A founding member of the beloved North Carolina bluegrass-ish band Mipso, Jacob Sharp has always loved a team. He attributes this to being a middle child, which is the basis for his debut solo album, Middle Kid. Born and raised in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Jacob not only loved being on a team but also radiated towards musical collaboration on guitar and mandolin. He studied at UNC Chapel Hill where he met his bandmates and formed Mipso in 2012. He ended up moving to Brooklyn after school where he fell into a musical community with folks like Courtney Hartman, The Brother Brothers, and Sarah Jarosz. From there, he and his wife moved to Los Angeles, then to Altadena, until the tragic wildfires of 2025. They eventually made their way back east and now reside once again in North Carolina. Their young daughter is named after Jacob's mother, who died when he was 21 years old, just weeks before Mipso's first concert.

Jacob is such an interesting and gentle person to be in conversation with in ways that make you want to know his whole story, which is vast! He speaks about his early life as well as the loss of his mother and what that feels like in tandem with becoming a parent himself. He is actively sharing music and surrounding his young daughter with music; we talk about what that looks like and how she's responded. Jacob is also very passionate about wine and shares where that came from and how it intersects with music. We also discuss the possible future or non-future of Mipso, who announced an indefinite hiatus on May 7, 2025, and wrapped up their final shows from October 8–9, 2025. I'm thrilled Jacob released his solo album! I have loved all the solo songs he has dropped so far and the new record does not disappoint.

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It's Lizzie No speaking to you from Dublin, Ireland, where I recently moved! It's fall here which makes my mind wander back to my home state of origin, New Jersey, where leaves are undoubtedly changing and cider donuts are being consumed. I hope you're enjoying autumn wherever you are.

This summer I said goodbye to Nashville, Tennessee, where I had been living for the past three years. I also worked on a bunch of projects, rehomed my beloved foster dog Dino, and prepared myself logistically to move to a new country. I don't think it was possible to prepare myself emotionally, but the paperwork is done, thank god. I'm mentioning all of this from my desk in Dublin because it's hitting me how quickly a transition period can become a major chapter of your life, how quickly a temporary living situation can become home, and how all of a sudden things that felt permanent have become memories.

This leads me to my interview with Minnesota folk singer Charlie Parr, whose new album, Rooming House, comes out on Smithsonian Folkways on October 16. Rooming House is an emotionally impactful musical story in seven acts. Like a lot of Charlie Parr's music, this album feels like a play where the stakes feel so real that you can't help but walk away more empathetic for having experienced it. The setting is a rooming house, and the characters are the folks from young to old who have been thrown together by circumstance. It's the type of brilliantly observed story-album that we are lucky enough to get when imaginative artists from working class backgrounds have the courage to tell stories.

In addition to being a prolific songwriter, Charlie Parr is a fabulous guitar player and student of the blues, so our conversation covers some of his musical backstory in addition to a discussion of the album. On a personal note, in 2020 I made an exhaustive cross-genre list of the songs from the decade of the 2010s which had been most important to me, and Charlie Parr's "Cheap Wine" came in at #1. His songs have accompanied me through a lot of life changes, so today is a big day for me, and a big day for Basic Folk.

Before I let you listen to my conversation with this contemporary heavyweight of folk music, I want to read you a passage from Charlie's written accompaniment to Rooming House:

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Michaela Anne grew up in a military family that moved a lot: Washington, Michigan, California, Virginia, and Italy. She and her family are currently in the middle of a huge, long move. It seems like there are always SO MANY THINGS going on with Michaela in her family and career.

One of the constants growing up was listening to music and learning to play. In the mid-2000s, she studied at the New School in New York City, where she met her future husband, musical partner and co-host of their show The Other 22 Hours, Aaron Shafer-Haiss. They eventually relocated to Nashville and are in the middle of relocating to New England via Michigan.

In the early 2020s, Michaela's life changed intensely: She got sober, found out she was having a baby, and her mom had a very serious stroke. “My hands were full of the hands of those who needed me,” she says, “and for two years I didn’t pick up my guitar.” She has since released two full-length albums, including 2026's These Are the Days. The new album is her first self-owned album of her career after a decade of recording under traditional indie-label systems.

In our conversation, she speaks to her relationship with chaos and how she prefers many, many things going on at once, versus calm and stillness. She talks about her complicated and evolving relationship with beauty and her own physical appearance as she turned 40 this year. She discusses her relationship to masculinity, which is something she is especially thinking about lately as she and her husband are raising a son.

Like many people, Michaela's career was transformed because of the pandemic. In addition to that world-changing event, she realized that no one has any control over anything and she was going to stop putting off having children. It was something she had always wanted but put aside, over and over, because of her career. This is a very action-packed and inspiring conversation with Michaela Anne. I learned a lot from her in our hour together and I can't wait to do it again!

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