Americana w/ Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 17 November 2025
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What is Americana music? Is it a genre? A community? A refuge? Twenty four years after the founding of the Americana Music Association and thirteen years since the first Grammy was awarded for Best Americana Album, defining "Americana" remains tricky. In our experience, the most common answer has been "you know it when you hear it."
However you define it, however, there is one thing everyone agrees on: Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell are Americana legends.
In this episode, recorded in front of a live audience in Nashville, TN, Emmylou and Rodney discuss their musical careers, how they became associated with Americana music, and what Americana means to them. Bob too shares his musical journey both before and after joining the Avett Brothers and the ways that genre (Americana and otherwise) has been part of that story.
This episode originally aired as RTN #284 on Sept. 25, 2023. This episode was originally edited by Gary Fletcher. Live audio recording and mixing by Adam Botner. This reair was edited by Ben Sawyer.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Ben Sawyer and this is The Road to Now. |
| 0:08.5 | Today on the show, we asked the question, what is Americana music? |
| 0:12.4 | And we get the answer from some pretty amazing guests, Amy Lou Harris and Rodney Crowell. |
| 0:17.0 | This conversation was recorded live back in September of 2023, right up the street from my house at Riverside Revival. |
| 0:24.0 | It was such a great night. |
| 0:25.4 | And the kind of thing that's fun to share again. |
| 0:28.6 | Bob and I are busy lining up new episodes to record. |
| 0:31.3 | We hope everybody caught the new American Revolution documentary by our friends, Ken Burns, David Schmidt, and Sarah |
| 0:39.0 | Botstein. Bob and I will be back with new episodes coming up. |
| 0:42.4 | Hope you guys are getting ready for the holidays. |
| 0:45.0 | Thanks for listening. Take care. |
| 0:49.3 | Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the road to now live. |
| 0:52.1 | Thank you so much for being here. |
| 1:00.2 | Thank you so much for being here. We're here to talk about Americana music tonight, and we're, again, really grateful that you |
| 1:05.5 | all are here with us to talk about this subject, this genre. |
| 1:12.6 | And that's the question, right? |
| 1:18.3 | What we wonder this week, as we start the Americana Music Fest week and all the big festivities going on in town, |
| 1:21.7 | is Americana a genre? |
| 1:25.3 | Is it a community? |
| 1:27.3 | A community of musicians? Or is it a refuge for artists that don't fit |
| 1:35.3 | other places anymore? Yeah, and this is the thing is like, I've heard several people say when I've asked |
| 1:41.2 | them, I'm like, what is Americana? And they try to explain it and they go, well, you know it when you hear it. Right? And that's just kind of an interesting definition. It's true, though, right? When you hear Americana, you go, okay, I know what that is, but then when you try to explain it to somebody, it gets kind of confusing. So tonight, like, we have, I mean, my co-host included some of the great figures in |
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