Here’s a few bêtes noire: Religions are the cause of war or  I hate musicals and the one that perhaps annoys more than any, I hate country music.

When I hear this last one I’m inclined to respond in a similar way when my 16 year old son declared he didn’t believe in God. ‘That’s interesting,’ I found myself replying. ‘Which version of God is it you don’t believe in?’ Country Music has always been quite a wide catch-all for what was once known as hillbilly music, honky tonk, folk, western swing and bluegrass. Indeed if we allow the term Americana to enter this discussion the term gets so wide as to become meaningless. What usually happens is the person trying to tell you they hate Country Music is  fixating on an idea of country that passed sometime before 1973. They might well hate country music but even they would admit that some of the current crop of country artists – Kane Brown, Kelsea Ballerini bare very little relation to the stuff they think they hate.

There’s a lot of country music I hate too and I avoid playing most of it on the AC on a weekly basis. There’s also a lot of rock music, pop music and jazz I hate too – but there’s also enough to love to make spending any time on the stuff I dislike feel like an exercise in time wasting.

All of this was going through my head as I looked up to a poster I’ve kept in my house for the last ten years or so. It was a gift from Diana Jones of a Hatch Print poster of her EP Sparrow. We’ve always loved the print and it was good to be able to tell her again how much we’d treasured the gift. Sparrow was the name of the EP and also the name Diana gave to her 100 year old , 4 string Harmony Martin guitar which she used exclusively on the recording. Diana might well fall into that wide classification of country music or even folk music but what part of her repertoire bears any relation to Wanda Jackson or for that matter, Peter, Paul and Mary is anyone’s guess. Diana is a troubadour in the great tradition of Woody Guthrie, Odessa and Johnny Cash and if some of that feels like country music that’s fine by me.

She was in Glasgow recently to play a show at The Glad cafe which I heard was very good indeed. During the day she stopped by the AC to record some live tracks for us from her reimagined Better Times Will Come album and spent a bit of me talking about the project and the current state of play in her home country. Growing up as an adopted child in New York Diana felt a seemingly inexplicable attraction to rural southern music. It began to make sense when, at 23, she discovered her birth family in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. It’s this great tradition she has tapped into over her recording career. Her last but one album , Song To A Refugee, is a great collection of protest songs based around the experience of exile and asylum and is a powerful record in the great folk tradition.

You’ll enjoy hearing Diana as our special guest on this week’s AC. Listen too for some great new music from Roseanne Reid, Riders of The Canyon, Natalie Merchant and some George Jones. It’s country music – our way and it all starts at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland this Tuesday evening or BBC Sounds whenever it suits. Join me if you can.

Dear Willie,

You don’t know me, but somehow, thinking back on things I feel as if I might know you a little. I certainly feel as if I know your voice as well as any voice I know. I’ve been listening to that voice a long time now too. If I remember correctly I heard your voice properly around forty seven years ago on a cassette tape. In our church there was a visiting student called John Fitzpatrick who was one of the loveliest fellows that came round our way. One day he couldn’t contain his delight that you had recorded an album of hymns we all knew from growing up. The Troublemaker was the name of that album and it made me rediscover the hymns my grandparents and parents knew as well as that I came to know and love your voice. I especially loved your treatment of ‘In The Garden,’ a hymn my grandmother sang often, and one night, on a whim I even sang it myself at the Royal Albert Hall during a gig.

However I need to go back to your voice. What was it that connected so much with me? Was it the vulnerabality, the colloquial stylings or the gentle vibrato or was it simply that you always told the story so simply? My friend, Beth Nielson Chapman says it’s the fact you sang as you spoke and she’s so right. Perhaps that’s why it sounds as great today as it did in the fifties but also allows us, the listeners to follow the song. Now, that is something you have always done so well.

You were a radio guy first Willie, and it’s through the radio you first let people hear your own songs. These songs! How could it be that someone could write songs which would become standards but have the confidence to make records which contained none of your own material? Why is it we associate you with songs like Blue Eyes Cryin’ In The Rain, Georgia or Always on My Mind as much as we do, Crazy,  Me and Paul or a late classics such as It Gets Easier? I think it’s because you are the rarest of people; the original artist. You write, you play that beautiful guitar, ‘Trigger’ you act and you keep singing. It’s the singing that has made you a fixture in the lives of so many music lovers. We love the stories of being the country outlaw who left Nashville and went back to Texas, we love that you’ve never followed a prescribed route and that has occasionally found you a little wide of the law but most of all we love the music you’ve given us.

I have a lot of albums on my shelves. I like to think I have some great ones, but I have to admit that I may have more of your records than anyone else’s. If I can share one problem, Willie, it’s this: In trying  to condense your career into our two hour celebration for your 90th birthday I fear I really didn’t know how to do justice to the volume of material you’ve produced. You’ve paid tribute to all your great friends, Waylon, Bob, Johnny, Kris, Lefty and so many more. So, this Tuesday we are going to celebrate your records.  You probably don’t have time to listen, but if you did, you’d feel a lot of love from Scotland. If you are interested it’s on BBC Radio Scotland from five past eight this Tuesday and you can hear it in Abbott, Texas anytime you like on BBC Sounds. If anyone else is reading this, you are welcome too.

There.            I’ve written the headline so you don’t have to.

What is Nashville like? It’s a question I’ve been asked many a time. The follow up question is often, ‘Is it worth a visit, as I’ve always been keen to see it.’ Even now my answer would always be, ‘Yes.’ However I’d have to confess it’s a place which, in so many ways, has changed beyond recognition. Perhaps it was always changing and perhaps too the changes seemed to go unnoticed to the casual tourist. What is certain now however, is that Music City is going through a period of civic turmoil.

I’m sure some of this is familiar to you, but in case you hadn’t noticed here’s a recap: Three weeks ago a lone shooter killed six people including three elementary school children. In the wake of the tragedy locals assembled in and around the State Capitol to protest about the lack of gun control. In a fevered atmosphere, three democratic representatives cheered on the demonstrators. In a strange twist of events the majority Republican House representatives tried to label the protest an insurrection and sought to expel the three Democrats. They, in turn became known as the Tennessee Three, and in the way all politics seems to go these days, the country took sides. What was clear however was that Nashville parents and children were concerned enough about the lack of any meaningful gun control to attend protest over a considerable number of days. Inevitably I came across the story in more detail through Margo Price’s twitter feed.

in the background to all this has been the State’s recent draconian legislation which outlaws drag artists. It’s not hard to imagine this has been seen as a hostile act towards the LGBTQ+ community. Such was the outrage on this particular subject that the there was a benefit/solidarity concert featuring some big country names including Maren Morris, Allison Russell, Amanda Shires, Brittany Howard, Brothers Osborne, Hozier, Jake Wesley Rogers, Jason Isbell, Joy Oladokun, Julien Baker, Mya Byrne, Sheryl Crow, The Rainbow Coalition Band, and YOLA. During the gig at The Bridgestone Arena Maren even dared Tennessee authorities to ‘arrest me’ for introducing her son to some of the drag queens. So don’t even wonder what any of this has to do with country music!

So there is and has been over some time a growing gap between the liberal artistic ‘Americana’ community and the more conservative culture of ‘the south.’ In amongst all of this is the ever present issue of race, which in America, underscores every political twist and turn. The most popular country artist (and perhaps even simply ‘artist’ of any genre) in the U.S. just now is Morgan Wallen. You won’t hear his music on the AC as we, like many others have been put off by his racist tag, which he never seems to have tried hard enough to disown. On one notorious night his career hung in the balance and the outcry that surrounded the late night out burst threatened to end his nascent fame. After that things took a strange turn and it seemed despite (or was it because) of the incident his career took off into the stratosphere.  Is this another sign that all is not well in America’s Music City?

To get behind some of this and see how it is changing and moulding the music from Nashville we’ll be talking to our own correspondent, Bill DeMain this week and trying to learn a little more about how America’s Music City can return once more to being best known for making music.

We will be bringing you lots of music along the way with tracks from Ruston Kelly, Caitlin Rose, Sierra Ferrell and Tanya Tucker featuring in two hours of country music…our way. Join me on BBC Radio Scotland or on BBC Sounds from five past eight this Tuesday evening. I’d suggest you might not want to miss this one.

In what seems the first time in a long time this week’s Another Country is brought to you from Studio 6 at the BBC in Glasgow. We’ve been on the road, at C2C and eased off air for a triumphant Scotland night at Hampden  (I managed to get tickets, so had no argument) over the last few weeks.  So a return to a pile of records and two hours to play them seems about the happiest scenario I could imagine this Tuesday evening.

A dear friend and previous producer rather despaired of me during my Sunday Morning shifts a few years back when I admitted I’d be quite happy just shutting up and playing a bit more music. She had to gently point out this wasn’t the reason we had been commissioned to be on air. But really, is there anything better? I say this as we can all be DJ’s so easily these days. Any fool can hit a couple if buttons and music will spew out of your smart phone for days on end. No repeat guaranteed? Oh yes, it can do all of that and no ads, news, weather or traffic announcements. So why believe in the radio? I happen to think the clue is in that great song by Mark Germino about the mythical DJ Rex Bob Lowenstein:

And his name is Rex Bob Lowenstein
He’s forty-seven, goin’ on sixteen
His request line’s open but he makes no bones
About why he plays Madonna after George Jones

No algorithm will suggest that, no matter how hard you try. The joy of playing artists from different age groups, decades, ethnic groups and sexes is what makes curation such a joy. I’m still indebted to some of the great radio people from the seventies and eighties who shaped my musical taste. In times when (if you missed the back announcement) you might wait years to find out what you’d just heard there were moments and nights on the radio when songs would explode my world. The next day you might well walk in a completely different direction because of what you’d just heard on the wireless, and, if you were a songwriter, your emphasis and artistic arrow might point in a whole new direction. I was reminded of this again a few days ago when I enjoyed a quiet holiday breakfast leafing through the brilliant Paul McCartney song book, The Lyrics, where he talks about how he imagined being different artists as he wrote particular songs. I was so glad it was not just me! Yes, I loved Jackson Browne but then I heard The Only Ones and I just wanted to be Peter Perrett.

On this week’s AC you can do a little imagining yourselves. Do you want to be Jimmie Rodgers, Caitlyn Smith, Bob Dylan, Trisha Yearwood or even Brandy Clark? In another dream you may fancy being in a bluegrass band called Mighty Poplar or singing cowboy songs like Andy Hedges.

You decide. You can listen in live on BBC Radio Scotland FM this Tuesday evening from eight or at a time and place of your own choosing on BBC Sounds. Either way do join me if you can.

As spring arrives I’m minded to think back three years and take stock a little. We were driving out to a theatre workshop with which my wife and I are both involved (in different ways) last week. As we were hurriedly getting into the car and anticipating the week before us we both recalled how fortunate we were to be going to a room where we would wear no masks, greet our friends properly and get to speak and sing together. Sometimes it catches you unawares, but we’ve all been on quite a journey.

In my happy place I’m always on a family holiday when the kids were young. We still enjoy going away together, but now there are more of us with husbands and partners in tow and even a grandchild too. Then we would have a mix tape, or a holiday CD burned to accompany us on long road trips or even short spins along the coast to a night out in the south of France, or Fife or wherever we went. It would be eclectic. I’d sneak a few favourites in and there would be enough songs we loved together for a sing a long. This could range from The Sound of Music to Stevie Wonder’s Misstra Know It All and all points in between. Coldplay’s The Scientist got heavy rotation on one Spanish adventure I seem to recall. There was one song, which even now, brought universal adoration and repeat plays. It was a tune from my own boyhood which appeared regularly on Saturday morning radio: Alan Sherman’s Hello Mother, Hello Father. An American kid’s letter home from summer camp. It was the final verse which came to mind this week as the sun shone and life looked a little more ‘normal.’

Wait a minute, it’s stopped hailing
Guys are swimming, guys are sailing
Playing baseball, gee that’s better
Mother, father, kindly disregard this letter

In my vernal reverie it was that last part of the song which hit home. Gee, it really is better. There’s much that isn’t right about the world but the ability to interact, socialise, perform, applaud together has again become central to everyday life – and I’m still grateful. As it happens the trigger for all of this was thinking about our very special show this week. It’s a recording of Nickel Creek‘s Celtic Connections performance in January at Glasgow’s City Halls. It was an exceptional night of virtuoso playing and singing which will amaze, fascinate  and delight. In between sets you’ll hear a conversation I recorded upstairs with Sara Watkins and Chris Thile from the band which spans the seventeen years since their last visit to the city.

As ever we kick off at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland and also BBC Sounds where you can listen again any time you wish. Do join me on this week’s Another Country In Concert special.

When Jordan Davis appeared in the BBC foyer for his performance and chat on Saturday afternoon he was dressed in the winter clothes he’d beeen sporting on his recent Canadian tour. Who can blame him? Spring in Glasgow is mid-winter in Tennessee and Jordan wasn’t taking any chances with the temperature.

Jordan Davis / BBC Scotland Country 2 Country 2023 – © Julie Broadfoot

Jordan was the first of six visitors to the foyer over a weekend of conversation, acoustic performances and full on rock-outs in the BBC and Glasgow’s Hydro. it was, for Scotland, the best attended C2C so far, and judging by the reaction of the audience, a complete success. On this week’s show we’re going to bring you a more reflective edition of the festival that you won’t have experienced in the noisier Hydro. Instead we have acoustic performances and chat from Midland, Jordan Davis, Matt Stell and Morgan Evans with some fascinating conversation from Lainey Wilson and Thomas Rhett thrown into the mix. It was a hectic few days for me between hosting the mainstage over the river each evening and welcoming these great guests to the BBC each afternoon. I am truly indebted too to the AC audience for coming over in the afternoon and making a whole day of their C2C visit. You were all so patient as we went through the many angles and pick-ups that are part of a TV recording.

Lainey Wilson /BBC Scotland Country 2 Country 2023 – © Julie Broadfoot

if you are keen to see this as well as listen in you can watch the first show this Saturday night at 10 p.m. on the BBC Scotland channel and you can also see that via the iPlayer if you don’t live in Scotland.

My head is spinning a little but I thought it would be fun to reflect a little on some of my big takeaways from the weekend. I’m sure this is more of a discussion starter and (I have to be honest) there were times when it was just impossible to see an entire set as I often had to be two places at once. We didn’t have any guest from Friday but I enjoyed getting to know the audience and having time to take in the live sets. Lindsay Ell and Mitchell Tenpenny certainly went down well though I have to confess I found both sets a little more rock than country….though in Lindsay’s case brilliantly executed. She’s an amazing guitarist and great performer. I was really taken by Old Crow Medicine Show’s set however. It really had everything: fiddle, banjo, madolin, washboard, free step-dancing and gospel harmonies. It was a triumph which won the band a whole new audience.

I really enjoyed meeting Zac Brown up in his dressing room and I told him how great Caroline Jones was earlier. Caroline is the newest ZBB member and plays almost everything. She performed a great solo set on the spotlight stage earlier in the evening and we will be playing some of her music over the next few weeks. Unfortunately I found the ZBB sound a little tricky and I know they had experienced technical issues on the night which didn’t really allow me to fully engage. I gather, however, that the audience really loved the show.

Saturday was a better evening all round for me. I just couldn’t stop listening to Jordan Davis and thought he put in one of the best shows of the weekend. I knew Lainey Wilson would be good but was a little thrown by her slightly over-eager opening. She then settled into letting her songs do the work and the show became a sheer delight. She sang and played brilliantly and delivered a beautifully curated performance. Thomas Rhett’s only problem on Saturday was what to leave out. There were so many hits to cram in he could have played beyond the curfew. I thought TR too had one of the best sounds of the weekend.

Thomas Rhett/ BBC Scotland Country 2 Country 2023 – © Julie Broadfoot

Matt Stell‘s set was certainly well received though I only caught the last part. Morgan Evans was the pleasant surprise of the weekend for me. he’d picked up a kilt earlier in the day and sported it for the entire set! The reaction he got for his performance was one usually reserved for headliners and I suspect his might be the performance everyone remembers a year from now. Midland brought country harmony and some interesting covers. I loved their Wichita Lineman version – no easy song to get right – and finishing the set with Wicked Game was a lovely surprise. Lady A closed out the weekend and the hits were all present and correct with all three singers in great voice. Hilary Scott’s decision to make the Glasgow audience the background chorus for American Honey was a perfect moment.

 With Morgan Evans /BBC Scotland Country 2 Country 2023 – © Julie Broadfoot

It seems C2C is winning new friends each year and I look forward to bringing you our highlights over the next couple of weeks on the TV and the wireless. Join me from five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland or BBC Sounds this Tuesday evening, and on BBC Scotland or iPlayer over the next few Saturday evenings. Join me if you can.

It’s March, it kinda feels like Spring and on the second weekend of the month there’s really only one place you want to be. If you’re in or around Glasgow I suggest you might want to get yourself down to the river and beg, steal or borrow a ticket for Country 2 Country, the three day festival of all that’s best from Nashville.

I’m still celebrating the fact that we can all gather again. We missed two years of this great event and I’m delighted to tell you this year will have more people in attendance each evening than it had on its biggest night ever in 2022. That night, with Luke Combs headlining, was one of the best atmospheres I remember at the festival and there was a real sense of celebration in the room. This year I’ll be in my usual spot on stage welcoming some great guests including, Old Crow Medicine Show, Zac Brown Band, Lainey Wilson, Jordan Davis, Thomas Rhett, Midland and Lady A. If you’re there for the weekend then so am I and we’ll all hope to still be on our feet come Sunday night.

If this isn’t exciting enough we are hosting two very special afternoons over at Pacific Quay (BBC Scotland’s HQ) across the river, which is three minute’s walk from the Hydro’s front door. On Saturday and Sunday the stars of C2C will be performing acoustically and chatting with me as well as answering some questions from your good selves. We’ll be filming all of this for BBC Scotland TV and making a two hour special radio show for broadcast on Tuesday March 14th. You will certainly want to be there if you can and we’d love to have a packed house of AC listeners and country music fans. If you’d like to be in the audience you will need to listen LIVE to Another Country this Tuesday evening as we’ll be announcing ticket details on the show. So do tune in.

Here’s little montage of some of some great times in the PQ foyer over the last few years:

On the show we’ll also be playing you tracks by the artists you’re going to see over the weekend as well as playing some great new cuts by Tenille Townes, the fab Wood Brothers and Ashley McBryde. With a little help from Jackson Browne we will also pay tribute to the late David Lindley after the sad news of his death last weekend. There are, I’m glad to say, always so many fantastic new records to play. So do join us live this week as it will be your chance to get up very close and personal to some of the biggest country stars on the planet. It will also be your chance to hear them perform their songs the way they sounded when they were first written.

So many people tell me they would love to go to Nashville and experience country music in its natural home. Let me suggest to you that on C2C weekend you can simply, and very easily, let Nashville come to you. Tune in this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland or on BBC Sounds from five past eight and find out how to be part of the gathering. I look forward to seeing you there.

What is it about songs? Why is it they can have such a deep impact on your emotional wellbeing? Sometimes it’s like falling in love; there’s no rhyme or reason, it’s simply that you’ve heard a song and you really just need to hear it again.

That’s why, I suppose I enjoy playing music on the radio and when push comes to shove I’d always call myself a songwriter over any of the other job titles I might claim. Songwriters are good people to be around. Oddly enough I really hadn’t hung out with that many until midway into my career I signed a publishing deal that involved me doing a lot more co writing. The first time I was put together with another writer my publisher suggested I go up to Highgate in North London and spend a bit of time with Charlie Dore. 

I can still remember the first of many visits to Charlie’s place in the early 2000’s as she led me by the hand through the weird world of the cowrite. She taught me what to expect, what to ignore and how to listen to what was happening in the room. I learned to re draft, to spend a bit of time on the song and I learned to expand my own expectations of what a song can and cannot do. It only made me fall in love more with song.

Over these last twenty years or so Charlie and I have remained good friends and it has been a joy to play her music on the wireless in that time. A few years after we met she returned to making her own music as a solo artist, which is how she’d started a good few years before. Charlie was known for her big radio song, ‘Pilot of The Airwaves’ which had been successful in the US and the UK. This had ultimately led to her career as a songwriter penning hits for Tina Turner, Celine Dion and George Harrison. Stepping into her studio to see these gold discs adorning the walls was a moment I won’t forget.

Over the last ten years or so, Charlie has made a series of beautiful records which aren’t quite folk or pop but happily could easily be described and embraced by the ever helpful Americana genre. Indeed, Charlie will tell you that her earlier career was closer to country music until the label who’d signed her on that very basis decided it had all got a little too country!

On this week’s AC we are welcoming Charlie to the studio to play songs from her most recent album, Like Animals, and pick some country/Americana faves for the show. She’ll be performing alongside her own regular writing and recording collaborator Julian Littman and bringing their music shop assortment of instruments with them. It will be a magical two hours where you can hear Charlie live and hear some great picks including tracks from Willie Nelson, Shawn Colvin and The Carter Family.

It all starts at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland or whenever you fancy listening in on BBC Sounds. Either way do join me if you can.

On this Tuesday’s AC we will play out a long conversation I recorded a few weeks ago with Margo Price. We were speaking between my studio and her back porch in Tennessee where she now lives. It’s geographically distanced from East Nashville and emotionally it represents a slight musical unhooking from the roots she explored on her first few albums.

Margo Price’s music has always been changing. The desire for new directions is perhaps the most consistent factor in her musical style. On her new record, Strays, the even articulates that search in a song called ‘Change of Heart.’ Despite it being less ‘country’ than her earlier releases, there’s still no doubt about what rocks Margo’s boat. Her own story is pure country and she would acknowledge that she wouldn’t be where she is today without absorbing the classic country music of the 50s and 60s as part of her constant search to find new inspiration. What I hadn’t known until I read her biography over Christmas was how long and deep a struggle it was to get her career to where her audience first encountered it.

If you can recall it was Midwest Farmer’s Daughter which introduced the world to Margo’s music. Before that, our Nashville correspondent, Bill DeMain had told us about this East Nashville act called Margo Price and The Pricetags who were causing a stir over the river. The song and video for Hurtin’ On The Bottle was the first song we played and it was that song which drew Jack White’s attention to Margo’s music leading to her signing to his Third Man Records label.

You can read all about that in Margo’s memoir, Maybe We’ll Make It, which talks about the struggle she and her musical soul-mate and husband Jeremy Ivey had to get their songs heard. It also tells the heartbreaking story of the birth and death of one of Margo and Jeremy’s twin sons, Ezra. As you can well imagine, that loss is a pain she carries with her every day. She has come a long way since that dark time thirteen years ago and the uncertainty in that book title best explains Margo’s openness to the future. She’d be the first to explain that she has no certainty that she has made it or ever will and that’s what makes her story and her music so compelling.

We talked all of that and especially about the great collection of songs she has cut on Strays. Listen out too for Margo explaining to your old fogey presenter how inspired she gets by her experiments with psychotic drugs. It will be the fourth time Margo’s been with us in the last ten years or so and as ever, it was a real pleasure to spend time in her company.

If that’s not enough we have new bluegrass, country-folk and some great down home country classics in a packed two hour show. It’s all live from five past eight this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland or whenever you fancy on BBC Sounds.

I was on holiday and far from home when the news broke last week about the passing of Burt Bacharach. Often, when people of a certain vintage die, there can be a bit of communal head scratching as to how sure most of us were that they were still alive. Indeed my old radio friend, Simon Mayo formed a jocular quiz around the subject of whether certain celebrities still walked this earth are had passed on to the life hereafter.

In Burt’s case, however, there was none of that. His legacy was certainly assured, but so too was his presence on the world stage. Burt Bacharach had been playing shows, writing and producing music and releasing records until very recently. Not only that, but (if it really needs said) he was doing all of this up to and beyond his own very high standards. A quite remarkable feat. In case you wonder why any of this has anything to do with country music then I’d love to point you to his recent collaboration with Nashville’s very own Daniel Tashian. It’s an EP which we have enjoyed hugely on the AC called, Blue Umbrella, and it really is a beautiful piece of work highlighting both artists as great song writers.

I may have laboured this point before, but in case there is any doubt, I think one of the reasons that people love Bacharach songs is because the ones they always quote are written by Burt and Hal David. In the interviews I’ve seen with Burt over the last few days I’ve noticed he is always keen to give due credit to his late, great collaborator. These beautiful melodies would be soulless without the addition of the lyrics of Hal. A House is Not a Home, I Say a Little Prayer, Walk On By and I’ll Never Fall In Love Again are love songs of a higher order because of that brilliant combination of a lyric and a melody. What is also true, and song writers can never really over-learn this, is everything Burt did was led by the melody. And that, more than anything else, is what turned Brill Building craft into pop music gold.

Hal and Burt never veered very far from the love song as a format for their 2 – 3 minute masterpieces. I’m guessing, if you had asked them, they’d have told you that the well never runs dry on that particular subject. That is why, on this week’s AC, we too are going to celebrate the love song. In our case, it will be the country love song but…and this is a very important but, our two hours

We will have songs of young love, parental disapproval, the first tingle of romance, commitment, disappointment and songs that celebrate love from all sexual orientations. There will be complications, mismatches, break ups and divorce. There will however be time to console you with love that lasts and is truly celebrated on St Valentine’s Day. It will be two hours of country love songs curated by ourselves and going out to lovers of all kinds and all places this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland at five past eight. Join me live if you can on the airwaves or at any time you can make it on BBC Sounds. It will be great to have your company.