The Americana Music Association was born at a series of meetings by roots music executives and advocates in 1999. As the AMA wraps up its 25th anniversary year, the scene it’s helped foster is bigger and more star-studded than its original organizers might have predicted. The 4,000-member organization has achieved many goals, from Grammy recognition to a more diverse and inclusive artist community. It has launched an educational foundation. To find out what’s next, Craig Havighurst and a team of MTSU student reporters surveyed members and sector veterans to find out what AMA might do next to maintain its momentum.

Welcome, Beyoncé, to the Americana movement. Among the R&B superstar’s personal record of 11 Grammy Award nominations announced on Friday is her song “Yaya”, a wild, finger-snapping, drum-line pounding, explicit track from the album Cowboy Carter. The innovative, country-inspired concept opus is up for Album of the Year overall and Best Country album too. The rest of the Americana and American roots fields look more conventional, with strong showings by Sierra Ferrell, Shemekia Copeland, and Aoife O’Donovan.

Americana music has been most conspicuously represented in the last few years by songwriting, band-leading artists, including Jason Isbell, Sierra Ferrell, and Billy Strings. Flash back to the origins of the alt-country and Americana movement, and the conversation was more often about bands, such as Son Volt, Whiskeytown, and the Old 97s. Such outfits made well-written roots music that rocked with that collective commitment that makes bandcraft so fascinating. This week I present two veteran and venerable roots rock bands that came along in the second Americana wave, bands that have weathered changes and renewed their vows - Austin’s revived Uncle Lucius and Raleigh, NC-based Blake Christiana of Yarn.