1,084 - The Jayhawks, Tift Merritt, Tanasi, Candi Jenkins

SPEAKER_1 (0:11)

From NPR Music and produced by West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support provided by Bailey Glasser. Welcome to another Mountain Stage with our host, Kathy Matea.

Kathy Matea (1:00)

Hello, and welcome once again to Mountain Stage, live performance radio from the Mountain State of West Virginia. I'm Kathy Matea, and we are here at the Culture Center Theater in Charleston, West Virginia. We're so glad to have you here, and all of you out there in Radioland. You'll be glad you tuned in, because today we are welcoming back one of the most influential bands in the last 40 years, and certainly the pioneers of a genre that would come to be known as Americana. They've got new music on the way. You'll hear the Jayhawks later in this show.

Also, in our next hour, a Kentucky artist pulling from lots of styles to make her own blend of country that's fresh and classic. Candi Jenkins is here.

And in just a little bit, one of their generation's most thoughtful and revered songwriters who first came to see us on Mountain Stage in 2005 And she's back again with her first new music in almost a decade. Tift Merritt is back with us.

But we're going to open the show this week with an acoustic trio based in Asheville, North Carolina. They call their music World Grass, and they're heavily influenced by folk traditions from all over the world, channeling through the lens of traditional Appalachian string music. All three are widely acclaimed musicians who have spent decades touring and recording across the world from Nepal to South Africa to Appalachia. In 2025, they received a prestigious grant from National Endowment for the Arts for their work collaborating with artists across many cultures. They released their self-titled album earlier this year. Please welcome Tanasi.

SPEAKER_3 (8:29)

We're talking about the Great Flood of 1916 in Asheville. And we didn't know when we wrote it that we'd have the same thing happen even worse in 2024 And this is a little picture of what, and I know you know how these things go also, but thanks to all of you for your thoughts about Asheville. Everybody that we've met up here so far has asked us, and we're doing all right. Thank you.

SPEAKER_4 (14:56)

Asheville, she is a force of nature. She's got a PhD in ethnobotany, and she's fluent in Japanese. She's an award-winning songwriter, and one of the kindest people you'll ever meet. Please put your hands together for Ms. Anya Hinkel.

And if you're out there in Radioland, thinking to yourself, man, I have never heard a dobro sound like that before.

You're right, if you haven't heard this man play. He, since three years old, has been devoting his life to music. He was the little guy at the piano whose mom would call him to come off and eat dinner, and then he'd go back and she'd have to call him off it again to go to bed. He's dedicated his life to making music. He can get under your bus and fix it. He's a fantastic dad. Y'all put your hands together. Billy Cardin on the dough, bro.

SPEAKER_3 (16:09)

And over here, picking the banjo, about to pick up this bass.

She's no stranger to this stage. She's been here with Uncle Earl, Biscuit Burners, Lovers Leap, and now here with Tanasi. She's an incredible mom. She's an incredible songwriter. And just one of the most wonderful people you'll ever meet. So make sure that come to see us at the end of the show. Miss Mary Lucy.

Billy Cardin (16:39)

We're going to play a tune for you that we adapted from Yoruba folk chant out of Africa.

The way that this music unfolds is just a bunch of percussionists. There's no strings.

And one percussionist starts, the next one layers on, the next one layers on, and before you know it, they have this really cool groove, kind of a polyrhythm. And then the vocals start. And so the idea here was, let's take our stringed instruments and apply a drum part to them and then just see what happens from there.

SPEAKER_4 (22:16)

We're going to do a song of Billy's up here next.

Billy Cardin (22:21)

Yeah, it's a little song that I wrote during a concert series I did in Asheville, North Carolina.

It was a great experience. There was an idea behind this thing and it was to set aside the inner critic and no matter what we do, it's make a nice yard or make dinner for our family or artist or whatever. And sometimes there's that voice in the back of your head that just says, this isn't good enough. Maybe you could do better. You should go back to the drawing board. So I wanted to set that aside and the way that I did it was, whatever I thought I wrote and when I got to what I thought might be the end, I would name it the first words that came into my mind. And this song is in the time signature of five for the most part, with the exception of the quintuplets in four in the beginning for everybody playing along at home.