Well, who’d have thought it? For two weeks running on the AC we play There Stands The Glass and in neither week did we feature the Webb Pierce version. If you missed either show you can listen back on BBC Sounds to both shows which feature Chuck Prophet and Willy Vlautin. Chuck favoured Ted Hawkins singing his version of the country classic and Willy opted to give us his own version of the song. Both were brilliant as was the conversation that came with the songs.
Chuck’s take on modern America is as unique in its own way to Willy Vlautin’s. Willy even talks about his fandom of Chuck and the joy he got riding in the Econoline with his old Green On Red guitar hero. What they both have in common is their empathy for the outsider. The characters that inhabit the songs of Chuck and Willy are all outsiders who, by the standards we’ve come to associate the newest American government, have very little going for them. In a brutal world where the populus is divided into winners and losers it’s a pretty sure bet the big man with the orange face wouldn’t be counting these characters or their authors in the winning column.
That’s the thing about America; we no sooner get a handle on some of what is going on than we find a conflicting story to disabuse us of all we thought we understood. Take this coming weekend: The twenty odd acts that make up the 2025 C2C line up will probably be telling stories about a different America than the ones favoured by Chuck Prophet, Willy Vlautin, John Prine, Nanci Griffith and Johnny Cash...insert your own act here. However that’s the great thing about country music or musical theatre or…pop music…just when you’re convinced that you don’t love it, along comes a song that turns you round and leaves you pointing in a different direction.
On this week’s AC we’ll give you a glimpse of that other side of country music celebrated by the many acts of C2C who’ll be performing at Glasgow’s OVO Hydro this coming weekend. We will also remind you of some of the great moments of C2C from the last ten years or so of festivals which started off in the smaller Clyde Auditorium but now attracts crowds of at least 4 or 5 times the size of that original audience. You’ll hear songs from headliners Dierks Bentley, Cody Johnson and Lainey Wilson. We’ll include some great cuts from Shaboozey, Tanner Adell, Wyatt Flores and The Castellows. If these names are new I can assure your they will become familiar over the coming months and years.
We will play songs from years gone by with contributions from Kacey Musgraves, Eric Church, Darius Rucker and Ashley McBryde. It’s a packed celebration which will set you up for the biggest event in the UK’s country calendar. Listen in live if you can from five past eight this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland or BBC Sounds.
