John McCutcheon and Tom Paxton return with “Together Again”, a fourteen song collection arriving January 9, 2026, that celebrates a partnership born on quiet pandemic afternoons and strengthened through years of Mondays at Two Zoom calls. What began in August 2021 as a way to ease isolation quickly became a creative ritual, yielding nearly two hundred songs and a renewed sense of play between two of folk music’s most respected voices. Their first album “Together” topped folk charts in 2023, and this new chapter carries the same spirit of curiosity, humor and deep craft that defines their friendship.
The album reflects a pair of artists who remain at the height of their powers even as their touring lives shift. Paxton has stepped off the road at eighty eight, and McCutcheon has scaled back his travel at seventy three, yet both channel decades of lived experience into songs filled with warmth and clarity. The opener “The Future” draws on McCutcheon’s memories from the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, where he watched young talents like Alison Krauss and Molly Tuttle signal the next generation’s rise. Elsewhere on the album they explore remembrance in songs like Old Dog and Rebel Gal, honor Pete Seeger with Pathfinder, share humor in Cheatin’ While I’m Eatin’, and weave in a classic baseball tale with Famous for a Day.
Their writing sessions still carry the same energy that sparked the project. McCutcheon jokes that they have material for ten more albums, a nod to the creative flood they never anticipated. Paxton brings the abandon and insight that Billy Collins once compared to using the pen as a flashlight, illuminating forgotten corners of human experience. McCutcheon brings a sense of wonder rooted in the fourteen year old kid who once learned Woody Guthrie songs from a library book.
“Together Again” celebrates the companionship, imagination and lived history that only decades of storytelling can produce. It is a rare gift to have these two voices side by side once more, sharing songs shaped by friendship and time.