America is a song that keeps changing its mind about what key it's in. BVA's Americana isn't the postcard version.

Transmission 02: High Wind Warning

November 9, 2023

"I love my country, stupid and cruel, red white and blue."

Wilco opens the second transmission with a line that holds patriotism and critique in the same breath. Nora Brown's old-time banjo plays "Darling Cora." Jake Xerxes Fussell interprets traditional songs from archival field recordings. Molly Sarlé brings Appalachian vocal tradition into the present. Sufjan Stevens finds UFOs in Highland, Illinois. Even The Beach Boys' "Little Bird", Dennis Wilson's fragile, overlooked gem, carries the weight of a California dreaming that was always more complicated than it seemed.

Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood close the episode with "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'", a duet about the end of something. A relationship. An era. A version of the country that maybe never quite existed.

Transmission 04: Break Open the Dark

December 7, 2023

The Doc Watson Family carries Appalachian music down the mountain. Elizabeth Cotten plays a right-handed guitar upside down and backwards. Mississippi John Hurt records in 1928, vanishes into farm work for thirty-five years, then is found again. Link Wray. Dave Van Ronk closes with Brecht and Weill. Three generations of music the market forgot and the valley remembered.

Transmission 07: Sketches of the Valley

January 18, 2024

My Morning Jacket's "Masterplan", Jim James's falsetto ringing through a Kentucky grain silo. Destroyer's "Watercolours into the Ocean," Dan Bejar's word-drunk glam. Father John Misty's "Olvidado." American roots music in all its complication.

Transmission 08: When the Revolution Comes

February 1, 2024

Joe Purdy's "Kristine" opens, a plainspoken troubadour on Mudtown Crier. Purple Mountains' "Margaritas at the Mall," David Berman's final record. Americana as the sound of a nation arguing with itself.

Transmission 09: Cold Damp Valley

February 15, 2024

Marty Robbins and Jerry Jeff Walker, the gunfighter ballad and the honky-tonk, two sides of the same coin. Americana at the edge of winter.