My guest on this week's Bitesize episode is Sara Watkins, who joins me to talk about I'm With Her's Grammy winning album 'Wild and Clear and Blue'. It's an album I really love (and a conversation I loved too) and I wanted to put something out to celebrate not only the Grammy win, but also the Grammy they won for the opening track 'Ancient Light'.

Sara talks about the process behind writing the record, which began to take shape shortly after the pandemic, why collaboration was so important and the central themes that emerged during the process. We also talk about community and connection in music and how the line between audience and stage is a little thinner in folk music than for some other formats.

This comes from a longer conversation we had in 2025. You'll find the full interview with Sara here.

Sara also mentions an interview I did with her bandmate Sarah Jarosz, about her album 'Blue Heron Suite'.

For more info on I’m With Her, including upcoming tour dates and to buy I’m With Her vinyl, CDs and merch, visit imwithherband.com

For regular updates follow Sara on Instagram and Facebook

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Welcome to this month’s Bluegrass Briefing, a monthly series of episodes taking a look at what’s going on in the world of bluegrass.

Here are the links to stuff mentioned in this episode.

News and announcements - church street news

• Chris Thile’s Acousticamp
• Tony Trischka’s New York Banjo Night
• Bruce and Darol’s Great Big Fiddle Hang
• Sore Fingers
• Rockygrass

Releases (The Grass is New)

• Bryan Sutton/Billy Strings video
• Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas
• Tony Trischka Earl Jam 2 (preorder)
• Della Mae

Scroll on Buddy

• Willie Nelson (preorder)

Other bits

• Full list of interviews
• Collings Guitars

Happy picking.

Matt

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My guest this week is sound engineer Dave Sinko, who returns to chat about The David Grisman Quintet.

We've talked about that record a lot on the podcast, but this is less about the story behind the album and more about how it influenced Dave and informed the way he approaches recording. In his words 'it changed my life.'

We chat about his subsequent work with members of the DGQ, including Grisman himself, and recording Tony Rice for a project with Alison Brown. We also discuss how that first DGQ record set the standard for what acoustic instruments could and should sound like, the contributions Bill Wolf and Bob Shumaker made to recording acoustic music and how Dave approaches miking instruments, based on what he learned from the first DGQ album, including on Chris Thile's latest Bach album, an extraordinary and challenging project to work on.

I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.

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