Country music

Both Jon Pardi and Jason Eady have to confront the dilemma of all young country musicians: how to navigate the pop current that keeps country music commercially viable while connecting to a past that fewer and fewer listeners are aware of.

Ken Tucker says The River & The Thread is a travelogue; a timeless work of comfort and quiet joy.

A new nine-hour box set, titled Sun Country Box: 1950-1959, collects Sun Records' country output.

When Price was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996, he was described as a living link from Hank Williams to the country music of today. He died Monday at the age of 87. We'll listen back to a 1999 interview he did with Terry Gross.

Jason Isbell's Southeastern, Kanye West's Yeeezus and an assortment of remarkable women dominated the Fresh Air critic's year in listening.

Ken Tucker calls the country singer-songwriter's new 12 Stories a "modestly amazing album." Every song is striking, textured and finely detailed.

On Three Chords and the Truth, bluegrass musician James King picks from the canon of country music to rearrange its songs as bluegrass. On The Bluegrass Album, country star Alan Jackson has recorded his first collection of bluegrass music — some classics, some originals.

The singer's new album is a work of great, accomplished craft about the pointlessness of crafting anything you care about, because the world is just going to ruin it on you.

Country-music star Vince Gill and steel guitarist Paul Franklin have teamed up to record a new concept album called Bakersfield.

The country singer, known for "He Stopped Loving Her Today" and many other hits, died Friday at age 81. Fresh Air remembers Jones with excerpts from a 1996 conversation with Terry Gross about his autobiography, his addictions and his perspective on his celebrated but troubled marriage to Tammy Wynette.