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.)