Also featured will be Buddy Miller, the show’s musical director, leading his Americana All-Star Band comprised of Don Was, The McCrary Sisters. Bryon Owings, Jerry Pentecost, Jen Gunderman, Jim Hoke, and Larry Campbell. Check your local TV listings or click on the link that follows (https://www.pbs.org/tv_schedules/), insert your zip code and search for “Americana” to find out when the show airs in your area.

Winners in the 2024 Americana Honors and Awards were recognized during an awards show in Nashville, Tennessee in September that is a highlight of AMERICANAFEST, a six-day festival and conference celebrating American roots-inspired music that is hosted by the Americana Music Association.

Sierra Ferrell’s Trail of Flowers (produced by Eddie Spear and Gary Paczosa) was named Album of the Year, while Ferrell was named Artist of the Year. The Duo/Group of the Year award was bestowed on Larkin Poe, while The Red Clay Strays were named Emerging Act of the Year and Grace Bowers was named Instrumentalist of the Year. “Dear Insecurity” by Brandy Clark& featuring Brandi Carlile (written by Clark and Michael Pollack) was named Song of the Year.

In addition to the six awards that were voted on by members of the Americana Music Association, Lifetime Achievement Awards were presented to Dave Alvin, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Rev. Gary Davis, Shelby Lynne, Don Was, and Dwight Yoakam

AMERICANAFEST annually draws thousands of artists, fans and music industry professionals to Nashville. It features daytime panel discussions and seminars and evenings chock-full of showcases throughout the Music City. The Americana Music Association (americanamusic.org), which produces the event, is a professional not-for-profit trade association whose mission is to advocate for the authentic voice of American roots music around the world.

Brandi Carlile, a folk-rock and Americana singer-songwriter who was named Artist of the Year for a second time during the awards show that was presented at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee last September 22, is among the artists whose performances were captured for this special episode. Also featured — in order of appearance — are performances by Fisk Jubilee Singers with Leon Timbo, Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan and Joe Henry, Allison Russell, The Highwomen (Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hembry, Maren Morris, and Amanda Shires) with Yola, Jason Isbell, Valerie June and Carla Thomas, Emerging Act Award-winner Charley Crockett, Amythyst Kiah, Buddy Miller (the show’s musical director), and The Mavericks. The Fisk Jubilee Singers, The Mavericks and “Queen of Memphis Soul” Carla Thomas were recognized as Lifetime Achievement Award honorees last September.

The Americana Honors & Awards show is a centerpiece of the annual AmericanaFest, a multi-day celebration of American roots-inspired music put on by the Americana Music Association each fall. A combination festival and conference, it is filled with daytime panel discussions and seminars and evenings chock-full of artist showcases at venues throughout the Music City. Established in 1999, the Americana Music Association is a professional not-for-profit trade association whose mission is to advocate for the authentic voice of American roots music around the world.

Here’s a link to an article about the Americana Honors & Awards that was posted on AcousticMusicScene.com on September 23, 2021.

Hosted by Rhonda Vincent and Jim Lauderdale, Bluegrass Now! Pays homage to bluegrass across genre, gender and generations. Featured performers include Alison Brown, Becky Buller, Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper, Missy Raines, Larry Sparks, Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen, Molly Tuttle, and Dan Tyminski.

“This feels like a homecoming as many of today’s most prominent bluegrass artists make a pilgrimage back to he source of the music to document their own musical journey,” said Chris Joslin, executive director of the hall of fame & museum. “If bluegrass music is Kentucky’s gift to the world, Bluegrass Now! Feels like Christmas morning.”

Here’s a link to a 30-second trailer for the televised special:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B_4a0nCVqk

Produced by Todd Jarrell (Bluegrass Underground, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band 50th Anniversary, and Songwriting With Soldiers), Bluegrass Now! showcases individual artists/bands and also brings together co-host Rhonda Vincent with Brown, Buller, Raines and Tuttle on renditions of “Allegheny Town” and “Girls’ Breakdown,” while Vincent’s band The Rage accompanies Bluegrass Hall of Famer Larry Sparks on “Take Me Back to West Virginia.” Co-host Jim Lauderdale is joined by Brown and Buller on “I Feel Like Singing Today,” while Buller also accompanies Lauderdale on “Iodine.” The PBS special concludes with an all-star finale performance of “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.”

Bluegrass Now! will air on more than 300 PBS stations. Check your local TV listings or visit https://pbs.org to find out when it premieres in your area.

Also slated to perform during the two-hour celebratory concert are Kim and Reggie Harris, Anne Hills, Christine Lavin, John McCutcheon, Noel Paul Stookey, Josh White, Jr., and Peter Yarrow. Woody Guthrie’s daughter, Nora Guthrie, and Doug Mishkin will be special guests, as will Tom Chapin’s daughters Abigail and Lily (The Chapin Sisters). Chapin’s frequent accompanists Jon Colbert (keyboards) and Michael Mark (bass) will serve as the house band. For more information and to purchase concert tickets, visit www.symphonyspace.org.

Pete Seeger, Sherman’s guest on the very first program, is credited with coining the name “Woody’s Children” out of reverence for Woody Guthrie and the singer-songwriters following in his footsteps. Seeger was a frequent guest on the show, as were Judy Collins, Odetta, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Paxton, among others.

Woody’s Children features live performances and interviews, along with recorded music, and is often presented in a thematic way. “I try to involve intriguing patterns, and I have thematic concepts,” Sherman has stated. “There’s always a thread, some kind of connection, that leads one song to the next.”

Although WQXR dropped Woody’s Children 30 years ago, Sherman, whose background is in classical music, continued to host a number of programs at the classical station as well from the late 1970s to the 2000s – including Young Artists Showcase. He also hosted television programs (Vibrations and Camera Three) on PBS and CBS during the 1970s.

Sherman taught at both New York University and The Julliard School for nearly 20 years, was a contributing music critic and columnist for The New York Times for 40 years, is the co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Classical Music, and, with musical comedian Victor Borge, and co-wrote two books (My Favorite Intermissions and My Favorite Comedies in Music). He and his brother, Alexander Sherman, compiled a pictorial biography of their mother, the noted pianist Nadia Reisenberg. He’s also been a frequent emcee and a concert narrator for Canadian Brass, The United States Military Academy (West Point) Band, and other ensembles; and has served on advisory boards for a number of cultural organizations.

Brand was a major player on the folk scene in New York (and beyond) – not only as an energetic, prolific and versatile performing and recording artist, but also as host of the world’s longest continuously running weekly radio show with a single host — as confirmed by Guinness Book of World Records.

Beginning in 1945 and for more than 70 years, Brand hosted Folksong Festival on WNYC, a public radio station – and he did so weekly without any compensation. His last show – a mix of music and conversation, punctuated with humor — aired on Sept. 24. The recipient of a George Foster Peabody Award in 1995 for ‘more than 50 years of service to the music and messages of folk performers and fans across the world,” Brand played a diverse array of music and engaged in conversations with many of the artists who performed and recorded the songs on his show. Woody Guthrie (who he met around 1939 and to whom he paid tribute in a 2001 PBS documentary entitled Woody & Me that he wrote, directed and hosted) was one of his early guests. Among the other musical luminaries who appeared on Folksong Festival over the years were Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, Harry Chapin (with whom I also saw him perform in concert at my alma mater, Huntington High School), Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, Lead Belly Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs, Odetta, Tom Paxton, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Pete Seeger (with whom he worked on the People’s Songs newsletter), and Suzanne Vega.

Brand was blacklisted in 1950 in Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio & Television, although he was never called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He continued to invite politically active artists onto his radio show.

Through the years, Brand recorded hundreds of songs – his own compositions and those of others — on some 100 albums. These ranged from collections of bawdy ballads to political campaign songs, drinking songs, sea shanties, vaudeville numbers and children’s songs, among others. His composition “Something to Sing About [This Land of Ours]” is viewed as an unofficial national anthem in Canada.

He also hosted the weekly Canadian children’s television series Let’s Sing Out that aired on CBC during the 1960s and featured such then-emerging talents as Leonard Cohen and Gordon Lightfoot, and was part of an advisory panel that created Sesame Street. Brand believed he was the namesake for the popular PBS children’s series’ character Oscar the Grouch. He also hosted the National Public Radio program Voices in the Wind during the 1970s, a top-rated Canadian show called Brand New Scene, and was host and co-producer of American Odyssey on New York’s WNET Channel 13, as well as a couple of children’s TV shows stateside. He also was engaged in writing for dozens of documentary films for which he won numerous accolades and awards; wrote and composed for and/or appeared in hundreds of television commercials; and authored a number of books and music manuals.

The curator of the Songwriters Hall of Fame in New York, Brand also saw his songs covered by others. Doris Day’s rendition of “A Guy is a Guy,” Brand’s reworking of an old English pub song, was a #1 hit on the Billboard chart in 1952.]. He also wrote songs for the Broadway musicals A Joyful Noise and The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N.

Along with David Amram and the late Theodore Bikel, Brand was part of the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance (NERFA)’s first annual Wisdom of the Elders panel discussion in 2010.

Born Feb. 7, 1920 on wheat farm near Winnipeg, Manitoba, Brand moved with his family to Minneapolis, MN as a youngster and later to Chicago, before settling in Brooklyn, NY where he graduated from Erasmus Hall High School and Brooklyn College. While growing up, he aspired to be a writer and started writing professionally – for radio and television — while still in high school. Although he attended Brooklyn College to learn writing and journalism, he wound up earning a degree in psychology since those were the only courses in which he reportedly earned A’s. After a stint in the U.S. Army, he moved to NYC’s Greenwich Village and immersed himself in its then-burgeoning music scene during the 1940s American folk music revival.

Brand leaves behind his wife Karen and their son Jordan, three other children from a previous marriage — Jeannie, Eric (with whom I graduated from Stony Brook University) and James, and nine grandchildren.

PBS’ airing of the new documentary coincides with the recent publication of a 144-page coffee table book, Peter, Paul and Mary: 50 Years in Life and Song (Imagine/Chartsbridge), replete with hundreds of photos and evocative narrative text drawn from interviews and personal writings from each of the trio’s members. November also saw the release of a new album, Discovered: Live in Concert (Rhino), featuring 13 songs that the trio performed in concert but never recorded in the studio.

Produced and directed by Emmy Award–winner Jim Brown, 50 Years with Peter, Paul and Mary highlights some aspects of the popular and inspirational trio’s career not previously included in other PBS specials. The new documentary includes rare archival footage stemming from the group’s emergence in New York’s Greenwich Village and the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s of which Peter Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers were so much a part. 50 Years with Peter, Paul and Mary spans five decades of music and activism up to the moving memorial for Mary (who died in 2009) and what her former musical partners are doing today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cI_uTVmuU

Archival footage includes the trio singing “Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” during the 1963 March on Washington at which the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famed “I Had a Dream” speech. As Yarrow observes in the documentary, it was a time when “music began to inspire America, tweak its conscience, and articulate its dreams.” Peter, Paul and Mary are also seen and heard singing a song they wrote for anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy during a campaign rally in 1968, and visiting homeless shelters to mark the trio’s 25th anniversary in the 1980s. “Activism and advocacy was in our blood,” acknowledges Stookey.

Footage of the trio singing “Deporteees” with Tom Paxton and “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” with Pete Seeger are excerpted from previous PBS specials. The new documentary wraps with coverage of the touching memorial for Mary Travers in New York City in 2009 and vignettes about Noel Paul Stookey and Peter Yarrow.

Although the PBS documentary bears the name 50 Years with Peter, Paul and Mary, the trio was actually formed in 1961 –- having made its first public appearance that fall at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village. Mary sang with them for 43 years and the trio was on hiatus for seven years

Peter, Paul and Mary released their eponymous debut album for Warner Brothers in 1962. It topped the charts that summer, remained in the top 10 for ten months and the top 20 for two years, and featured the hit single, “If I Had a Hammer.” That song, penned by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays, became an anthem of the civil rights movement and was performed by the trio during the 1963 March on Washington. The trio’s sophomore release featured their own “Puff the Magic Dragon,” a now classic song that has been a children’s favorite for decades. Peter, Paul and Mary’s rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” was released in the summer of 1963, and also became a big hit for the trio. These three songs are among the many that can be heard during the documentary. Since Peter, Paul and Mary’s musical history together extends more than 50 years, the documentary’s title and that of the new coffee table book harken back to that of the trio’s album, Late Again.

Yet, as Judy Collins has observed: “Timeless as a river. Sweet as the song of birds in the spring. Familiar as the faces of your loved ones. It seems Peter, Paul and Mary have been in our lives since the very beginning, inspiring us with their joyous and uplifting music.”

Part of PBS’ Fall Arts Festival, Nashville 2.0: The Rise of Americana kicks off public television’s Americana Music Weekend that also includes ACL Presents: Americana Music Festival 2013 that airs Nov. 23 and features performance highlights from Americana Music Association’s annual Honors & Awards show that took place Sept. 18 at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium, as captured by Austin City Limits.

Artists featured on Nashville 2.0 include Alabama Shakes, The Avett Brothers, Billy Bragg, Laura Cantrell, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Rosanne Cash, The Civil Wars, Elizabeth Cook, Rodney Crowell, Dawes, Jerry Douglas, John Fullbright, Shakey Graves, Emmylou Harris, The James Hunter Six, Jason Isbell, Jim Lauderdale, The Lone Below, The Mavericks, The Milk Carton Kids, Buddy Miller, Mumford and Sons, Amanda Shires, Shovels and Rope (the AMA’s Emerging Artist and Song of the Year winners this year), Richard Thompson, and Dwight Yoakam.

Nashville 2.0 was co-directed by Carol Stein and Susan Wittenberg, who also were responsible for 2011’s Women Who Rock. Terry Stewart, former CEO and president of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, is the executive producer. Award-winning actress Anna Deveare Smith hosts the special. Check your local TV listings for air dates and times in your area.

“His music was always so insightful and clever, so timely and slightly haunting,” says Susan Lacey, series creator and executive producer of American Masters, of one of American history’s most iconic folk music heroes. “Humming ‘There But for Fortune’ after Phil Ochs’ death was a bittersweet experience.” With the U.S. engaged in foreign wars today as it was in the 1960s, Ochs’ music is as relevant now as it was then. The screening of Kenneth Bowser’s documentary — which had a limited run at art-house cinemas last year — as part of American Masters, an eight-time winner of the the Emmy Award for Outstanding Prime-time Non-Fiction Series, will expose more people to Phil Ochs and his music.

Editor’s Note: Early last year, I arranged for Phil’s sister, Sonny Ochs, to speak along with what turned out to be a nearly sold-out screening of the film at Huntington, New York’s Cinema Arts Centre. Last January, she also shared her reflections on Phil and the film with AcousticMusicScene.com readers. The article, originally posted on Jan. 16, 2011, is re-posted below.

Phil Ochs was an American troubadour who passionately believed that he and his music could help change the world. Many of his songs became anthems for the anti-war movement during the turbulent 1960s, and his music continues to influence and inspire songwriters today – 35 years after his death. “Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune,” a new film about him, features commentary by Joan Baez, Billy Bragg, Tom Hayden, Christopher Hitchens, Sean Penn, Pete Seeger, Peter Yarrow and others – interspersed with performance clips of Ochs. Described as “enthralling and fascinating” by Paper Magazine, the film paints what Entertainment Weekly calls “an essential portrait of an artist who ought to be better known.” Sonny Ochs, Phil’s sister and the host of a folk radio show in upstate New York, shares some thoughts on her brother and on the documentary about him with AcousticMusicScene.com readers.

We grew up in an apolitical family, but when he went to college, he had a roommate named Jim Glover whose father was a socialist. Phil learned a lot from him and was able to wed his music to events of the day, thus becoming a topical songwriter. He won a guitar from Jim in a bet on the 1960 presidential election. This gave him the tool he needed to accompany his songs. The rest is history.

Phil went on to become a very prolific writer, but was brought down by manic depression, which runs in the male side of our family.

He ended up committing suicide in 1976, at the age of 35.

I have been producing Phil Ochs Song Nights since 1983. They take place mainly up and down the east coast, but also in the midwest, far west and Canada. The performers play Phil’s songs, but also their own to show that the art of topical songwriting is still alive and well. There is a sample Song Night on the home page of my website, www.sonnyochs.com.

A documentary about Phil, produced by Kenneth Bowser, opened at IFC in New York’s Greenwich Village on Jan. 5 [2011] and has received very good reviews. It is really interesting because it shows Phil against a background of the times, and it doesn’t try to hide his blemishes. It is very honest and strong which is why audiences seem to like it so much. It is my hope that more people will hear Phil’s music and be amazed at its relevancy 40 years after it was written. I am very proud of him!

“What we found compelling, and what drove this project from the inception, is the fact that you can really get a new perspective on the story of American popular music with the banjo as the vehicle,” says Emmy Award-winning writer and producer Marc Fields, who produced and directed Give Me The Banjo with the assistance of co-producer and music director Tony Trischka, one of the most influential banjo players in the roots music world. “It truly cuts across all categories and boundaries of race, class, region [and] genre,” Fields continues. “The instrument is at the root of roots music and at the crossroads where folk tradition meets commercialism, yet it’s still struggling for the respect and serious attention it deserves.”

Give Me The Banjo was more than nine years in the making and was culled from the filming of more than 350 hours of interviews and performances in 14 states.

A web-based archive of musical and historical content that extends beyond what will air on television, The Banjo Project (www.thebanjoproject.org) is designed to serve as a cultural gathering place for exchanging knowledge and news about the banjo, replete with photos and video clips.

Legends of Folk: The Village Scene intersperses archival performance footage of such folk luminaries as Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, Richie Havens, The Lovin’ Spoonful and Simon & Garfunkel, along with newly filmed interviews with Don McLean, Maria Muldaur, Tom Paxton, Michelle Phillips (of The Mamas and the Papas), The Spoonful’s John Sebastian, and Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul & Mary), as well as John Cohen (of The New Lost City Ramblers).

Stookey, Yarrow and their late trio partner Mary Travers also will be heard and seen singing “If I Had a Hammer,” while McLean (best known for his songs “American Pie” and “Vincent”) performs “Castles in the Air.” Paxton sings his classic “The Last Thing On My Mind,” and The New Lost City Ramblers perform “Liza Jane.” Two singer-songwriters who died too young also are featured – Tim Hardin singing “If I Were a Carpenter” and “Phil Ochs” declaring “I Ain’t Marching Any More.”

Legends of Folk: The Village Scene was directed and produced by four-time Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Jim Brown, who also produced and directed Peter, Paul & Mary: Carry It On;Wasn’t That a Time, the critically acclaimed 1981 documentary about The Weavers; American Roots Music, the four-part PBS series that aired in 2001; A Vision Shared: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly; Pete Seeger: The Power of Song; and other programs as part of PBS’ American Masters series of specials delving into the lives, works and creative processes of some of our cultural icons.