Amythyst Kiah's 'Wary + Strange' is an unusual combination

XPN | By Jessie Scott,

Published November 1, 2021 at 4:11 PM EDT

She is young, über talented and enigmatic. It is such a delight to watch Amythyst Kiah take her place center stage. She grew up in a world of rock and alternative, and then studied roots music in east Tennessee while in college.

Kiah found camaraderie and excitement in the room with Rhiannon Giddens as part of Our Native Daughters, and has now gone on to release the solo Wary + Strange, with its unusual combination of roots influences and alternative sounds. Hers is a powerful presence on stage and off. We talk music and history, and explore how she crafts lyrics from both lived and observed experiences on this session for World Cafe.

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Jessie Scott

World Cafe Nashville correspondent Jessie Scott is a 50-year radio veteran, and is currently the program director and afternoon drive host at WMOT Roots Radio in Nashville. She has spent the last couple of decades nurturing, curating, writing, and creating audio and video, in an effort to tell the story of American roots music.

Stephen Kallao

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Kimberly Junod

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).

See stories by Kimberly Junod