This is the modern Americana songbook as it actually gets played at jams and around kitchen tables. The Carter Family sits next to Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, and the Grateful Dead sits next to Doc Watson, because that’s how the music traveled. Old Crow Medicine Show finished a Bob Dylan sketch and gave us “Wagon Wheel.” Welch and Rawlings wrote “Orphan Girl” and “By the Mark” in a voice so old you’d swear they came off a Carter Family record. Richard Thompson wrote a motorcycle ballad that bluegrass pickers adopted without asking. These songs share a sensibility more than a sound — plainspoken, story-driven, built for a guitar and a voice.

Use this list as a working repertoire. Learn three or four cold before the next jam and you’ll have something to call. Each song’s page on Picker’s Guide has chord charts, lyrics, recordings to learn from, and song history when you want to know where it came from.