Craig Havighurst

Don Williams rarely gets namechecked in roll calls of larger-than-life country music heroes or outlaw legends, but fans of roots music should not sleep on the Gentle Giant and his legacy.

In her song “Enabling,” Tenille Townes presents two partners in a showdown over the deplorable behavior of what we presume to be the guy, who's “kicking

Last fall at the Earl Scruggs Music Festival I saw an early performance by a new trio made up of some of western North Carolina's outstanding traditional musicians: Billy Cardine on dobro and slide instruments, Anya Hinkle on vocals and guitar, and Mary Lucey on vocals, upright bass, and clawhammer banjo. And at that moment I began to pine for an album we could play on The Old Fashioned. Well, it's here, the self-titled debut of TANASI, pronounced TAH-nuh-see (even if I get that wrong in the broadcast), billed as a “worldgrass trio channeling global folk traditions through the drive, textures, and close harmonies of an Appalachian string band.” We've played a song or two before, but to celebrate the album's May 8 release we spin “Sweetest Breeze.” Also this week, the title cut from the Steep Canyon Rangers' new album, a new single featuring Billy Strings from Full Cord, a first-time artist here in North Carolina's Redbud, and good ole good ‘uns from Jimmy Martin and Cliff Waldron.

A bunch of experienced Kentucky-based bluegrass musicians who happened to be good friends (and vice versa) started getting together to jam on Thursdays during the Covid pause. So when they decided to put together a formal band, the name Throwdown Thursday came to mind. Newly signed to Mountain Fever Records, the group includes Kati Penn-Jenkins on fiddle and vocals, Justin Jenkins on banjo, Evan Maynard on mandolin and vocals, Ronald Mosley on guitar, Kyle Perkins on bass, and Austin Maynard on harmony vocals. We're digging the much-loved and covered Shawn Camp and Billy Burnett song, “My Love Will Not Change,” a good showcase for Kati's voice and fiddling. That arrives late in the show, but on the way, a block of music chosen by Amy (who hosts solo this week) features artists playing at the Mt. Airy, NC fiddle convention and contest. She was excited to see a new album out from the folk duo Mama's Broke. And she brings New Orleans band The Clover Valley Boys to the Old Fashioned for the first time.

Memories are often cemented by striking contrasts, and on Summer Solstice Saturday afternoon in Telluride, CO, I felt whipsawed in the most memorable and beautiful way.

“Who are your influences?” is such a hackneyed question in music journalism and radio interviews that it's become something of a joke.

I love that the Sullivan Sisters chose this photo in front of the Chicago skyline as the cover of Carolina Bluebird , their debut EP of 2025, because it turns out we have a journey in common. We moved from North Carolina to Evanston, IL and got serious about bluegrass music there on the north shore of one of the greatest cities in the world. I moved for college at Northwestern. For their dad, it was to teach saxophone there. Nice. So, the sisters came up in a musical household and got tons of support as they skilled up on banjo (Luciya) and guitar (Soraya). They started winning contests and playing widely. Now they've now scaled their duo up to a five-piece band and found a label home at Dark Shadow in Nashville. We love the clawhammer feel and mountain modal mood of their first single “Devil's Got A Hold On You,” and there's more to come as they gear up for an album planned for early 2027. Also this week, new singles from Unspoken Tradition, Dale Ann Bradley, and Frank Solivan and Dirty Kitchen.

When I had the country-noir songwriter and artist Olivia Wolf on the show in 2025 , the conversation delivered some unusually surprising

Aaron Lee Tasjan is among the hardest-to-describe songwriter/artists in modern Nashville, and that's high praise.

Allison Russell, one of Americana/folk music's biggest breakout stars of the post-pandemic era, says she never intended to launch a solo career.