Florence Dore is a Nashville-born, Chapel Hill-based musical artist whose most recent record, Highways and Rocketships, recorded with REM producers Mitch Easter and Don Dixon, won Best Americana Album of 2022 at Lonesome Highway Magazine. The road from Florence’s first record Perfect City (2001) to Highways and Rocketships was long but anything but straight—she spent that time getting tenure as literature professor at UNC Chapel Hill, riding around on Steve Earle’s tour bus to catch up with her drumming husband Will Rigby (a Duke), writing a couple of books, putting on a conference at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, taking a seat on the board of  the Bob Dylan Institute at Tulsa U—and raising a daughter. Back in 1994 the Posies covered Florence’s song ‘Christmas’ for the Geffen release, Just Say Noel, and over the first pandemic months, she co-created Cover Charge, the Billboard-charting compilation record of NC artists to benefit Chapel Hill’s iconic rock venue Cat’s Cradle. Florence’s manager Kathie Russell made sure that she and her crack band—husband Will (Steve Earle, Matthew Sweet, The dB’s), Gene Holder (The dB’s), and Mark Spencer (Son Volt)—accomplished a substantial tour behind Highways, and Florence continues to play out as she prepares to make her third album, Hold the Spark.