It’s always the way of things. I leave our AC HQ on a Tuesday night and think to myself, ‘Well we’ve played a lot of the things I really love right now…what the heck are we gonna play next week?’
Then it comes, slowly, but in they creep, the songs you just need to hear again and immediately I think I need to share them on the airwaves. What’s interesting and exciting for me is finding tracks in so many different ways: playlists, blogs, mentions and shares; all ways in which we find three minute gems we think you’ll love. Of course we have a great many folk plugging us new music all the time and this week I was really taken with a new record I was sent by White Tail Falls, aka, Irwin Sparkes who was so fed up with the music he was hearing sounding so anodyne he set up microphones in an array of locations to make his debut album. Hugely inspired by Josh T Pearson, whose album, The Last of The Country Gentleman, we enjoyed a few years back Irwin has made a beautiful debut which will intrigue and delight.
Of course what determines any week’s playlist is events. Like many folk in country music we were saddened to hear of the death of Bucky Baxter towards the end of last week. You’ve probably heard Bucky’s music quite a lot on the records of Steve Earle, Kacey Musgraves and Bob Dylan. He was a man who took to pedal steel playing mid-career and was reputed to have joined Bob’s band on the basis that he would teach Dylan how to play the instrument. Intriguingly we’ve never found out where that conversation went, but Bucky maintained he stayed in the band as long as he did because he never tried to become ‘mates. “I just worked for him. And we had a good working relationship … but I never went to his house for Thanksgiving or anything,” We’ll play you some wonderful records which feature the playing of Bucky Baxter including a great recording he made on his son, Rayland’s 2018 album, ‘Wide Awake.’
Another album I’ve loved recently is Eliza Gilkyson‘s 2020. It’s 50 years (Fifty!) since her debut album and she really keeps getting better. We want to play a song she has written based on a letter written by Woody Guthrie to the US President’s father, Fred Trump. If ever there was a time to hear the thoughts of Woody on the Trump family I think we might have found it.
A week in politics is a long time as a wise British PM once observed. Stuff happens and songs will always get you through. Gather round the wireless this Tuesday evening if you are able and we’ll try to make life a little more bearable. We’re on BBC Radio Scotland and you can tune in from anywhere in the world on BBC Sounds.
