Country music is changing. Hugely popular and worming its way into mainstream playlists across the globe it may be a high point for the genre. The tide, if you’ll pardon the metaphor, is still rising. What’s interesting is that as much as it seeks to find new audiences so too, in direct proportion, do new artists seek to find a home in country music.
There are, of course, significant outliers here. The path from country to mainstream pop is a well trodden one. However over the years the many singers and songwriters who have gone from country to pop have always kept a country option open. I fully expect and hope we’ll see a Taylor Swift return to country one day too. Maren Morris may too have declared she no longer wants to sing in the church choir but one day I wouldn’t be surprised to hear another Amen or Hallelujah.
This brings me to my special guests this week who one might seem the unlikeliest new country stars on the block. However Chapel Hart are three woman who have a deep love of country music. As Danica Hart explained to me last week, they love country music because it was the only music they heard where they grew up in Mississippi. From there they went busking in the streets of New Orleans before The Voice came calling and the rest…well that is the story you can hear this week.
Chapel Hart swept into Scotland last week and, as promised when we spoke at C2C in March they came by our studios to record a session and conversation for Another Country. There’s much to talk about which include their close encounters on The Opry, their Dolly answer song and the one they wrote for Loretta too. Other names including Simon Cowell and Darius Rucker come up in conversatio and you can hear their own favourite country songs as well as a great cover version of another famous country song. It’s all in a second hour special in this weeks show.
But that’s not all! We have some great new artists to play you in our first hour with special mentions for Skylar Gudasz, Waylon Wyatt and our new Scottish favourite Rhona McFarlane on this week’s playlist. As well as this we’ll celebrate twenty five years since The Chicks huge Fly album was released. It was a Number One record and contained some of their biggest hits.
Yiou can hear all of this on BBC Sounds or on BBC Radio Scotland from five past eight this Tuesday evening. Join me if you can
