A century-old guitar invention, a Canadian barbecue champion and a new Michelin star reveal an Americana culture enriched by everyone who learns its craft. This week, the most compelling traditions have an international accent.
The next time a resonator guitar sends that bright, sliding cry through a bluegrass tune, listen for the journey inside it. One of American roots music’s most distinctive voices owes much to John Dopyera, a Slovak-born inventor whose American patent application for a resonator-equipped instrument was filed on October 12, 1926.
A hundred years later, that history is getting a fresh hearing. Resonating Heritage, a new project launched this week by Peter Gašpar and Henrich Novák, is gathering support for recognition of resonator-system instruments within Slovakia’s intangible cultural heritage. It invites players and historians to help tell the story. Behind the familiar sound lies a wonderfully practical ambition: make the guitar louder. Metal, wood and ingenuity became a musical vocabulary.
That transatlantic conversation continues in Stephen and Jana Mougin’s "There’s No Reason To," a September release receiving fresh attention this week. Massachusetts-raised Stephen plays guitar with Sam Bush; Slovakia-born Jana spent years singing and playing bass with Fragment before making her home in Nashville. Their duet, written by Rick Lang and Lincoln Meyers, brings two musical lives together around the complicated business of staying in love. Put it on for the harmonies; stay for the sense of experience behind them.
Barbecue supplied its own border-crossing moment in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Calgary’s SmellaQue, led by Janice Smella, took the grand championship at the 37th Jack Daniel’s World Championship Invitational Barbecue. The victory came with $25,000 and the chance to defend the title. For anyone who has watched a brisket refuse to follow a timetable, there is something deeply satisfying about seeing such a demanding craft mastered far from its most celebrated American heartlands.
Back in Texas, Goldee’s Bar-B-Q received a Michelin star in the guide’s October 8 announcement. Inspectors singled out its Black Angus brisket, cooked slowly over local post oak. The appeal is immediate: a destination built around the transformation of an exacting cut through patient cooking. A Michelin star gives travelers another reason to make the Fort Worth pilgrimage.
Together, these stories make an inviting itinerary: explore the resonator’s history, listen to the Mougins, follow a Canadian pitmaster, then pull up a chair in Texas. The pleasures remain wonderfully tangible: strings under the fingers, wood feeding the fire, a voice finding its harmony. Americana grows richer as more people learn how to make those things their own.