In 2007 five musicians from Haywood County, North Carolina named their new band after the Great Balsam Range, then dropped the word Great before their first gig because it sounded pretentious. This episode traces how that grounded instinct carried Balsam Range from a casual local jam to IBMA Album of the Year and multi-genre Billboard success without ever leaving home.

The original lineup was anything but amateur: banjo player Marc Pruett had played on Grammy-winning Ricky Skaggs records, guitarist Caleb Smith builds custom instruments as a luthier, and Tim Surrett had toured with the Kingsmen Quartet. Their 2007 debut Marching Home featured guests like Tony Rice and Joe Diffie, Last Train to Kitty Hawk gave them a first number one, and 2012's Papertown, named for the paper-mill town of Canton in their own county, spent five months atop the ...