Craig Havighurst

Friends, our holidays were lovely except for one thing. Our carefully hand-crafted Christmas/Happy Holidays edition of the Old Fashioned for 2024 was all cued up and ready to go, like a stocking hung by the fireplace. But we had a miscommunication, and the show, set for Dec. 21 and for Christmas Eve, didn’t air as scheduled. So we ran it on New Year’s Eve, and maybe you heard it! Anyway, this year’s music was all new and quite wonderful. The Rock Hearts delivered a new version of Willie Nelson’s “Pretty Paper.” The Osborne Brothers sang about University of Tennessee football in “Christmas Time On Rocky Top.” Our mandatory “Christmas Time’s A Comin’” came from none other than Dolly Parton. But I’d love to direct your attention to a song that would sound amazing any time of year, the new single “Don’t You Hear Jerusalem Moan” from Boston-based, Jewish-centric newgrass band Jacob’s Ladder. Their interpretive power and vocal harmonies on this one give me goosebumps every time I play it. There’s a magical video on YouTube. We’ll be watching for more from them.

As with all of the duo’s songs, the basic ingredients of “Empty Trainload of Sky” are dead simple, with just two sections and four chords.

Aoife O'Donovan performing with Paul Kowert (L) and Jordan Tice (R) from Hawktail.

Fifty years ago this month, Willie Nelson set up in a studio that was new to him - Autumn Sound in Garland, TX - to make his 18th album and his first for Columbia Records. Also for the first time in Nelson’s career, his contract gave him total control over his work, and what he had in mind was a sound so spare and lyric-focused that the label thought the end product -

I've posted a couple of coy, mysterious photos of clear blue ocean on my socials this week, but now I'll come clean. For the second year in a row, I was invited to be an official part of Delbert McClinton's Sandy Beaches Cruise, the longest running music cruise in the business and a who's who of Texas/Gulf Coast blues and R&B. My job is to host daytime interview sessions with selected artists, this year Paul Thorn, The McCrary Sisters, Teresa James and the mighty Los Lobos. Last year you might recall, I posted an account of my experience with context about the music cruise business as both a web story and an hour of The String. This is not that. I just wanted to dash off a postcard in hopes that it will send a little warmth and energy back home to a chilly Middle Tennessee.

Composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein virtually invented the genre we know as the musical with era-shaping shows including Carousel, South Pacific and The Sound of Music. But their first musical together, one that helped usher in the golden age of Broadway, was Oklahoma!, which premiered on March 31, 1943, at the St. James Theatre in New York City.

Maryland Farms in Brentwood, TN is a classic late 20th century office park - all glass, right angles, and acres of pavement. That is to say it’s the last place I thought I’d ever go searching for the legacy and catalog of the mighty Sun Records.

Noah G. Fowler is a welcome addition to the Nashville roots music scene. He’s a Pennsylvanian who’s performed at Americanafest, FloydFest, our beloved Jalopy Theater in New York, and of course good old Dee’s Lounge in Madison. What I’d heard of him was squarely in country territory, but on his new single “Stranger,” he calls in the banjo brigade for a sweet bluegrass track. We’ll be watching for updates in case a string band album may be in the works. Elsewhere this episode, we feature the newest from Becky Buller, her take on New Grass Revival’s “Reach” for an upcoming covers album. Wyatt Ellis partners with Peter Rowan for a two-sided single, and we offer up the Bill Monroe ripper “Memories Of You.” More new stuff comes from Dale Ann Bradley and Joe Mullins. And the historic bells get rung by Jimmy Martin, the Highwoods String Band, and the Coon Creek Girls.

Sam Grisman, playing bass and leading the Sam Grisman Project last summer at the Caverns.

This week Amy Alvey did all the work, curating and hosting while I was out of town for a week. All I had to do was enjoy her mix of old-time and bluegrass, which runs the gamut from Deford Bailey to a new track from classic Americana trio The Devil Makes Three. But I wanted to spotlight Riverbend, a traditional-leaning quintet from the St. Louis comprising Aaron Muskopf (guitar, vocals), Blake Korte (dobro, vocals), Andy Novara (mandolin, vocals), Will Miscall (bass, vocals), and Alex Riffle (banjo). We’ve played these fellows before, and here, they’re teasing their upcoming album No More Will I Ramble with the single “Sawdust,” about putting in hard days’ work and seeing too little come of it. Also in the hour, a twist on the old Little Sadie story from Michael Corleto, fiddle and banjo from George Jackson and Brad Kolodner, and a new single from Amy’s own duo Golden Shoals.