Right now I’m going to paraphrase my old mucker, Showbiz Niz. While rightly upbraiding us for a lack of Louvin Bothers on the AC (at one point) he launched into a short history of popular music. ‘If there were no Louvins there would be no Everleys. No Everleys – no Beatles. No Beatles – no pop music!
He had a point. It also follows on from there. No Beatles – no Byrds or Buffalo Springfield. Both of those bands went on to begat The Flying Burrito Brothers, Poco and The Eagles and with that the birth of country rock…I know I’m simplifying…but this week’s AC guest needs to be put in the context. Timothy B Schmit was the man who replaced The Eagles’ Randy Meisner in Poco and about ten years later, the same man again in The Eagles. Quite a feat.
When I made my first solo album I worked with a brilliant drummer called Scott Crago who was then drumming with the reformed Eagles. Don Henley didn’t want to play drums all the time so Scott was the man. I remember asking what the current Eagles line up was. When he ran through the familiar names I must have looked puzzled when Timothy’s name was mentioned. Scotty burst into song and five words answered my query….’I Can’t Tell You Why.’ A big Eagles song written and sung by Mr. Schmit and as familiar a radio hit as any of their biggest songs.
On this week’s AC we have Timothy B Schmit in conversation and an exclusive solo session he recorded for us last month. He’ll be talking about his new solo album, ‘Leap of Faith,‘ his work with those Eagles and in particular his great friend the late Glenn Frey. You’ll also hear the story of one of the most remarkable session musicians from that seventies LA scene.
We’ve also got some great new music from Ags Connelly, Laura Marling and …from Iceland….Kaleo,
We will be bringing you some recordings from artists who’ll be visiting Scotland for Country to Country. We’ll also have news of how you can be in the audience when we host our close one-to-one conversations with some of the biggest names in country music on the C2C weekend. It’s going to be good and it all fits into a packed two hours of this week’s Another Country. We’re live on BBC Radio Scotland FM from five past nine this Tuesday evening. Join me if you can.
