Jun 26, 2017
In episode 26 we went deep on the banjo. I asked three leading contemporary players how they’d fallen for their instrument and what they thought about the state of the banjo in 2017. There is a LOT we did not and could not cover, including the African American origins of the banjo and its multi century journey through...
Jun 25, 2017
In one of the early sequences of the celebrated new grateful dead documentary Long Strange Trip from Amazon studios, much is made of Jerry Garcia’s first real girlfriend. She’s feisty and adorable and ablaze with love for art and the bohemian life. She’s planning to make a life with Jerry until! He picks up the...
Jun 12, 2017
Around 1970, a teenaged Tommy Emmanuel of New South Wales Australia wrote a fan letter to his guitar playing idol 10,000 miles away in Nashville. And Chet Atkins wrote him back with encouraging words. A couple of decades later, Tommy was performing and recording with Atkins, who recognized him with the honorary title of...
Jun 8, 2017
One of the things I love about Nashville is a profound and pervasive respect for Music City’s studio and road musicians. Without them, the stars go out. The music stops. So from time to time here we zoom in on the lives and careers and thoughts of these working pickers. In the hour ahead, a bass player whose five...