A little memory came calling last week. A friend had tweeted some photographs of the building of the Tay Road Bridge on the 50th anniversary of the bridge opening and suddenly I was back there. Growing up in the sixties in Dundee it was impossible to ignore such a wonderful development. You only needed to look out almost any south facing window – and there were plenty of those – and you’d see the landscape changing and as well as something strange, new and wonderful being created right in the middle of one of the widest stretches between Angus and Fife. At night the workers would carry keep on building and you’d see their lights shining out across the estuary and hear the deep thud as the pillars were sunk into the bed of the river.

On the day it was to open we must have been given the day off school or the schools were still to return. Either way we went down to the new precincts built around the entrance of the bridge to see the Queen Mother reveal the plaque and see the first official cars cross through the tolls. My sister asked the local TV reporter for his autograph and we all generally agreed it was the most exciting thing to have happened to us.

Then last week my old pal, Breeks from Goucho’s Record Shop put up a photograph on Facebook of the original shop in Perth Road and again I was straight back there. By now I was a student, short of money but keener than ever to acquire a decent record collection. Groucho’s provided the sole means to achieve that mission. Going in on a Saturday afternoon was like nothing that ever happens to me these days. Second hand albums were there sure, but also there were magazines – I once got Zig Zag and there were many back issues of the Furry Freak Brothers  – badges were being made with cool slogans and the names of your favourite new punk bands…and punk rock singles adorned the walls. You could buy the newest ones and also catch up with the ones you’d missed, sometimes 12” versions. The there was the counter. It was here the 17 year old eyes of your author turned circles. All manner of weird and wonderful hippy paraphernalia: joss sticks, bongs, pipes and objets d’art for which this brethren boy’s imagination could find no possible reason to acquire. And yet that smell and the otherness of that small space was an intoxicating fun of rock, colour and mystery. And who were these bands? Sure there were some I’d heard of and desperately wanted but the others…Commander Cody…The New Riders of The Purple Sage? Whoever they were and whatever they were about they all seemed to belong in this magical west end world.

It was years later when the good Breeks was in hospital that we played a track by one of these acts for him on the AC to cheer him up. After that I made a little note to myself to explore the roots of cosmic country a little more some night. But somehow, like many noble plans, it never really happened.

So this week I have another excuse and it’s been spurred by a couple of newer artists who could well lay claim to that title too. Sturgill Simpson is leading the way with his own fusion of country, rock,blues, soul and  a new cosmic contender, Morgan Delt from L.A. They have both inherited a little of the space cowboy tag from the great tradition that goes back to Gram Parsons, Gene Clark and the man who comes along with a new album very soon, David Crosby. So allow us to take you on a little orbit or two this Tuesday.

We will also play you Willie Nelson paying tribute to Ray Price, more good things from Julia Jacklin, White Denim and hear why lots of people are loving Lori Mckenna’s new album. Did I mention we have a Merle Moment and Luke The Drifter on vinyl?

If I’ve missed anything out you can listen along and check for yourself. It all starts at five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland FM this Tuesday evening.

‘The play is memory. Being a memory play it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic. In memory everything seems to happen to music (that explains the fiddle in the wings).’ So explains narrator, Tom Winfield, in his monologue at the beginning of Tennessee Williams’ ‘The Glass Menagerie.’ We went through, as a family, to see it at The Festival last night and I was caught up again in that great story of a writer trying to make sense of his past and realising that, despite his best efforts, he can neither return or completely leave the memory behind. Thirty Five years on from when I first encountered the play I was moved to tears last night of the depiction of the Laura, based on Williams own younger sister, too frightened of life to fully engage; lost in her own private world and the fragility of her glass animals.

A wise, good friend of mine told me that our deepest spiritual experiences happen within our childhood. Quite a discomfiting thought for some people on the life long soul search. It’s no surprise therefore that all writers return to childhood in some way to make sense of their own lives. This week’s very special Another Country celebrates all of that in a unique two hour celebration of a very real new talent.

Sturgill Simpson’s current album, ‘A Sailor’s Guide to Earth’ is a beautiful long love letter to his young son. In all that imagining of a young life however there is inevitably a sense in which the artist uses his own memories and instincts to project his hopes and fears for his young lad:

Oh, and everything is not what it seems
This life is but a dream
Shatter illusions that hold your spirit down
Open up your heart and you’ll find love all around
Breathing and moving are healing
And soothing away
All the pain in life holding you down

(Breakers Roar)

What makes Sturgill so interesting to us that his career is on one level a classic country story and on another a complete counterpoint to everything held true by Music Row. Despite now being on a major record label, all of Sturgill’s career has been based around his own musical instincts. Rejecting the advice of the moguls on Nashville’s 16th Avenue he brought out two of his own albums within a year and within a very short time was touring to such a successful level that the music business was struggling to keep up.

We were lucky to catch on to what Sturgill was doing very early on and he recorded his first ever UK radio session with the AC. We’ve kept faith with him over these few short years and he’s been good enough to keep coming back to see us. Recently we recorded a fascinating conversation with him in the dressing room of his Glasgow ABC show. Reflecting on the birth of his son, his recent chart topping success and his short lived but deep friendship with the late Merle Haggard he gave us a brilliant insight into his current thinking.

For me it was real joy seeing the development of such a great talent and knowing our instincts hadn’t been wrong. It was also life-affirming to know that people can become so successful and still be as natural, warm, engaging and funny as the day you first met them.

Later that evening as Sturgill was in the middle of one of the gigs of the year in that same venue my producer Richard Murdoch turned to me and said, ‘I think I have a brilliant idea.’ He did and it was.

On this Tuesday’s Another Country you can hear that idea in full. Three years worth of conversations with Sturgill Simpson and all the songs he’s recorded in session for us (solo and with his band) in that short time. In between we celebrate the music that inspired this Kentucky troubadour and the music he’s still listening to. It will be a remarkable two hours all based around the talent of a remarkable artist. Join me if you can this Tuesday from five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland.

It’s the perfect image. A train in the night. It will remind you of a loved one gone far away – maybe off to war – and tease with you the possibility of taking off. The duality is perfect…the train that took your baby away is the train that might bring him/her back another day.

When it’s dark and quiet I often hear the click clack of the train from my garden or through the park when I’m on a late night stroll with the dog. It never really sounds romantic to me cause I know it’s only going round a greater Glasgow circle and the reality is that no one is really getting very far. In the old days I used to live quite near the main line to london and there was something (still is) fairly wistful about watching that long sleek sleeper slipping through the Glasgow suburbs knowing it took people to the big smoke. In the early days…and I’m not sure this will ever pass either….I could never sleep on the ‘sleeper’ as I was always too excited at the very idea of speeding through the night on a train.

I’d heard stories of American trains and the romance that went with the railroad but have had very little experience of it. It wasn’t really until I went to Nashville some years ago that I got a real sense of the hypnotic draw of the sound of a train. The first time I stayed there the triple glazing and air con meant I got no sense of ever being near the track. Then one day, one a writing appointment in a house not far from my hotel, I heard it. Nashvilleans are so used to the freight trains going through the city and the soundtrack of their long, mournful horns that they don’t even flinch when they hear it echoing through the traffic. On a later visit I stayed very near the main freight junction downtown and I found myself drawn to going over to the side of the tracks and just watching and waiting as the trains went past. What I couldn’t fathom was my inability to wait around long enough to let one train pass. I’d been there a good 40 minutes and there was still no sign of the caboose.

Billy Bragg and Joe Henry have a new album coming out soon which celebrates the railroad. They have taken my fascination one step farther by getting on the trains, recording as they travelled. It’s a beautiful thing and we’ll be talking to them about the whole project. Meanwhile we thought we’d celebrate the Great American Railroad a little on this coming Tuesday with songs from Billy and Joe, George Jones, Roseanne Cash, Anna and Elizabeth and the man who once worked on the railroad himself, Sturgill Simpson.

We’ll also bring you some great new things from Steve Gunn, Mutual Benefit, The Stray Birds and Michael Nau. We’ll play you some lovely older things from Hank Williams, Emmylou Harris and by the man who came through Glasgow last week, Van Morrison.

We start at five past nine and you can find us on BBC Radio Scotland FM.

I’ve never really got over the idea that the summer holidays are endless. 7 weeks as a child made it quite possible to be a different person coming back to school than the one who’d run out of the gates at the end of June. I remember wanting to come back into the next year and be looking and sounding different. It rarely worked.

This morning I had a strong sense of those long July weeks when I spent a bit of time sorting out the path at the back of my house. Turning over some unwanted weeds I spied a couple of beautiful beetles and remembered again being the boy who, with his chums next door, collected all manner of insects, bees and assorted wildlife. Mornings would drift into afternoon as bees, wasps and all manner of myriapoda were buckled into makeshift dens, boxes and jars. It seemed to me that we rarely ventured home, though in truth, we never really went that far away either. I distinctly recall managing to return to the house fairly quickly when an insecure bee jar broke free and the newly liberated buzzers took revenge on their captor. It was all of this which went through my mind this morning pulling out the weeds and generally getting lost in my garden. I found myself thinking, ‘It’s summer, so this is where I’m really meant to be.’

It’s probably me stretching my holiday as long as possible. Returning from a warm place to a sunny Scotland is always the bonus we yearn for. But I am back and, as you may have seen on my Life in Ten Pics on the telly last week I’m delighted to be back in the studio to play you some music I’m loving at the moment.

Tonight we’ll pay tribute to this family:

For the full story of The Browns is better told by my radio hero, Eddie Stubbs who shares his memories of Bonnie Brown when her death in July was the subject of one of his great blog.https://www.facebook.com/eddiestubbsofficial/. We’ll play you some Browns from vinyl tonight.

We’ll also play you some great selections from one of our favourite record labels, Third Man Records. Not only do they record, master, manufacture and distribute the records from their Pie Town HQ in Nashville they’ve recently decided to play one of their records in space…….I know…more tonight featuring The Raconteurs, Margo Price and new signing Dwight Yoakam.

We’ll have some wonderful new records from Band of Horses, Miranda Lambert, Haley Bonar and Brent Cobb. Look out for some vintage Alan Jackson from his excellent boxed set compilation and, of course, this week’s Merle Moment.

We’ll be on from Five past Nine on Tuesday on BBC Radio Scotland FM. Join me and send me a picture if you’re listening out of doors too.

On Saturday night I went to see Martin McDonagh’s The Lonesome West at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow. Darkly funny it concerns the lives of two brothers who live in a state of permanent conflict in a remote village in the west of Ireland. The strange logic of their feuds only illustrates how isolated their lives have become. Violent,comic, bathetic and strangely life affirming I recommend the play to you as good a night out as you will find while Richmond Fontaine are not in town.

In some ways it provided the link between the two parts of my radio week. On Tuesday night I will welcome the aforementioned Fontaines in session and, inevitably, in conversation with the great Willie Vlautin. On Richmond Fontaine’s latest and final album an assortment of characters leave, get lost and try to pick up the pieces in and around Oregon and, no matter how tragic, we find ourselves drawn into the disappointment of each fragile life story.

He sold off the horses to some guy in Arizona
Whitey and me couldn’t get them back
Cause we were flat broke
I hated him for what he’d done to us
But I knew he was in a bad way
I heard he ended up in Douglas
Holed up in the Gadsden Hotel
And shot all that money away
He fell apart in his underwear in the lobby
Crying for his sister
Who hadn’t been alive in years

From Whitey and Me by Richmond Fontaine

Since Willie Vlautin’s characters entered my life a few years back I feel I approach each new song or novel partly with an expectation that all will not be well but also with a realisation that the full range of human expectations can be realised. Sure, they’re going to fail, but this is not Hollywood, it’s Winnemuca or Reno; it’s the Elko Lounge and we’re all just looking to survive.

By sheer coincidence my guest on my final Sunday Morning With of this season is Jean Vanier. One of the most remarkable people living in the world today and described by many as a ‘living saint.’ I’ve no doubt he would reject both of these charges because his entire life has been given over to making his own life more obscure and enabling the excluded to be seen as vital members of society. 50 years ago he founded a community near Paris in a little village called Trolly-Breuil where he decided he would live with two other men,  Raphael Simi and Philippe Seux who would leave the institution where they lived to share their lives with him. Together they began L’Arche.

However, despite his attempts at obscurity, the world has noticed. L’Ache now has 147 different communities based on that 1964 model working in 50 countries. His awards include the French Legion of Honour, Companion of the Order of Canada, the Rabbi Gunther Plaut Humanitarian Award 2001, and the International Paul VI Award. In November 2004, a CBC poll placed him number 12 in a list of Greatest Canadians. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and the Templeton Prize.

Last week I went over to meet Jean Vanier in that original L’Arche house to which he moved in 1964 and has never left. Now aged 87 he is as vibrant and engaged as ever. Sitting in his small study surrounded by work and whatever he’s been reading we talked about the Christianity that frames all that he does, his belief that we are all enriched the more we engage with and celebrate people of disability and the continued journey towards becoming human. It was one of the more remarkable conversations I’ve had the privilege of sharing and I hope you will listen in this Sunday Morning from 10 on BBC Radio Scotland.

Another Country goes out this Tuesday when Richmond Fontaine will be in session and I will be talking to Willie Vlautin about the current album, ‘You Can’t Go Back If There’s Nothing To Go Back To’ and re-listening to some great songs from his back catalogue.Join me from 9 p.m. on Tuesday on BBC Radio Scotland.

There’s a great story about Hayes Carll which emerged in an interview from last year. He told his Mom he wanted to be a folk singer.

‘You can’t do that,’  she said. ‘When Hayes asked why she explained: ‘Two reasons. First, you grew up in the Woodlands. What are you going to write about? There aren’t enough towels at the country club?’ Hayes countered, ‘OK, that’s a valid point. What’s the other reason?’ ‘You don’t have a butt. To be a country singer, you have to have a butt. You need to sit down and be a folk singer.’ And yet, as Hayes himself gladly pointed out, ‘Against the odds and here I am with a Grammy nomination for Best Country Song of the Year.’That Grammy nod was for his beautiful song, Chances Are performed by Lee Ann Womack. We’ll get a chance to hear that on the show this week.

He wasn’t sitting down a few months ago at the CCA where he played with his travelling musicians and delighted the Glasgow audience by bringing his new significant other – one Alison Moorer – onstage for 3 songs. Bumping into Kevin Morris from The Fallen Angels Club who promoted the Hayes show the other day he smiled when I reminded him off the gig in question. ‘I think that’s the best night we’ve had in a while, ‘ he told me. He isn’t wrong. There’s  a deep truth in Hayes Carll’s new work and all of that was evident on that magical evening back in April.

The next morning in our AC studios I picked up from where the gig left off and got to ask him all the questions which hung in the air after such a warm, intimate show. Songs about Lovers and Leavers, Friends, Driving and one very special story about his son The Magic Kid.

It’s a song written for his son but all of it might well apply to himself.
And I may get it wrong or get it right
But either way I’m standing in the light
Where nothing is hid
I’m the magic kid

Everything is there and all is revealed in Hayes Carll’s songs

But in case you’re worrying; a night in listening to Hayes on the radio will never be dull. This, after all, is the man who gave us the great ‘She Left Me For Jesus.’ ‘The problem with irony,’ as Hayes so eloquently put it that night, ‘Is not everyone gets it.’ However we have confidence you will really enjoy the songs and the conversation of Hayes Carll in session on a very special Another Country.

Listen out too for some new music for Look Park, Jesse Malin, Joana Serrat, Morgan Delt and our own tribute to the late Scotty Moore.

We’ll have another Merle Moment as we work our way through all the Hag‘s No 1 songs. We’ll anticipate the return of Sturgill Simpson and remind you that Lucinda Williams is in town this week. It all starts at five past nine this Tuesday on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

There’s a story I came across which explains why I love Jerry Reed and why I love country music. It seems invariably that any great story of country and the south will also, at some point, merge into a story about fishing…so this one is no different.

In September 1967 Jerry Reed went fishing one day when he was tracked down by Mary Lynch, Chet Atkins assistant. Mary had been sent by Felton Jarvis to find him as there was a recording session happening at RCA in Nashville to record Jerry’s song Guitar Man. The artist recording the session was Elvis Presley who had been hooked on the song since he’d heard it played on a Los Angeles radio station some time before. The problem at the session was that no one could get their head (or their fingers) round Jerry’s guitar hooks. It just wasn’t sounding right. Enter Jerry:

Felton Jarvis (Elvis’s producer) recalled the moment he walked in, ‘like a sure-enough Alabama wild man. You know, he hadn’t shaved in about a week, and he had them old clogs on – that was just the way he dressed. He come in and Elvis looked at him and said, ‘Lord, have mercy, what is that!’

This Tuesday on the AC you’ll get a chance to hear what ‘that’ really was all about. Jerry Reed, it seems to me, is a name that kept popping up every where we went on our recent Nashville trip and the good Mr M and I thought it might be good to remind ourselves about his music. So this Tuesday you’ll hear Jerry Reed as performed by Jerry himself, Elvis Presley, Porter Wagoner and Johnny Cash.

We’ll also pay tribute to this man……

During Ralph Stanley‘s life country music has gone from hillbilly to bluegrass to Americana and all the way back again. It’s fair to say however that Ralph Stanley never went out of fashion. With his brother Carter he helped harvest the mountain music they grew up on (hymns, folks songs and ballads) and weave into it their own unique sound resulting in the most simple but beautiful roots music you might ever hope to hear. Last week, when Ralph died aged 89 there were tributes from across the world of popular music. I saw messages from Ryan Adams, Ricky Skaggs and Van Dyke Parks. Dr Stanley leaves behind an incredible legacy and we’ll pay our own tribute with a great Ralph Stanley selection on this week’s show.

As ever we’ll find plenty time for some new records and we’ll be playing something from new folk pioneers Darlingside, some good things from Dierks Bentley, Sara Watkins, a Merle Moment and something great from Brandy Clark. John me if you can from five past nine this Tuesday (repeated on Fridays from 7) on BBC Radio Scotland.

I’m a huge fan of Desert Island Discs. I also think Kirsty Young is a great presenter. She has a wonderful way of allowing people to tell the listener something of themselves without us feeling she has them pinned against the wall. Perhaps the reason for this is that the guests are usually doing something anyone would love; being asked to pick their favourite records.

It’s in that choice that so much is usually revealed. Yes, there was always a stream of megalomaniacs who picked “My Way” but look longer and deeper and over the years doubts, loves, fears and joys have often been better explained and highlighted by the record chosen than the awkward confession.

You’ll remember too that at the end of the programme they ask the killer question, ‘Of all the discs you’ve picked which one would you choose to take if you could only have one?’ I guess it focusses the mind a little. We don’t ask that particular question on this week’s Another Country but we do have some great guests and they all pick a record they truly love.

Once more this week it is The All-Star Country Jukebox. Over the last few years no visitor to our studios has been allowed to clip shut their guitar case or pocket their harmonica without sharing one of their favourite country songs. The beauty of this is I now have records I’ve never heard before running through my head and the plan is, that by eleven o’clock on Tuesday evening, something similar may happen to you.

So listen out for all three Pistol Annies: Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Angeleena Presley as they pick some heartbreakers from Guy Clark, Patsy Cline and Deana Carter. But which songs and who picked which artist? We’ll play music from Glen Campbell (twice in fact), Ray Price, Gillian Welch and The Carter Family. We’ll hear the thoughts of the female half of Little Big Town, Rhiannon Giddens and First Aid Kit as well as a choice by Kacey Musgraves  and something by Kacey too. As ever stay tuned for these moments you were not quite expecting and a sublime introduction to the rules of country music as explained by Chuck Prophet. In amongst this your host picks a few faves too and I can guarantee you’ll be adding to your record collection before the evening is over. It all starts tonight on BBC Radio Scotland from five past nine. Join me if you can.

We’re used to heartbreak around here. It’s what we do. It’s the currency of country music old and new. But this weekend’s horror in Orlando calls for a better response. Inevitably music comes in where other forms of comfort just don’t seem to work.

I would/should have been in George Square yesterday. Standing alongside gay friends and fellow citizens who have fought through and won enormous civil rights battles only to see fear return, whispering on the streets to anyone who’ll listen that, on account of their birth genes, they should be worried for their lives. It would be less than human to be an LGBT person and not be afraid.

I would have been there had someone not decided it was fair game to steal my 88 year old mother’s handbag while she helped them identify something in a supermarket. Sometimes weeping may seem like the only music we’re ever going to hear.

This morning I’m looking and listening as people in Soho in London gathered together and singing Paul Simon’s brilliant hymn of healing, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ because, maybe, it’s the only thing we can do. When Hillsborough tragedy was raw I stood on the stage of The Royal Court in Liverpool as an audience sang ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and 26 years later saw the same families celebrate justice by singing the song once more. When a gunman massacred people in a Charleston Church last year President Obama visited and seemed to help the healing process when he sang ‘Amazing Grace’ to and with a grieving congregation. Sometimes it’s all we’ve got.

But there’s something else here which I want to say because I have time and a blank piece of paper: We must never allow people to be afraid simply for being who they are. LGBT people have seen huge civil rights changes to the way they live because of the injustices and humiliations they had to suffer for thousands of years. Looking back in 50 and 100 years time, my descendants are going to be shocked at how badly gay people were received by those who should have known so much better. As a Christian I feel ashamed at how the Church has been complicit in that story. As much as anyone else we too need to ask for some mercy.

Tonight on Another Country we were planning to play Mary Gauthier‘s great ballad of righteous love which expresses that very sentiment, Mercy Now. We will also be playing the song which started this blog in its rawest purest, broken form.

Later we’ll welcome Anti Records’ very own Andy Shauf in session and conversation and we’ll allow music to work its magic back into our lives. Join me if you can from five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland.

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