Tag: wmot

The String – Matt Rollings

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Matt Rollings says his role as the leading studio piano playing sideman in Nashville from the late 1980s onward made it hard for him to forge his own taste and sensibility as an artist.


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Now that he’s slowed that work and broadened his projects, he’s made his first album as a leader in 30 years, Matt Rollings Mosaic, with a bunch of friends and collaborators who happen to be superstars, including Alison Krauss, Lyle Lovett and Willie Nelson. Our talk covered the fascinating ways and means of the A Team Nashville session players and much more. Also in the hour, emerging singer songwriter Shannon LaBrie, who’s about to release an album produced by the guy who brought us The Judds and SHEL among many others.

The String – Daniel Donato and Jake Blount

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, two remarkable emerging artists who’ve put in a quarter century and found unique pathways.


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Daniel Donato landed a plum guitar gig in downtown Nashville at age 16 and now he’s building a new world of twangy jam with his debut LP ‘A Young Man’s Country’. Jake Blount is re-defining old-time music with banjo and fiddle out of his DC base. His anti-racist push is forcing bluegrass and Americana to investigate its origins and its audience. His new album Spider Tales is a showcase of the Black roots of our shared music.

The String – Heidi Newfield and Mac McAnally

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Two guests this show who both have careers straddling Nashville’s hit-driven Music Row and art-driven Americana scenes.


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Heidi Newfield had a run of country hits in the 2000s w a band and as a soloist. Now she’s reinventing and going gritty with her songwriting and blues harp on her first new album in more than a decade, The Barfly Sessions, Vol 1. Mac McAnally is a legend on the Row – a Hall of Fame songwriter and a 10-time CMA Musician of the Year. His own music displays real independence and countless skills as a singer, writer and producer. His new one is called Once In A Lifetime.

The String – Chuck Prophet

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Chuck Prophet is a lifer who at 57 says he’s just getting the hang of it – it being crafty, intelligent songs that feel good even when they’re downers, songs that rock and twang in balanced proportions.


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Since going solo after a decade with the psych garage band Green On Red, Prophet has given us a vast body of work that sits easily on the shelf next to Rockpile, Elvis Costello or Tom Petty. Now he’s releasing a reflective, sardonic and political album called The Land That Time Forgot. From retooling his solo sound to his long partnership with spouse Stephanie Finch, there was a lot to talk about.

The String – Joshua Ray Walker

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Reaction to Joshua Ray Walker’s debut album was as strong and swift as any to come along in country music and Texas songwriting in quite a while. But the Dallas native had been working stages nightly for ten years by the time the world paid attention.


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He was ready to follow up fast and he did so to great acclaim on 2020’s Glad You Made It. This self-assured, thoughtful artist has a lot to say.

Also in the hour, we meet Australian emigre to Nashville Emma Swift, whose new collection of Bob Dylan covers is quite special.

The String – Adia Victoria

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Adia Victoria taps the lineage and resolve of the early Blues queens with a sound made for “the now” on her 2019 album, Silences.

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Victoria’s journey from South Carolina to Atlanta and then to Nashville reads like no other artist of recent memory. She works hard to set herself apart from the institutional trappings of the indie music business. Critically acclaimed and sharply thoughtful, this made for a fascinating and challenging conversation.

Photo credit: Daniel Jackson at Newport Folk Fest 2019 for BGS

The String – Chatham County Line

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

With an old-school look and feel, Raleigh, North Carolina’s Chatham County Line started at the dawn of the new millennium in a surge of passion for bluegrass music. Now at 20 years old, they’ve made only one very recent personnel change and refreshed their concept as a post-modern string band with drums.


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Their new album, Strange Fascination, displays far-reaching vision and a warm, cohesive sound, riding on the unique songwriting voice of Dave Wilson. Wilson and co-founding multi-instrumentalist John Teer join host Craig Havighurst for a retrospective conversation, featuring music from their past and present.

The String – Becca Stevens

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Just beyond the fuzzy boundaries of roots and Americana music, we find Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter Becca Stevens – at least, we hope you have found her. With a complex musical language drawn from folk, jazz, classical, and pop, her output is searching, challenging, and ever-evolving.


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A graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts and the New School in New York, Stevens leaps from American public radio to European tours to collaborations with the likes of Jacob Collier, Snarky Puppy, and recently folk icon David Crosby. She is among host Craig Havighurt’s favorite artists working today, so he sought out an interview and was excited and loaded with questions when she said yes. Her newest album is the shiny and electric Wonderbloom.

The String – Corb Lund

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

With ten albums and 20 years under his belt, Alberta’s Corb Lund is one of the finest and wittiest songwriters working the Western end of country music. The singer is now on his way to legendary status in Rocky Mountain cowboy-inspired songwriting.


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His newest is Agricultural Tragic, a 13-song collection that evokes the characters and colors of his home region. Also in the hour, Henry Hicks talks about Black Music Month and Black Lives Matter. Hicks is the CEO of the National Museum of African American Music, opening this fall in Nashville.

The String – Brandy Clark

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

In an era where women are marginalized on country radio, Brandy Clark is at the top of most people’s list of women who should be on the air a lot more.

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She’s written hits for others on Music Row, but her own records are beautifully produced and full of insight about people and humor that would have tickled Roger Miller. Clark’s shared a Grammy Award for writing Kacey Musgraves’ “Follow Your Arrow” and earned numerous nominations as an artist. Her latest is called Your Life Is A Record. Also in the hour, the prophetic and passionate folk and protest music of Eliza Gilkyson who focused on what she knew would be a pivotal year in history, producing the album 2020.