For those unaware, John McCutcheon reached out to his longtime friend Tom Paxton with a simple idea: why not use Zoom - a newly essential tool in those pandemic days - to connect, ease the isolation of COVID, and maybe write a few songs together?

That following Monday at 2:00pm EST, they logged in. One Monday led to the next, and soon the weekly sessions became a ritual. More then four years later, they’re still at it.

Neither man, with already monumental catalogs that tower over much of modern folk music, could have predicted the creative flood that began that summer afternoon. Their first collaboration, Together (2023), gathered fourteen songs from those early sessions. The album topped the folk charts and earned glowing reviews across multiple genres. Yet those fourteen tracks represented only a fraction of nearly two hundred songs born from their virtual meetings.

Now comes Together Again (Appalsongs, 2026) - another fourteen songs from two of the most revered songwriters in acoustic music.

This time, things look a little different: at 88, Paxton has retired from the road, and McCutcheon, a spry 73, has scaled back his touring schedule. But both remain at the height if their creative powers.

1. The Future
2. Old Dog
3. Artie’s Last Stand
4. Ran Away with the Circus
5. Pathfinder
6. Stop at Nothing
7. Sargeant O’Reilly
8. Cheatin’ When I’m Eatin’
9. Rebel Gal
10. Last Man Sitting
11. Every Monday at Two
12. Famous for a Day
13. We Know How This Ends
14. Lay This Old Guitar Down

On an album chock full of songs of reflection and remembrance, of a heartfelt tribute, playful humor and more, they open on the emboldened The Future, a decorative ode to Old Dog, the wistful Artie’s Last Stand and the twisty folk storytelling of Ran Away with the Circus and then we get brought forth the banjo-driven Pathfinder, the melodious Stop at Nothing and the acoustic, veritably spoken word Sargeant O’Reilly.

Along next is the fun-hued countrified bounce of Cheatin’ When I’m Eatin’, the low sung Rebel Gal, and the impassioned Last Man Sitting, and they are in turn backed seamlessly by the heavenly divine sounds brought forth within Every Monday at Two, the harmonically-dewy Famous for a Day, the set rounding out on the forthright We Know How This Ends, coming to a close on the genuinely all-embracing Lay This Old Guitar Down.

With wide-ranging insight, impeccable craftsmanship, and luminous performances, Together Again stands as proof of the deep well these two songwriters continue to draw from. These are songs only decades of life, love and music can produce.