This Friday I’ll spend the best part of the hour with the youngest veteran in the business. Ryan Adams is still (compared to your host) a very young man…..well everyone’s young compared to me, but Ryan really is still young. And yet…he’s been in a band (Whiskeytown) he’s forged a brilliant solo career and has the albums and grammy nominations to prove it, (Heartbreaker, Gold) He’s formed another band, fallen off a stage or two, had some high profile love interests and he’s now a happily married, substance free singer songwriter and producer. It’s quite a journey.
He’s also living in LA and has now done something few of us can imagine by producing the current of his original producer. Not many can say that. On Friday we’ll catch up with Ryan as he tells us how his current eponymously titled album came to be. And, I need to add at this point, it’s an album with some fine songs on it. He is in great voice.
We will be hoping that Janice Forsythe has returned from Dundee with our record deck and we’ll have some new things to play you from ………and another Ryan, Ryan Bingham. If we don’t play The Staves then there will be trouble. As promised on our Facebook page we will play you something beautiful from the late Gene Clark, who would have been seventy years old this week. It all starts at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland.
On Sunday Morning…
I’ll be spending the first part of the show chatting to Aled Jones. ( I know; He looks sickening ly young and your host looks…..well rather lost within Broadcasting House if truth be told) I ran into Aled recently and he was able to tell me a little about his teenage life and I realised there was much we probably don’t know about him. The Child prodigy, the TV and Radio presenter is someone who you possibly feel you know already but there is also the story of a young man making sense of losing the beautiful voice that had defined him since childhood. Add into that the fact that the normal teenage rites of passage could never be enjoyed it all makes for a fascinating personal story. Although, as you will probably hear, that didn’t mean he always chose Hollywood over football.
Later on I’ll talk to Professor Mona Sidique about her book chronicling the story of her own spirituality, ‘My Way.’ Mona has written many academic books which all of us her in Religion (apart from the good Dr Holloway) have failed to read. In this book she’s talking about her own life and her own faith. Poignant, honest and insightful it’s a Mona primer. I’ll be talking to her about her decision to tell her own story and what that self examination has taught her and can teach us.
Even earlier…
On Sunday morning on BBC Radio 2 I’m again sitting in for Bob Harris. I’ll be talking to my hero of youth and young adulthood, Jackson Browne. And that, my friend, is really all you need to know. Don’t miss a minute if you can help it. From 3 a.m on BBC Radio 2 and for the following month all three programmes can be found on the iplayer.
Do join me for some of these radio adventures if you can.
