Hear the Best New Folk Music with Fresh Cuts Friday

Discover the Best New Music of the Week!

We’ve pulled together some of the best new music we’ve heard lately — and you can hear it all on Fresh Cuts, my weekly radio hour. Tune in every Friday at 2pm ET / 11am PT on Folk Alley’s 24/7 stream — available on our website, mobile app, or your smart speaker too.

Prefer to listen on your own time? Just click on the Fresh Cuts stream whenever it works for you.

In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at some exciting new music that’s caught our ears this week!

Molly Tuttle, “I’ve Always Been A Rambler”

Included on the new John McCutcheon-produced compilation Long Journey Home: A Century After the 1925 Mountain City Fiddlers, is the 1928 tune “I’ve Always Been a Rambler.” The compilation features and pays tribute to fiddlers and songs from an iconic 1925 fiddle contest in the small Appalachian town of Mountain City, TN.

KIRBY, “The Man”

Just released, KIRBY’s latest album, Miss Black America short for Mississippi Black America, is “an album about growing up in Mississippi and understanding how the fight of your ancestors, the love of your family, the blood on the land and the joy of the Sunday choir shaped how you see the world,” says the Memphis-born, Mississippi-bred hitmaker. “It is an audiovisual experience of the Mississippi Delta, and a love letter to the rural South.” “The Man” is dedicated to KIRBY’s father.

Alison Brown & Steve Martin, “Dear Time” (feat. Jackson Browne)

The upcoming album Safe, Sensible and Sane (out 10/17/2025) features banjoists Steve Martin and Alison Brown on their debut collaborative album. Featuring guest appearances from Jackson Browne, Vince Gill, the Indigo Girls, Tim O’Brien, Jason Mraz, Della Mae. “With the banjo, there are so many styles you can work with, but Alison and I both have an ear for its more melodic, melancholy aspect,” Martin shares. “We got together and played music for days, and ended up making a record where our entire banjo histories coalesce.”

Bill Scorzari, “Can’t Break This Fall”

Bill Scorzari, former New York trial attorney turned full-time musician, releases Sidereal Days (Day 1) on Oct. 17, with Day 2 coming in 2026. Of the song “Can’t Break This Fall” Bill says, “When I first wrote this song, it was a favorite of mine to play live. Like most of the other songs on this album, a lot of time passed before I resolved to circle back to it and get it recorded and released. There’s no particular reason for the delay, other than that, over the years I was recording other songs that I also wanted to release, and when the time finally came for the songs on this album to follow, time simply had passed.” To quote a lyric from the song, “You can say, ‘Now’s not the time,’ and not know where the time goes.”

More this week on FreshCuts!

Cha Wa – “Why You Wanna Do Me Like That” (feat. Irma Thomas)
Courtney Hartman – “Bright Eye”
Danny Burns – “Blue Ridge Blue”
Grant-Lee Phillips – “Closer Tonight”
Max Gomez- “Don’t Leave Me Lonely”
Robbie Fulks – “Poor and Sharp Witted”
Rodney Crowell – “Sometime Thang”
Tekla Waterfield & Jeff Fielder – “Something My Own”
Wes Corbett – “Hartford’s Bend on the Cumberland”