By design or coincidence, this week's Finally Friday features two major names in contemporary bluegrass music. Darin & Brooke Aldridge will be releasing their tenth album, a landmark in a career that's seen them win multiple awards and earn the admiration of the genre with a sound that draws as much on gospel and country music as it does on straight ahead bluegrass. Becky Buller (who once played fiddle with the Aldridges) is the industry's triple-threat with IBMA Awards for her instrumental chops, her singing, and her songwriting. She's tackling some of the most serious and vulnerable subject matter of her career on her upcoming album Jubilee. Check out Craig's preview of this Friday's talent-packed revue.

In January, the newly energized Nashville Blues and Roots Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to cultivating blues careers and spreading its history through public schools, held its first-ever local competition to nominate contestant artists at the 2024 International Blues Challenge in Memphis. And in a nice Music City surprise, the NBRA’s delegate in the band category, Piper & The Hard Times, went to Memphis during the coldest week of the year, put on several sizzling sets, and came away with the grand prize. In this hour of The String, we meet Al "Piper" Green and his bandmate/guitarist Steve Eagon to talk about their game changing win. Up first, Gulf Coast blues and R&B icon Marcia Ball talks about fifty years of rocking roadhouses and the occasional blues cruise.

Suzy Bogguss started playing and performing on a hand-me-down guitar from her sister in small-town Illinois. After almost a decade making a living out west playing at ski lodges and smaller venues, she moved to Nashville, where she carved out a special place in 1990s country music. Amid a time of diversity and vibrancy in the format, her sweet, folky voice took flight when she found the right songs, including the career-makers “Someday Soon” and “Outbound Plane.” She’s toured steadily ever since, though recordings have been selective since 2000. During the pandemic though, she took on her first album of new material with last fall’s Prayin’ For Sunshine, the first where she’d written all of the songs. In this hour, we cover every key stage of this award-winning career.

The Wonder Women of Country, a side project of busy Americana songwriter/artists Brennen Leigh, Kelly Willis and Melissa Carper, started in 2021 as a touring vehicle for three friends with compatible visions of country music. Fans have been loving it, and naturally they started asking if there was a recording to take home. The WWOC have made good on that desire with a self-titled EP, released on March 15.

After more than a decade helming her progressive acoustic band The New Hip, bass player Missy Raines has reconfigured and turned back to the music she was raised on and the genre for which she’s been named Bass Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association ten times, most recently in 2021. Her new band is called Allegheny, and her new album Highlander finds her singing about the lonesome wind, fast-moving trains, and more weighty and contemporary subjects in the old school style.

Few pickers have toured harder or traveled farther than jamgrass veteran Vince Herman, who co-founded the iconic Leftover Salmon 34 years ago in Colorado. Yet there are always new things to try, so he’s added the band The High Hawks to his list of collaborations. Our sit-down visit was sparked by that band’s album Mother Nature’s Show doing so well on the Americana chart and by his own recent move from Colorado to Nashville, where he’s become a hub of the picking scene and an avid co-writer. We cover a lot of ground from his origins in Pittsburgh and West Virginia to the everlasting desire to play the next show. Also in the hour, progressive banjo player Kyle Tuttle calls in from a fishing trip to talk about his years with Molly Tuttle and his new solo album Labor Of Lust.

John Leventhal is one of the quiet achievers of American roots music going back more than 30 years. Early on as a guitar player in his native New York City, he connected with Jim Lauderdale and Shawn Colvin, co-writing and producing their debut albums. He met his wife Rosanne Cash as they worked on the pivotal album The Wheel. He’s produced some epic albums since then for William Bell, Sarah Jarosz, and others, winning numerous Grammy and Americana awards in the process. At last, he lent his guitar and studio skills to making the solo debut album Rumble Strip. Rosanne is there for some duo vocals, but otherwise it’s warm and tuneful instrumentals that foreground some of the lovely textures and grooves that have been behind so many albums we’ve loved.

History was on Béla Fleck’s mind as he released Rhapsody In Blue on Feb. 16, the 100th anniversary of its 1924 premiere. It's a multi-faceted, album-length celebration of the great work of American music - and its adaptability. The centerpiece is a 19-minute classical version by the Virginia Symphony Orchestra with Fleck playing Gershwin’s tricky piano part on banjo. But there are blues and bluegrass versions of the piece too. Because even at age 65, when he could be coasting on all he’s done, Fleck still looks for apparently the hardest thing he could possibly try at any given time.

Malcolm Holcombe, the brilliant and enigmatic songwriter whom Lucinda Williams called “an old soul and a modern-day blues poet” has died at 68 years old, after a battle with cancer and a late-life surge of creative fire. He passed away on Saturday near where he was raised in western North Carolina, but Holcombe jolted his way into the consciousness of many roots music lovers and practitioners during a spell in Nashville 25 years ago. In a music community characterized by polite songwriter rounds, Holcombe was unnervingly ferocious and feral - a mesmerizing performer and lyricist whose mix of gifts and demons invite worthy comparisons to Hank Williams and Townes VanZandt.

In the 1990s, Paul Burch was among the pioneer artists who brought legit country music and old-school Music City values to Lower Broadway’s honky tonks. In the years since, he’s been an admired songwriter and performer while branching into scoring and production. Now he puts on yet another hat as he joins Middle Tennessee State University’s Center For Popular Music (CPM) as the manager of its non-profit, in-house label Spring Fed Records.