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Malcolm Holcombe: A Southern, Guitar-Playing 'Bard Of Broken Hearts'

In August 2017, on his way to Missoula's River City Roots Festival, Malcolm Holcombe, a troubadour of "hill-country high poetry," stopped by MTPR to record a few tunes and visit with host John Floridis. The audience at his performance that weekend listened raptly to this "songwriter's songwriter" from North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains.

Alan Kaufman writes: "Holcombe's guitarwork is always masterfully spontaneous. On stage, edgily rocking his chair, his finger-flying fretwork and strum spin the theater like a roulette wheel, while his granular voice takes us aboard an Americana folk bus that is a ravaged speeding palace of bad luck and hurtles us down the blacktop road of no return where chain gang blues mingle with Celtic madrigals resonant with hardbitten lives."

(Broadcast: "Musician's Spotlight,"  6/7/18 and 8/23/18. Listen on the radio Thursdays, 7:30 p.m., or via podcast.)

John Floridis, the host and producer of Musician's Spotlight, has been with Montana Public Radio since 1997. He has interviewed over 200 musicians during that time. He is also an independent recording and performing artist in his own right and a former registered music therapist.
Beth Anne Austein has been spinning tunes on the air (The Folk Show, Dancing With Tradition, Freeforms), as well as recording, editing and mixing audio for Montana Public Radio and Montana PBS, since the Clinton Administration. She’s jockeyed faders or "fixed it in post” for The Plant Detective; Listeners Bookstall; Fieldnotes; Musicians Spotlight; The Write Question; Storycorps; Selected Shorts; Bill Raoul’s music series; orchestral and chamber concerts; lecture series; news interviews; and outside producers’ programs about topics ranging from philosophy to ticks.
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