Rhiannon Giddens, 'Waterboy'

XPN | By Bruce Warren

Published December 23, 2015 at 9:00 AM EST

In 2014, Rhiannon Giddens, the fiddler and frontwoman for the Carolina Chocolate Drops, collaborated with Elvis Costello, Dawes' Taylor Goldsmith, My Morning Jacket's Jim James, and Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons as part of producer T-Bone Burnett's The New Basement Tapes project. This year, she released her solo debut, Tomorrow Is My Turn, on which she puts her own breathtaking mark on songs by Patsy Cline, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Nina Simone and others.

Giddens showcased some of these songs on World Cafe earlier this year. At the 2015 Americana Music Honors & Awards ceremony, held at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium in September, she performed a show-stealing version of the traditional folk song "Waterboy," along with Hubby Jenkins on banjo.

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Bruce Warren

Bruce Warren is assistant general manager for programming of WXPN in Philadelphia. Besides serving as executive producer of World Café, Warren also contributes to Paste magazine and writes for two blogs: Some Velvet Blog and WXPN's All About The Music Blog.

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