Abigail Washburn

If American old-time music is about taking earlier, simpler ways of life and music as one’s model, Abigail Washburn has proven herself to be a bracing revelation to that tradition. A singing, songwriting, Illinois-born, Nashville-based clawhammer banjo player, she is every bit as interested in the present and the future as she is in the past and
every bit as attuned to the global as she is to the local. She pairs venerable folk elements with far-flung sounds, and the results feel both strangely familiar and unlike anything anyone has ever heard before. Her new release, City of Refuges, is something completely different, even for her: a sublime marriage of old-time and indie-pop. “This new project incorporates what would’ve in the beginning of my career seemed like an unexpected move, but now feels like a really natural progression of working with people that reach into other genres and other spaces musically.”