled decades ago, in a story about genre, identity, feminism, and the communities we built before the internet.

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What can our foremothers teach us about how to challenge the system? And when should we challenge our own expectations? In conversations with legends such as Alice Gerrard, Kristin Scott Benson, Laurie Lewis, Missy Raines, Alison Brown, Rhonda Vincent, Sierra Hull, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, and many more, our hosts learn how tradition can bring community together and how it can break it apart. Join Carolyn and Tristan on their road trip as they explore the paradoxical world of bluegrass: an American art form with American problems, strengths, and growing pains.

Don’t Call Me Darlin’ is based on the Women in Bluegrass newsletter that was published quarterly from 1994–2003 by Murphy Hicks Henry. More information about Murphy, including how to purchase her book Pretty Good for a Girl: Women in Bluegrass, can be found here.

Read the Women in Bluegrass digital archive, created by Tristan Scroggins
To help support the archive, consider making a tax-deductible donation

For more information on our hosts and their other ongoing projects, please visit:
Carolyn Kendrick
Tristan Scroggins
Follow Don’t Call Me Darlin’ on social media
Interested in sponsoring us? Contact BGS
Underwriting Inquiries

The Working Songwriter: Erin McAnally

Posted on by Cindy Howes

Our guest this week is Erin McAnally. Born in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and raised in Nashville, Erin grew up surrounded by the music business as the daughter of legendary songwriter and guitarist Mac McAnally. Over the years, she has worked in A&R, music publishing, and film and television scoring.

Alongside her husband and frequent collaborator Mick Utley, she co-wrote songs with Jimmy Buffett, including “Audience of One” and “Nobody Works on Friday,” both of which appeared on Buffett’s final album, Equal Strain on All Parts, released posthumously in 2023. She is also a founding member of Floating Collective, a musical project with Utley and Brendan Mayer, all three of whom are children of members of Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band. The group released its debut album in 2024.

Today, Erin serves as Executive Director of Songwriters of North America, advocating for the rights of working songwriters. Her work has taken her to SXSW, Americanafest, and Folk Alliance.

I got a chance to catch up with Erin McAnally to hear about her musical journey so far.

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Photo Credit: Erin McAnally

Folk Files: Cold as the Clay

Posted on by Cindy Howes

This episode is an exploration of ghost songs or, more accurately, “revenant ballads.” Ghosts are not particularly common in English ballads, so we’ll look at what circumstances are needed to summon a revenant into a song and discover how these supernatural lyrics interact with ancient superstitions from multiple cultures. These ghosts are mainly on the side of justice and love, but watch out: they can tear you to pieces if you wrong them.

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Find a list of all musical excerpts used in this episode.
On a Quiet Street Where Old Ghosts Meet by Jay Michaels
Learn about the newly unearthed concert from Jean Ritchie

Support Folk Files by joining the Patreon.
Folk Files is a member of The Bluegrass Situation.
Interested in sponsoring Folk Files? Contact BGS.

Host: Olivia Harding
Assistant Producer: Aaron J. Morton

Basic Folk: Charlie Parr

Posted on by Cindy Howes

It’s Lizzie No speaking to you from Dublin, Ireland, where I recently moved! It’s fall here which makes my mind wander back to my home state of origin, New Jersey, where leaves are undoubtedly changing and cider donuts are being consumed. I hope you’re enjoying autumn wherever you are.

This summer I said goodbye to Nashville, Tennessee, where I had been living for the past three years. I also worked on a bunch of projects, rehomed my beloved foster dog Dino, and prepared myself logistically to move to a new country. I don’t think it was possible to prepare myself emotionally, but the paperwork is done, thank god. I’m mentioning all of this from my desk in Dublin because it’s hitting me how quickly a transition period can become a major chapter of your life, how quickly a temporary living situation can become home, and how all of a sudden things that felt permanent have become memories.

This leads me to my interview with Minnesota folk singer Charlie Parr, whose new album, Rooming House, comes out on Smithsonian Folkways on October 16. Rooming House is an emotionally impactful musical story in seven acts. Like a lot of Charlie Parr’s music, this album feels like a play where the stakes feel so real that you can’t help but walk away more empathetic for having experienced it. The setting is a rooming house, and the characters are the folks from young to old who have been thrown together by circumstance. It’s the type of brilliantly observed story-album that we are lucky enough to get when imaginative artists from working class backgrounds have the courage to tell stories.

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In addition to being a prolific songwriter, Charlie Parr is a fabulous guitar player and student of the blues, so our conversation covers some of his musical backstory in addition to a discussion of the album. On a personal note, in 2020 I made an exhaustive cross-genre list of the songs from the decade of the 2010s which had been most important to me, and Charlie Parr’s “Cheap Wine” came in at #1. His songs have accompanied me through a lot of life changes, so today is a big day for me, and a big day for Basic Folk.

Photo Credit: Shelly Mosman

The Other 22 Hours: Buddy Miller

Posted on by Cindy Howes

If you don’t know Buddy Miller by name, you probably know his work. He joined Emmylou Harris’s band in the mid-1990s, has worked with artists from Robert Plant to Patty Griffin, is a Grammy winner and a multiple-time Instrumentalist of the Year with the Americana Music Association, and served as an executive music producer for the television series Nashville. Yet the collaboration he returns to most is the one at home. Buddy and his wife, Julie Miller, have made music together for more than forty years, through bankruptcy, a van full of gear, and the point where the road became too hard on her. In this open conversation, Buddy reflects on the pull between producer and partner, his honesty about where he fell short, and the record they made in the corner of their bedroom with red lights glowing in the dark. “We survived,” he says. “We came out different.”

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In This Episode:

Go Deeper:

Watch: View this entire conversation above or on YouTube.
Explore: Find similar conversations in these themed playlists.
Connect: Join the conversation on Instagram.

The Other 22 Hours is hosted by Aaron Shafer-Haiss (producer, mixer, musician) and Michaela Anne (songwriter, artist, creative coach). More about Aaron’s work. More about Michaela Anne’s work.

Produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss. Original music written, performed and produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss.

Photo Credit: Michael Wilson

The Other 22 Hours: Dan Wilson (Semisonic)

Posted on by Cindy Howes

Dan Wilson’s songs have shaped our collective cultural landscape, from Semisonic’s enduring anthem “Closing Time” to Grammy-winning collaborations like Adele’s “Someone Like You,” The Chicks’ “Not Ready to Make Nice,” Chris Stapleton’s “White Horse” and Jon Batiste’s “It Never Went Away.” Yet behind four decades of catalog mastery lies a quiet, rigorous inner examination of what it means to build an artistic life.

In this spacious conversation, Dan reflects on stepping off the tour bus during the height of rock success to care for his medically fragile newborn daughter, the radical freedom of striking the word “should” entirely from one’s creative vocabulary, and why he spent the entire ascent of a global number-one single terrified instead of celebrating.

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In This Episode:

Go Deeper:

Watch: View this entire conversation above or on YouTube.
Explore: Find similar conversations in these themed playlists.
Connect: Join the conversation on Instagram.

The Other 22 Hours is hosted by Aaron Shafer-Haiss (producer, mixer, musician) and Michaela Anne (songwriter, artist, creative coach). More about Aaron’s work. More about Michaela Anne’s work.

Produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss. Original music written, performed and produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss.

Photo Credit: Yazz Shervin