One of the joys of broadcasting on BBC Radio Scotland is the knowledge that people can listen from all the outcrops of lowland, highland and island Scotland. I remember doing the late shift a few years back and getting a lovely text in from a couple camping on Islay who were sitting by their tent tuning in. It’s odd what connects you but I think these brief missives gave me a desire to re connect to the country where I live.

I’ve spent so many years of my life trying to get to places very far from home that I now realise ( almost too late) that the only new things I’m really keen to experience are all here in Scotland. I started in earnest this year by going touring to Stornoway, Ullapool and Orkney. Next month I venture to Shetland – I have been once before but I’m looking forward to seeing it through more experienced eyes. We had a Highland holiday last week in our favourite part of the world, Nethybridge. The full glory of Speyside, Abernethy and the Cairngorms was there for us to enjoy and enjoy it we did. The dog loved swimming in Loch an Eilein and we all loved walking, cycling and generally soaking up the Highland air. The local rumour is that Bob Dylan has a house there and if he does, he made the right choice. It’s paradise. So it will be great to be back in studio 6 this Friday imagining those radio waves hitting north, west, east and south of Scotland.

If you listen in you’ll hear a session from this man:

Daniel Meade in his own words is “a singer of songs from Glasgow, Scotland, drawing on the influence of Hank Williams, Big Bill Broonzy, Jerry Lee Lewis and Old Crow Medicine Show to name a few of the too many to name. Been around the world a couple of times, round the block a few more times, tells tales of the heart through a hurting head.. Something for those who have lived a little. Enjoy!”

We’ll find out more on Friday I’m certain when Daniel and his band join us for one of those special hours from Studio One.

We have some lovely new things from The Avett Brothers, Willie Nelson and The Secret Sisters and Jonathan Wilson. We’ll introduce you to Son of Dave and hear some lovely things from Waylon Jennings with Johnny Cash and George Strait, Kacey Musgraves and Amanda Shires.

I’m back on Sunday Mornings too..

Have you ever seen or read Touching The Void? If you have you’ll be fascinated by my special guest this Sunday, Joe Simpson. Joe’s story is one of these ones you can’t really believe. Even his closest climbing companion assumed he was dead until he turned up badly injured three days later at base camp. That expedition became the defining story of Joe’s life and 25 years after the publication of the book I’ll be finding out some more about what kind of man Joe Simpson is.

It’s been a bitter week for people in Grangemouth. As I write there’s a glimmer of hope but we all know these kind of industrial disputes can end badly. So what happens when people go into arbitration? We find out what can be expected and what people need to bring to make it work from some people who’ve been there.

We celebrate The UK Jewish Film Festival by reviewing The Jewish Cardinal based on the true story of French cleric Jean-Marie Lustiger.

And…….how many Godparents do you need?

There will, of course, be music. We’ll hear from Hem, Leyla McCalla, Nancy and Lee, Billy Preston and …more.

It all starts this Sunday morning from five past seven on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

Health warning: This blog will interest old guys of a certain age and most likely repel young, intelligent women. This will only happen in print and never on the radio. I promise. This picture should provide sufficient forewarning……..

I’m just browsing. I don’t need any help thanks. It’s something we had lots of practice at in the early seventies. I was a pupil at Dundee High School which sits at the top of Reform Street. The lunch bell went around 12.45 and it was our practice to head straight into town. Food first: Wallace’s on Crichton Street for a pie and a yum-yum, or to the Golden Fry on Union Street where any number of items could be deep-dipped in hot boiling fat. It was simple stuff. But after that? After the chip wrappers had been binned and the nonsense talked. Then it was Boots or Largs or later on Bruce’s; all record shops or record departments where the albums were racked alphabetically and where we would flick through them endlessly with (at best) only the slightest clue about the contents of the music. Frank Zappa worried us as much as we were intrigued by Emerson, Lake and Palmer and there was always more to see on the front of Sergeant Pepper from when you’d looked the last time. What was certain was that most had only heard the record if a big brother or sister or some cool cousin had bought it. Who could afford ‘All Things Must Pass?’ (a guy in 5th year apparently whose name escapes me but is remembered as that guy…)

I’m thinking of all this on the first really cold day of autumn as the dark gathers round the house early and I’m glad to be home, locked in from the cold and sitting looking at new album sleeves. It’s funny how the sleeve still offers hope or scares you off until, very often, it’s the only thing left on the pile. I’ve been lucky this week. I found an album that had a good sleeve (it didn’t have a guy in a stetson, rather an arty drawing of a wolf). How often your hopes get raised only to be hopelessly dashed when you distictly feel you’re listening to an album you’ve heard 100 times before. As I write this I’m now doing the opposite thing. Choosing the record with the worst sleeve and a band with a bad name…and what do you know, it’s not bad at all.

This Friday we’ll celebrate these records and lots more besides as we’ve got two hours without extended conversations and sessions. It’s records all the way. Music from……………and that wolf, that bad sleeve? Step forward Jadea Kelly whose fine album Clover we’ll share with you. And do you think this sleeve looks good ?

.. I didn’t but hey it sounds great and quite original. I think you might find it’s quite a keeper. And if you think that picture’s a little…well, bland. You can’t accuse this band of the same thing.

I’m not sure what I’d have made of Those Darlins if I’d only encountered them on the new album for the first time. Courageous, provocative – but actually a little off-putting over breakfast. The good news is there’s plenty inside to provide appropriate pleasure.We will also be playing Porter Wagoner, Hem, Grizzly Bear, Howe Gelb with KT Tunstall and a rather exciting new band from Glasgow called Honeyblood. Just don’t judge us by our front cover.

It all starts Friday at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland.

I hear the guitars ringin’ out
Ringin’ out down union street
I hear the lead singer shoutin’ out, girl
I wanna be a slave to the beat
Yeah, tonight I wanna break my chains
Somebody break my heart……….

I wanna be where the bands are

Bruce Springsteen

And that’s what took me to The Hydro the other night, I guess. It’s great by the way. Glasgow has – for the first time I can think of – commissioned and been delivered a purpose-built (pop) music venue. The others – and there are some great ones – have never really had rock ‘n’ roll in mind when the architects were involved. They’ve been shoved around and converted, adapted and reconfigured and often with excellent results.(Barrowlands, King Tuts, Oran Mor) But The Hydro is something quite special and all of us – especially me at the end of the year -are going to enjoy being there.

But here’s the thing: I went along the other night  – the less said about the gig, the better really – but what really shocked me was the people in the corporate box we were kindly seated in all acted and talked as if they were in their own living rooms. They drank, ate…well I get all of that…but talked at volumes which made the massive PA system irrelevant at points. What is all that about? It’s as if they think it doesn’t really make any difference. I don’t understand it and, as a musician on the stage, it’s the worst feeling. But it’s the norm now. And it’s not just because of the act; I was amazed at the full-scale conversations going on all around me even at the Springsteen show at Hampden in the summer and if you think Glastonbury is full of people who only want to ‘listen’ to music, you couldn’t be more wrong.When we first hosted Mary Gauthier on the AC a few years ago she told me how she’d never played her own home town of New Orleans because it was a ‘party town’ and she needed a listening room. Exactly Mary…oh that we would call them all that. There’s a lovely ‘listening room’ in Glasgow. Cafe Brel – it holds about 50 people. What we now need is for the audience to let the other great venues becoming listening rooms too. So if, like Bruce, you want to go where the bands are you might want to think a little bit about how the bands feel…listening might be a good place to start.

Darden Smith knows a thing or two about audiences. he certainly knows how to work them. I spent a very enjoyable few weeks on tour with Darden opening up for us (McIntosh Ross) a few years back. By the time we got on he’d made them laugh, cry and, no doubt, fall in love. On his new record, Love Calling, he’s fallen in love himself and I suspect we’ll hear more about that on Friday. He’s in town to support Laura Cantrell at their sold out show in St Andrews In The Square (another great listening room) and he’ll play his set then travel like the wind to join us for the second half of Another Country. I recommend it highly, time spent with Darden is never time wasted and you’ll feel life is better for his songs and conversation.

This Friday too we’ll get round to playing you some fine new records by Israel Nash Gripka, Tony McLaughlin and Mazzy Star and The Head and The Heart. We will also celebrate Austin Texas – home of Darden Smith – with some very appropriate Texans. You know that this will all be beautifully punctuated by some wonderful records from the vaults because, as you well know, we love country music.

See you Friday from five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland.

When I arrived at the session there was a palpable excitement in the control room. The Barr Brothers had packed up and gone and I was there to listen and pose some questions.

I knew from the faces of Joanna and Chris (our ace engineers) that something special had happened in studio on that day. Out of the Barrs travelling caravan had come an entire (second hand) music shop of instrumentation from bows to harps and even a bicycle wheel. The session we recorded takes songs from their eponymously titled album and on Friday we will play you these recordings and open up with wonderful sonic world of The Barr Brothers. Friends of our old friends The Low Anthem from their Boston days, the Barrs are now from Montreal and listening to their music and chatting with them I realise that’s a city we need to explore more.

This is one you’ll not want to miss.

There is so much going on in Glasgow just now you’d need to be fleet of foot to catch it all. But if you are a fan of our show you should really check out the Glasgow Americana Festival. Madison Violet, Slaid Cleaves, Israel Nash Gripka are all friends of the AC. Or future guest Laura Cantrell will be supported by next week’s visitor Darden Smith and one of my all time favourites Devon Sproule will be playing my favourite venue, The Glad Cafe in a couple of weeks. And if that is not enough you can beg a ticket (none available now) for the Glasgow Americana tribute to Gram Parsons the same night. Many of the above acts are appearing at that with some special help from our pal Roddy Hart too. As Larry David would say…pretty, pretty good.

So there will be a fair sprinkling of these artists on the show plus some unusual contributors…this may well be the first time the AC has played Frank Black. He has a new spin on Lee Hazelwood and we’ll be delighted to play Marty Robbins I’ll also introduce you to the joys of my old pal Show Biz Niz. Stuart Nisbet is a promoter, guitarist and country music fan. You’ll know the sound of his guitar from his days with The Proclaimers and many others. Many years ago he told me about a plan to record the hymns of Sankey and Moody. He’s actually gone much wider than that but essentially has stuck to the same brief. His father, a travelling preacher, went on preaching tours in the US where the young Niz would travel with him and tune in to country radio stations and hear the lonesome sound of the pedal steel. It’s an instrument he now calls his own and indeed he’s the first man on the list if you’re looking for a player in Scotland. The album is now out – The Gospel According to Mr Niz and we’ll let you hear some of it on Friday. We feature music from John Fullbright, Those Darlings, Gambles and The Jim Jones Revue so it will be quiet, noisy and soulful and will you will be left in no doubt about our on going love of country music. All starts on Friday at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland.

It’s funny how it works. A friend phones you up and tells you something.My pal Davie Scott (musician, academic and radio presenter of this parish) had been over to Toronto a few months ago. He came back raving about a band he’d seen twice within the few days he’d been there. The band was The Milk Carton Kids and by glorious coincidence that very day their new album popped out of an envelope on Richard Murdoch’s AC desk. As you may well know, we have been playing their music pretty frequently in these last few months. I’m delighted to say we’ve now caught up with Kenneth and Joey from the band and recorded a brilliant session, a very funny interview and even filmed them for our website. (You’ll like the fact that the lads dress up for each occasion) There is no novelty here though. This is an act with two strong singer/songwriters, fabulous harmonies and some beautiful guitar picking. You might well say, what’s not to like? If you hold a warm place for The Everlys, Simon and Garfunkel or closer still Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings you are going to enjoy our guests hugely. As well as all of that there’s some very dry humour being thrown into the mix.

I’ve been on the road myself these last couple of weeks so it’s been my pleasure to take a pile of albums along for the ride. Let me share a personal gripe here. These days it’s almost getting harder – not easier to listen as you travel. My new Mac has no disk drive…are they nuts? I had to buy a disk drive but discovered that our luxury tour bus – all mod cons fitted  – is really fab, but bounces too much on the back axle to allow my disk drive to work properly. Undaunted I have listened on and found some wonderful things to play you. Look out for a splendid new album from Scott Miller. We will tell you more about Leyla McCalla – from the Carolina Chocolate Drops and share new music from Agnes Obel and Jonathan Wilson. We will also reflect on the fact that it’s 40 years ago this week since the death of this man.

I first bought his albums around 1977 when they were reduced and were a real bargain at £1.99. Grevious Angel was the album which really made the difference to my life and, I’m sure, led me to this sjow all these years later. We’ll talk, play and reflect on Gram Parsons this Friday too. We’ll also catch up with some new records from Andy Fairweather Low, Neko Case and Darrell Scott. If I have time too I’d like to share a little from the new offering by one of our most fascinating guests over the last few years: Tony Joe White. There’s a good interview in the UK’s brand new Country Music magazine which is brought out by the classic rock people. It’s worth a look too if you want their opinion on some modern country classics you might have missed. This all kicks of on Friday at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland.

In 1976 an institution opened in Dundee which changed the way we youngsters found and owned our music. It was on the Perth Road and it became the holy grail of lost Saturday when I’d stopped going to football matches as they seemed to be getting increasingly aggressive and violent. Groucho’s was my haven. It was where I could eke out any alowance or spare pocket money and perhaps stretch what might have been, at best, an album buy in a ‘normal’ record shop into a couple of albums and the odd single or two. Second hand it was and it offered not only the chance to buy records but also the possibility to trade your old ones.

In Nashville many years later I came across Grimeys which appropriately only talked of pre loved records. They got it. In a perfect world no one trades any record in. But first Groucho’s. Here’s what happened: You went in and went through everything. The joy of the second-hand store is not knowing what has survived since the last visit. Was that double album you’d thought about still available? Would there be something that you couldn’t find elsewhwere? I had one glorious ‘find’ one afternoon in 1978. I found a copy of Bruce Cockburn’s Sunwheel Dance. An album, I was pretty correct in assuming, no one else in my world owned. I later discovered that the man who’d traded it had one of the best record collections in The Ferry – maybe the city. I was pretty sure he’d just downgraded his collection by letting that one go.

After the initial trawl there was the walk to the counter. Behind that was the inscrutable ‘Breeks Brodie’ – a man who knew the going rate of any piece of vinyl. It was Breeks who took the record out of the inner sleeve and checked it for scratches and pointed out why you were getting the thing for £1.45.  (When I spoke to him today he told me that the top price for a Little Feat album was £1.80) He would, of course, do this on the way in too. If you were going to offset your old stuff for something new it was the scrutiny of Breeks you had to concern yourself with. Never easy I can assure you. He didn’t miss a scratch.

I bought Linda Ronstadt’s Don’t Cry Now…..here and it’s still in my collection. I thought of this as I read the sad news we won’t be hearing her voice singing anything new in the future. She talked this week of her diagnosis with Parkinson’s Disease and how it has meant she will no longer sing. We’ll celebrate the music we still have of Linda’s – and there’s much to celebrate too. Great solo performances and many of my favourite moments which involve her collaborating with other people.

However before I move on from Groucho’s let me share some of their conversations from the ‘Dinna Ask’ section on their website:

Choice words from people ‘two tracks short of a single’.

C: Do you have Radiohead ‘In Rainbows’?
S: Sorry, we don’t currently have a copy in stock.
C: Do you know where I’d get it?
    What other shops are there in town?
S: What about HMV?
C: How do you spell it?
S: H……M……V!!

 On Friday we’ll also spend a good bit of time playing bluegrass. I think Bill Monroe’s name may come up a few times…..It’s a long story but I’ll tease with this photograph and say this: Noam Pikelny plays Kenny Baker plays Bill Monroe. You’ll like it, I know you will.

We’ll hear from Devon Sproule and Mike O’Neil and I may well cause you to think, ‘I do believe I love country music after all,’ because we’ll also be playing Charley Rich, Roddy Hart, Diana Jones and Dawes and it will all start at 8 on Friday evening on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me live if you can.

On my final Sunday for a couple of months I’ll spend the first hour talking to a man who was once seen as one of the top ten political/social commentators in the USA. Often a thorn in the flesh to the political establishment,these days he’s a an ally of Obama and a friend to some of our own political heavyweights. He’s more interested however in what’s in ‘The Common Good’ and his new book sets out ways in which divergent political and social traditions can find common cause. Jim Wallis was brought up in Detroit and now lives and works in Washington so we’ll get memories of his youth in Motor City and his understanding of being Evangelical which may surprise many of you who automatically assume they all come from the right.

We’ll discuss what happens when relatively peaceful countries descend into the chaos of civil war and if it’s possible that what has happened in Syria can happen anywhere. We’re also going to take a walk down the Great White Way. Sunday Morning goes to Broadway.…and again, it’s not what you might expect. Safe to say that the sound of St Malachy’s RC Church Bells playing ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’ may well make your day.

Are you interested in the Search For Intelligent Life? Is it possible not to be? What would it say about faith if we discovered we were not the only civilization in the Universe? We talk to Professor David Wilkinson who’s spent a good deal of time thinking and writing on the subject. Finally, as always , we play great music from Ramsay Lewis, Stevie Wonder, The Carpenters and Skee-Lo – yes that Skee-Lo. It all starts on Sunday morning from seven on BBC Radio Scotland.

As I may have hinted a few weeks ago we have one of these special nights to bring you this Friday. When Tift Merritt came to town in July she became the AC’s most frequent visitor. Every time she comes in we say to her, ‘Come and see us next time,’ and to our delight and constant surprise she says, ‘Yes.’ This time she brought a friend, Eric Heywood, on guitar and together they performed some brilliant live versions from the fabulous current album, Traveling Alone. They also gave us a bonus Hank Williams song but we’ll save that treat for another time. As Tift’s album has been around for nearly a year now, and we’ve spoken about it before we thought we’d widen the discussion a little. So we sat down and chatted about….well, everything. Early albums, brilliant songs from the past ten years and what she remembers about writing them. I hope you’ll find it as interesting as I remember it. But for me, it was a fascinating insight into someone who is a treasure we should all value dearly. Her performance laster that evening  at Oran Mor was as good – and in many sense better – than anything I have seen this year so believe me when I tell you you need to join me for this very special hour.

Before that we’ll celebrate all the music we consider vital on the AC. Bluegrass – Jim Lauderdale and Ricky Skaggs step forward. New and exciting things from Winter Mountain , Daughn Gibson and Zervas and Pepper. Real country from Son Volt and Kitty Wells. How good does that sound?

Join me on Friday evening from 8 on BBC Radio Scotland

‘Tell Them About The Dream Martin’

50 years ago these words were spoken by Sister Mahalia Jackson as she sat behind Dr Martin Luther King at the biggest protest rally of the century in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

On Sunday we’ll look back at that speech; the context of its impact in those times and the why it was so effective. If it’s a while since you heard it then I recommend you re-watching. It doesn’t take long but in the space of a few short moments it moves from a standard Civil Rights rallying cry into an improvised oratorial masterpiece – some say, never bettered.

On Sundays we get to spend some time looking behind the headlines and this week we’ll talk to some people who have something worth telling us about cyber bullying. You will have heard the tragic stories very recently about young people who are suspected of taking their own lives in response to this phenomenon. How do we police it and who do we turn to if it happens to us? We talk to some people who know.

No one wants to live in poverty. But does it help when the media come in and want to tell your story? We’ve done a bit of that on our show in the past so when does genuine interest melt into voyeurism. There have been a few TV documentaries of late which have been at best, heavy handed. We’ll find out what people mean by ‘poverty porn.’

In the first hour I’ll find all about feminist novelist and journalist Joan Smith whose new book ‘The Public Woman’ has a lot to say about woman’s lives through some very recent examples.

We’ll have music from Frank Sinatra, KT Tunstall, Marie Knight and The Dependable Boys and of course Sister Mahalia Jackson.

It’s all live on Sunday morning from 7 on BBC Radio Scotland

Do you know about the podcast/download? You can subscribe from your usual podcast place and you’ll hear the best of the Sunday show all parcelled up in 40 minutes. You can also go to the BBC Radio Scotland  website to dowload it. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radioscotland#results-list

I’m writing this from my desk at my home studio window. It’s all change here round here. For years we’ve let the trees round our house grow until realising recently that ‘something needs to be done.’ Old Conifers planted well before our arrival here 19 years ago have now come so close to the house and grown so high that my working environment began to feel a little too like a walk in the woods. Nice for occasional atmosphere but my room was freezing even in that July heatwave. So the tree surgeons are in and clearing things out and this morning my view includes parts of Glasgow I didn’t know were there.

As I listened to a little WSM (Nashville’s Legend) online this morning they were talking about a cool wind coming down from the Great Lakes and giving a sense of ‘early fall.’ The trees here have certainly had that. As Scottish children return to school this week at the ‘end of the summer’ then it seems a good time to be coming back to Another Country and this blog. I hope you’ve had a great time enjoying this amazing summer. I’m old enough to realise this is not how things often are so it’s good to celebrate the outdoors as long as we can. I’m hugely indebted to Roddy Hart for keeping things alive on Fridays for a few weeks there and I hear Southern Fried was a real blast (albeit a warm one) for everyone who managed to get there.

Devon Sproule

Like the onward march of the seasons new music keeps coming and I’m delighted to flag up some significant returns of some of our favourite artists. Over the next few weeks we’ll have new albums from Devon Sproule, Jason Isbell, Bob Dylan and Ry Cooder. Glen Campbell may not be performing live but there are new recordings available. You may well have heard the on/off story of The Civil Wars who have retreated (if you’ll pardon the military metaphor) from their previous position and decided that they want to make records after all. Those millions of potential sales seemed to have a calming effect on their combustable personalities. There’s a new single  from our good friends Lord Huron too.

Barr Brothers

We’ll also have some fresh music from artists who are new to us and who we are getting very interested in meeting. Look out for us playing The Barr Brothers, Heartless Bastards, Hem and Cold Satellite. We’ll also hear new and lovely tracks from Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires who are married to each other but have separate musical careers. Oh there’s so much….. and we’ll work our way through that wonderful pile of waxings this Friday at 8 p.m. on BBC Radio Scotland.

I will also be with you on Sunday Mornings during August. This Sunday the first hour of the programme will be given over to a remarkable conversation I had a few weeks ago with this man……..

Albie Sachs’s life had already had its fair share of trouble before a bomb went off under his car in his exile home in Mozambique one day in 1988. He was targeted by the Apartheid Regime in South Africa for his unflinching opposition to their government and his story of recovery is remarkable. Albie shares with Nelson Mandela a great political and legal brain and a strong sense of justice mixed with a compassionate sense of mercy. From that fateful day in 1988 when he lost the use of an eye and an arm he went on to return to South Africa as a free man who helped write the new Constitution.

I’ll also speak with Alexandro Nash about Landfill Harmonic; a documentary film about members of an orchestra in the town of Cateura in Paraguay who play instruments made from the rubbish that surrounds them. Currently still in production, scheduled for release end of 2013.

We’ll spend time with another Folk Saint and we’ll enjoy music from Genesis, Ella Fitzgerald and De La Soul. It’s the only show that can – and we will. Join me if you can. Sunday morning 7 – 9. BBC Radio Scotland.

I went to Fife this week. I went to see one of my oldest friends be inducted as a Church of Scotland minister in the beautiful old church of St Monans. It’s the nearest church to the sea in Scotland – apparently – and as if to emphasise the point it has two miniature vessels suspended above the pews to remind everyone of the link. After that I went further along the coast to visit some of my family holidaying in Crail. It was one of the loveliest evenings I have spent in a long time. I nosed my way along the coast – still half remembering directions from the days I used to deliver things for my dad. My summer job was driving his van and making sure vital supplies were there for the newsagents of Angus, Fife and Perth. The parcels were full of fishing nets, balls and whatever the craze was that year. Hula hoops…frisbees? There were always plenty of buckets and spades as, in that part of Scotland, you can still have lost of fun on a beach on a cold day.

I’ve taken my children along these same places many times too. We often end up in St Andrews or Crail or Elie. The evening is usually not complete without fish and chips in Anstruther. My friend Pete moving there will give me all the excuses I need to go back more often.

Being alone in the car reminded me of the joys of those van drives many years ago. There was an old radio which Bert the main driver had half installed. It was always said he’d never quite got the compressor properly sorted as the thing screeched white noise under every bridge and you could enjoy it only as a man enjoys someone stopping hitting him. I opted for a pile of batteries and a cassette player. C90’s would be prepared and enjoyed, turned over, mangled, unspooled and played till chewed again. None of us from these days couldn’t fix a cassette with a bic pen. Only the toffs had in car stereos and van drivers usually had the sound of their own whistles. It was on these trips the music I now take for granted was all planted in my memory.

On Friday we play one of these songs from those trips. I loved Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and we get a chance to play one of their songs in the context of our session guests Lord Huron. They loved the harmonies and are part of another Californian explosion of creativity not dissimilar to the Laurel Canyon scene of the sixties and seventies. They come from the north and one by one have re located to joing singer and songwriter Ben Schneider from Michigan on the west coast. Their album was one of the top albums nominated by Paste Magazine last year and rightly so. It’s charming and original and has much of the sunshine of their new location in it. They were brilliant in the session and I know it will have those of you who haven’t yet got their album scurrying to find it.

We’ll also have some new things from The Holy Ghosts, Ned Roberts and Drew Holcomb and The Neighbours – all AC debutantes. New things also from The Wynntown Marshalls, The Mavericks and Guy Clark as well as all the usual surprises from the world of the AC.

I’m taking a short break for a month but Roddy Hart is coming to be your guide for a few weeks. As well as being a great singer and song writer, Roddy is a fine broadcaster too so I hope you’ll enjoy some of the new things he’ll be playing. If you are having a holiday do enjoy it and I’ll see some of you out on the festival circuit starting this Saturday at T In The Park. Friday’s Evening’s AC is on at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

Miller and Hartford. Estate agents? The core of the late seventies Scotland side? Keep reading……….

It’s a late train coming home west to Glasgow and I’m thinking about some of the people I’ve encountered over the last few days. Perhaps the most amazing musical moment was standing on the side of the stage at Glastonbury’s Acoustic Tent last Saturday evening with my son, Seamus, Gregor Philp and my manager, Tom O’Rourke. All of us were watching one of my great heroes, Steve Winwood put in a quite extraordinary shift with his band for an hour or so. The remarkable bit was the sheer skill of musicianship on show. Stevie was playing hammond, electric guitar and singing. That voice! Where was the bass coming from? None of us could work it out until Gregor stopped us all in our tracks; Steve was doing all of this and playing the bass parts on the hammond foot pedals. Some guy. I think it’s really important not to forget about where music came from and who brought it to us. Stevie’s one of these men and we’re grateful to them, that’s why I want to talk about other great musicians that we overlook at our peril, but still on Glastonbury:

It was great watching all of that through the eyes of my 12 year old son. He was mesmerised by the drummer and continued to be taken by the whole Glastonbury experience. If you haven’t been I can recommend it. Even I, a long time festival sceptic was quite taken by the whole affair. Hundreds of thousands of people in a small area but rather than getting territorial about space or privacy people seem to go about their weekend with a great deal of grace and community cohesion. Litter is picked up, courtesy is shown and the benefit of the doubt extended where possible. I was impressed.

Good too to see the variety of music on show. I didn’t see that much – I find a gig a day enough – so catching two or three acts is quite a big deal – but what I saw was really good.However I’m always going to feel I’d rather be hearing whatever it is I’m hearing in a hall rather than a field and with 49,000 or so less people in the room.

I’m getting close to my holidays and it’s got me thinking that there’s a couple of outstanding things I wanted to explore with you before the good Roddy comes to keep you company in my absence. Many moons ago I suggested I wanted to delve a little into the music and story of Roger Miller. (top picture)) I also expressed an interest in finding out more about the life and times of John Hartford. (above) Coincidentally a new book about John has just come out and so I thought it would be a good week to play some of his diverse writing and playing.

We’ll also explore Roger Miller’s remarkable career. Remarkable because he broke two commonly held rules of country. He wrote nearly all of his own songs and hits completely on his own and he also became a British household name because of one enormously successful song. There’s no real connection between them, other than they are both truly great. But there’s a wee bit of common ground over this character:

We’ll have lots of new things too including something from the rather lovely new album by Alela Diane, Shovels and Rope, Roddy Woomble and Mavis Staples. It’s going to be good, so join me if you can on Friday evening at 8 on BBC Radio Scotland.