Tag: podcasts

The String – AmericanaFest 2019 Part 2

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, one last round of visits with great artists visiting Nashville to showcase during AmericanaFest 2019.

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Craig’s guests include two songwriter artists from the United Kingdom who’ve made American music their own – veteran New Orleans piano man Jon Cleary and Northern Ireland’s soul-singing dynamo Foy Vance. Up first, an absolutely amazing songwriter from Portland, OR, Anna Tivel. Her album The Question is widely seen as one of the finest of the year.

Notes and full versions of these edited interviews can be found at WMOT.org.

The Show On The Road – Madison Cunningham

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week Z. Lupetin welcomes Madison Cunningham — a gifted songwriter, singer, and guitar slinger who has quickly risen from shy Southern California prodigy to a nationally admired, Grammy-nominated, major label recording artist redefining what could be a new genre between the fertile plains of pop, jazz, and new wave folk music.

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As the eldest daughter of a big family, maybe Madison Cunningham was always meant to be an old soul. And as a young star on the rise, she thankfully hasn’t had to toil long in dive bars and retirement community gymnasiums, as many new artists do. She has already dazzled on large stages, opening for her heroes like the Punch Brothers, Iron & Wine, and Andrew Bird, all while teaming up with luminaries like Joe Henry to bring her songcraft to a new level.

If you have an hour, lock yourself in a dark room and listen to her newest release, Who Are You Now, and forget the failed love affairs and credit card debt and smoky bars of your youth and put your faith in the new generation. We are in good hands, no doubt about it.

The String – Andrew Combs plus Erin Enderlin

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Ideal Man, the fourth full-length album from Nashville songwriter Andrew Combs has been praised by major outlets including Rolling Stone Country. Is it a country album? Is Combs a country artist?

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Well he undoubtedly was when his first records emerged. His debut album Worried Man had steel guitar and a snapping rhythm section and songs that got right to the point about loss and love. With 2017’s Canyons of My MInd, a swooning lush atmosphere wafts in, and Combs voice – always full of emotion and carefully wrought – stepped up a few levels. It’s one of the more seductive and involving male voices in Americana, in the same zone as John Paul White and Combs friend Dylan LeBlanc. It marked real growth and refinement, and Ideal Man does too. Also in the hour, Music Row songwriting success Erin Enderlin leans harder than ever into her artist career with the moving and deeply country Faulkner County.

Notes and full versions of these edited interviews can be found at WMOT.org.

The Show On The Road – Sam Lee

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on the show, Z. Lupetin speaks with renowned British song collector, sonic interpreter, roots music promoter, and deeply intuitive folk singer Sam Lee.

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Lee came to music almost by accident after a former life as a wilderness survivalist and nature advocate. Since, he has become one of the leading voices in Great Britain, saving the treasured endemic music cultures that rapidly disappear each year. His gorgeously delicate and meticulously researched debut, Ground Of Its Own, shot him from hopeful academic to nationally recognized folk star — partly by being nominated for the prestigious Mercury Prize. Lee has relentlessly worked to save and rejuvenate the ancient melodies and songcraft of Irish and Scottish traveller tradition, Romany rhythms and stories, and connect those traditional melodies to a youthful pop culture that is yearning to know where it came from and where it is going next.

His Nest Collective, an “acoustic folk club,” gathers artists, authors, dancers and theatrical renegades and puts on shows and events across London – making Sam a rare double threat – as both an artist and a promoter of other artists.

His newest release, Old Wow, drops January 31, 2020.

The String – The Bluegrass Episode 2019

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Host Craig Havighurst browsed World of Bluegrass in Raleigh in September and caught up with four artists who make for a pretty good cross section of the genre circa 2019: Tim Stafford of Blue Highway, an iconic band celebrating its 25th anniversary, Irene Kelley, a veteran songwriter who’s on top of the bluegrass charts, Appalachian Road Show, a new supergroup with a cultural mission, and The Dead South, a young band of Canadian folk rockers who represent the adventuresome edge of bluegrass music.

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Notes and full versions of these edited interviews can be found at WMOT.org.

The Show On The Road – Lucy Rose

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

As host Z. Lupetin travels across the UK this month, we bring you Lucy Rose – a talented singer/songwriter who grew up in the same lyrically fertile plain as Shakespeare. She has made albums filled with twisty tales of sharp-tongued, black-hearted people searching for redemption, and navigating the rough rivers of supernatural sorrow that refuse to let us go as we grow up.

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On her newest No Words Left, Rose has gone back to her roots a bit, forsaking the glossy Brit-pop direction toward which some of the powers-that-be wanted to push her, peeling back her sound to reveal just the thorny, pure fruit inside. The result is intense. Interlocking singing conversations in the tone of a toothy, hushed scream, she questions our relationships with ourselves — and maybe even God — to find who we really are behind the suffocating velvet gauze of our multiple social media personalities.

The Shift List – Duncan Holmes, Allison Anderson (Beckon | Call) – Denver

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, Chef Duncan Holmes and Allison Anderson, Director of Experience, at Beckon | Call in Denver, Colorado.

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Chef Duncan Holmes and Allison Anderson have incorporated music and a guest’s entire experience at Beckon | Call in a way that is completely holistic and natural. Perhaps it’s because it’s baked into Anderson’s title — as the Director Of Experience, she takes the role of what would normally be considered General Manager and elevates it to a master class in hospitality.

Consider the music at Beckon – the evening’s answer to their popular all-day dining option over at Call. Beckon is a ticketed chef’s table dining experience with ever-changing, seasonal menus. It seats 34 people in a U-shape with Chef Duncan and his team serving you from the center of the intimate dining room, and the entire meal takes about two and half hours. Because the meal happens in phases, each evening’s soundtrack is a hand-picked selection of albums played in their entirety, allowing the staff at Beckon to play through about three records of their choosing over the course of a meal. In the age of playlists and streaming, the decision to play through albums at Beckon is an extension of the meal itself, forcing you to slow down and pay closer attention to each of your senses throughout the experience.

Call was named one of Bon Appetit’s Hot Ten Best New Restaurants of 2018, described as an all-day hang where you may arrive at 10am and end up staying until 2pm — with all of the spritzes and endless selection of unique items to snack on, like their smoked salmon tartine, roasted carrot salad with peas, and Scandinavian-inspired bites.

Call is now on a brief hiatus as Holmes, Anderson, and the team complete some renovations, but Beckon is now a year in and has topped multiple must-eat lists in Denver and beyond.

The String – Shawn Colvin

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

In 1989 the album Steady On marked a pivot in Shawn Colvin’s life from playing bars to make the rent to being a leader in the singer/songwriter movement.


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Through a string of albums, including the hit-producing A Few Small Repairs, Colvin became a multi Grammy winner and an Americana Lifetime Achievement Award winner. This year, she’s revisited Steady On, recording and performing it in her signature, solo acoustic guitar style. Stripped to its essence, the songs speak as clearly now as they did 30 years ago. Also, an introduction to new Rounder Records artist Logan Ledger, a Nashville transplant with a voice so arresting his demo led to a production deal with T Bone Burnett.

The Show On The Road – Robert Ellis

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, Z. Lupetin speaks with Robert Ellis, the restless, tuxedoed, Texas piano-man who has paired his fleet-fingered, high-humored, “jazz in an Austin roadhouse” keys playing with machete-sharp lyrical turns of phrase — all backed up with his smile-through-the-apocalypse country-rock band.

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Ellis has gained a beloved international following all the while creating a persona that is half the tender brilliance of early Billy Joel, and half high-hatted, Southern huckster who might tell you a story that will make you cry one minute, and then steal your watch when you’re not looking the next.

Z. met up with Robert Ellis on the road together in the Netherlands.

The String – AmericanaFest 2019

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Episode 107 features three conversations held on the run during AmericanaFest 2019 in Nashville, Sept. 10-14.


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Billy Strings represents the cutting edge of bluegrass and improvisational acoustic music. He’s a breakout bandleader and a guitar player’s guitar player. His second album is recently out, called Home. Jontavious Willis is another guitar-playing youngster, but his thing is traditional country blues. He’s been mentored by Taj Mahal and Keb Mo. Kevin Russell is the songwriter and band leader known as Shinyribs – a legend of the Austin scene and a wildly entertaining showman.