The String

Episode 173: It takes a bold woman to cover "Only Daddy That'll Walk The Line," but Shannon McNally has been fearlessly facing down naysayers in the music business for 20 years. Nashville based after turns in LA, New Orleans and Mississippi, she's one of the most underrated roots singer songwriters in roots music, with a deep catalog and numerous distinguished collaborations to her name. Her lifelong love of Waylon Jennings inspired her at last to round up a band and cut songs by him or inspired by him, and the collection is getting raves. Also I speak with Oliver Wood, the guitar playing, songwriting half of the Wood Brothers, about his first-ever solo release. 

Episode 172: A sense of place pervades this split show featuring two of the most fascinating and accomplished voices in Americana music. Amy Helm is a veteran singer but a relatively new solo recording artist having released her third LP 'What The Flood Leaves Behind.' We talk about the aura and sound of her late father Levon Helm's Barn and how she keeps discovering new things there. Rachel Baiman came to Nashville from Chicago for college and made a name as a fiddler in the duo 10 String Symphony. Her solo albums are crystalizing a new indie roots sound with great songwriting. We talk at her home, a charming cabin thrust over the Cumberland River in Madison TN. Her new album is 'Cycles.' 

Episode 171: Founded by an irrepressible enthusiast in his very early twenties, Alligator Records grew into the most authoritative and wide-ranging label chronicling urban blues in the US. That man, Bruce Iglauer, owns and runs the label to this day, having released hundreds of albums on artists such as Albert Collins, Koko Taylor, Roy Buchanan, Lonnie Brooks, Edgar Winter, James Cotten, Curtis Salgado, Marcia Ball, The Holmes Brothers and newest star Shemekia Copeland. The hour features Iglauer in conversation, guest appearances by Copeland and artist Selwyn Birchwood, and selections from the new anthology '50 Years Of Genuine House Rockin' Music.' 

Episode 170: They're both Nashville icons but they'd rarely worked together until now. John Hiatt is a songwriter's songwriter with a voice that's made him a roots music star. Jerry Douglas is the most in-demand dobro player in the world. Both are recipients of Americana Lifetime Achievement Awards. When the idea to record together was hatched, Jerry brought his ace band to RCA Studio B where he and John crafted a gorgeous set of songs under the title Leftover Feelings. When the chance came up to sit down around a table with these amazing artists (and former String guests by the way), it was a no-brainer. 

Episode 169: He's known worldwide as a consummate virtuoso on the fiddle and the violin, but Mark O'Connor's first instrument was actually the guitar. After starting his music life with classical and flamenco style lessons, the Seattle teen branched into traditional fiddle and acoustic guitar. After making the groundbreaking Markology when he was 16, O'Connor realized he had bursitis in his elbow and he gave up the guitar to save his fiddling. After more than 40 years winning Grammy Awards and making waves in country, bluegrass, jazz and classical music, O'Connor picked up the guitar again and made a series of recordings that became the new Markology II. We talk about the long journey back. Also, mandolinist Joe K. Walsh, one of the many alums of O'Connor's famed, scene-making fiddle camps, talks about the new acoustic scene today and his new quartet album.

Episode 168: By the time 2020’s pandemic shroud covered the land and stilled its musicians, Oklahoma songwriter Samantha Crain knew all too well about incapacitation. In 2017, touring behind her album You Had Me At Goodbye, she was involved in three car accidents in three months, leaving her hands nerve damaged and debilitated, threatening her career. So the brisk and bright tone of her new EP is reassuring. Her shapely, idiosyncratic voice is still very much with us. “I’m feeling good,” she says. “I feel like I catalogued a lot of tricks of survival, due to dealing with the various physical and mental health struggles that I had gone through in 2018.”

Episode 167: I met Casey Driessen almost 20 years ago when he was new to Nashville, fresh off a music degree from Berklee in Boston and full of new ideas about bluegrass and American fiddling. He became a key sideman for folks like Tim O'Brien and Darrell Scott. As a composer and arranger he made several solo albums and then refined a truly solo approach with looping pedals. He's become a cutting-edge authority on the innovative bow "chopping" technique that all up and coming fiddlers have to learn now. His latest record documents nearly a year of global travel with his family, meeting other musicians and cooking up tunes and sessions captured in the album and multi-media work "Otherlands."

Episode 166: Still waters run deep with Nashville's Mando Saenz. He's cool and contemplative in conversation, while songwriters tell you he's a fountain of ideas in the writing studio, where he spends most of his time. The Texas native got his start in Houston and early tours with Hayes Carll. Fate brought him to Nashville where he's written and recorded since the mid 2000s for the innovative Carnival Music. He's especially close to Jim Lauderdale and Kim Richey and his songs have been recorded by Miranda Lambert and Lee Ann Womack, Midland and many more. His fourth album for the label and his most musically adventurous is All My Shame. Also a fun chat with Andrew Nelson and Blount Floyd, founders and co-leaders of the roots rock band Great Peacock. 

Episode 165: Growing up in the Pacific Northwest in the 1960s, Curtis Salgado fell down the rabbit hole of Deep South blues, jazz, soul and R&B and knew it would be his life's work. Now in his mid 60s, he looks back at a life full of happy accidents, earned admiration, survival and awards, including the BB King Entertainer of the Year prize. His new album on Alligator Records is Damage Control, a study in existential poise. Also in the hour, a key Nashville musician who led some of the sessions on that album, piano and organ player Kevin McKendree. He's toured the world with Brian Setzer, Delbert McClinton and more, while writing and producing soul/blues in Music City.  

Singer-songwriter Garrison Starr grew up in Mississippi, made rock and roll out of Memphis and got signed in her late teens to a major label deal where her song "Superhero" took her to the charts and major tours. Heady success, except it was upset by the traumas and betrayals of being outed as gay in college and a conservative culture that exiled her. Now, with a dozen albums to her credit and a successful songwriting career in Los Angeles, she revels in her growth and forgiveness on the new album Girl I Used To Be. Garrison is a fantastic talent with deep Nashville ties, and the story of how this personal album got written will surprise you. Also, I meet Nashville-based, English-bred newcomer Lilly Winwood, who's seen the music industry from the bottom and the top.