pplpod

Before the term Americana existed as a genre, Emmylou Harris was already living it. She took the raw materials of country, folk, rock, and bluegrass and wove them into something that didn't fit any ra...

14 Jun 22min

Deana Carter's debut album went five-times platinum, a feat that would seem to guarantee a long, celebrated career in Nashville. Instead, it became a cautionary tale about how the industry treats wome...

14 Jun 18min

Colter Wall sounds like he was born in a different century. His impossibly deep baritone and sparse acoustic arrangements feel more 1890s cattle drive than 2020s streaming playlist, and that anachroni...

14 Jun 18min

Ashley McBryde spent years driving between dive bars across Arkansas and the South, playing for gas money and sleeping in her car. Nashville had no interest in a stocky, plainspoken woman who wrote so...

14 Jun 17min

Before Kid Rock became one of the most polarizing figures in American music, he was a kid from a small Michigan town with an outsized ambition and no clear lane to drive in. His path from Navy barrack...

14 Jun 20min

Crystal Gayle had everything working against her from the start. As Loretta Lynn's youngest sister, she entered the music industry with a famous last name and an impossible comparison. Every stage she...

14 Jun 20min

Before Cody Jinks sold out arenas as a country artist, he was the frontman of a thrash metal band called Unchecked Aggression. That whiplash-inducing career pivot sounds like a punchline, but it's act...

14 Jun 20min

Billy Strings doesn't look or sound like any bluegrass musician you've seen before. Covered in tattoos and raised on a volatile diet of metal, punk, and traditional picking, he fused genres that suppo...

14 Jun 17min