The sound echoes a tone of inclusion and timelessness.

When you listen to Langhorne Slim, you’re hearing something oddly familiar, but also new and innovative at the same time. You let the songs soak into your skin, pushing ever so deeper into your carefully guarded soul. The words remind you of your past, faces you haven’t seen in years, but miss dearly. Each melody conjures memories, perhaps cherished moments, of loved ones either six feet under and long gone or six feet away where the emotional distance could still be bridged with a simple interaction.

Catch her if you can.

In the last two or so years, the name “Margo Price” has overtaken brightly lit marquees across the country and late night television programs around the world.

Don’t fuck with Elizabeth Cook.

In a city like Nashville, where your artistic integrity and credibility can be bought and sold to the highest bidder, Cook has remained a proud outsider, one whose stance on the fringe is quickly becoming the center of the melodic universe as tastes are changing, more like maturing, or even returning to the normalcy of what we regard now as “classic country” and “nitty gritty rock-n-roll.”

I’ve lived in Haywood County 1,931 days. It’s also the exact number of days I’ve known Balsam Range.

Within the first hour of my first day in these mountains, I befriended the members of this Western North Carolina bluegrass act. The engine of my truck was still hot due to a nonstop 16-hour/1,000-mile overnight drive from my native Upstate New York to my new gig as the arts and entertainment editor of The Smoky Mountain News in Waynesville.

They stick out.

In a city like Asheville and in a region like Western North Carolina, world-renowned for bluegrass and Americana music, being a rock-n-roll band is more the exception than the norm.

Why not?

Why not include Greensky Bluegrass in the sacred — sometimes stale and stuffy — pantheon that is bluegrass music? Why not include the Michigan group in the annual celebrations of string and acoustic music, which mainly originated in Western North Carolina and greater Southern Appalachia? Why not consider the quintet a direct descendent (a rebellious one albeit) of the original rebel himself — Bill Monroe?

It’s the intersection of American blues and British rock.

When you throw some Foghat onto the stereo, you’re entering a realm as big and powerful as the tunes radiating from a quartet that was at the heart of the soundtrack of the 1970s.

In the bluegrass world, it doesn’t get much bigger than Rob Ickes.

Fifteen-time “Dobro Player of the Year” by the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA), Ickes was a founding member of Blue Highway, a group as innovative to the genre as they were successful.

An iconic mandolin and fiddle player, Sam Bush has rewritten the game of bluegrass, especially when it comes to live performance within the genres of string, acoustic and rock-n-roll music.

Among his many accolades and awards was his 2001 “Album of the Year” Grammy as part of the “O Brother, Where Art Thou” film soundtrack. With his early days as a member of the groundbreaking New Grass Revival, to his current role fronting the endless touring juggernaut that is the Sam Bush Band, he continues to be an open book — in inspiration and in conversation.

In their 20 years together, the members of Dark Star Orchestra have equaled — if not surpassed — the number of shows played (over 2,300) and endless miles traveled by the Grateful Dead.