Alana Springsteen is making a 'different kinda country' on her debut album

XPN | By Raina Douris,

Kimberly Junod

Published January 10, 2024 at 7:00 AM EST

Do you remember your early 20s? Maybe you're in your early 20s right now, and you know that things can be confusing, intense and full of life lessons. Virginia Beach native and current rising Nashville star Alana Springsteen is right in the thick of all of that.

Springsteen is, like the title of her debut album, TWENTY SOMETHING, and she's divided that album into three parts called "messing it up," "figuring it out" and "getting it right." In this session, recorded in front of a live audience at World Cafe Live, you'll hear some songs from each of those parts. Plus, Springsteen talks about making the record, working with Chris Stapleton, and making it through the tumult of your 20s.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

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Raina Douris

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, is the host and writer of NPR's daily nationally-syndicated music interview and discovery program World Cafe. She has interviewed artists like Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, Questlove and Brandi Carlile, and was a 2022 keynote lecturer on the topic of Folk Music and music discovery at the Chautauqua Institution.

Kimberly Junod

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).