Nashville-born, Chapel Hill-based Florence Dore has released her second record, Highways and Rocketships with Mitch Easter and Don Dixon (of REM fame), and is on tour now. Even not counting the pandemic, the road from her first record Perfect City to Highways and Rocketships has been anything but straight. She spent a lot of time between then and now riding around on Steve Earle’s tour bus, catching up with her Dukes-drumming husband Will Rigby, wrote a book, put on a conference at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, took a seat on the board at the Bob Dylan Institute--and had a kid. Way back in 1994 Florence’s song “Christmas” came out on a Geffen release, and over the first pandemic months, when she had to suspend recording plans for Highways and Rocketships, she co-created Cover Charge, the charting compilation of NC artists to benefit Cat’s Cradle. MArk Spencer of Son Volt, Peter Holapple and Rigby--both of the dBs--as well as Jeremy Chatzky (Bruce Springsteen) and Mary Huff (Southern Culture on the Skids) appear on Highways & Rocketships.