This past September, the 20th annual Americana Music Festival & Conference featured a broad range of showcases from diverse musicians across alt-country, roots-rock, bluegrass, R&B, blues, folk and the singer-songwriter genre. The 2019 AmericanaFest Day Stage at the War Memorial Auditorium, produced jointly by WMOT Roots Radio, NPR Music and World Cafe, presented over 20 showcasing artists, including The Wood Brothers, Jade Jackson, Maggie Rose, The Mavericks, Molly Tuttle and more.

Today, we present the acoustic guitar duo of Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley. Ickes is a veteran bluegrass instrumentalist who won the International Bluegrass  Music Association's Dobro Player of the Year an unprecedented 15 times. He left his band of 20 years, Blue Highway, to focus on playing with Hensley, the young guitar prodigy who made his Grand Ole Opry debut at the age of 11. The inspired collaboration came out of the gate with a Grammy nomination for their debut album after playing together for only one year. Their latest release, World Full of Blues, effortlessly expands upon their country and bluegrass roots with a heavy dose of the blues. The record features a fuller sound with a backing band, but their acoustic set for AmericanaFest really spotlights the pair's unique chemistry on stage.

Copyright 2019 XPN. To see more, visit XPN.

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