I’ve been out early these last couple of weeks. My early runs with the dog take me through the glorious paths of Pollok Park in Glasgow’s south side. For a while there it seemed the summer would stretch on forever, bathing us in sunshine to compensate for all 2020 had thrown at us. However, it was not to be. Autumn arrived as soon as October started and in that short time the leaves have turned and fallen.

It’s no surprise this was the Romantic Poets favourite time of year. Tramping over the golds and red of a wild wood would melt even the most hardened of hearts. If the colours of the season didn’t nudge at your soul I suspect there is still something in the inevitability of nature giving in to the bitter realities of the coming winter which will give you cause for reflection. I’m just back from a long, slower wander which feels more in keeping with the time of year. At one point we stopped and turned round to stop ourselves getting lost, but in reality all of us could have kept on walking for miles. Perhaps the fact we can’t meet indoors is making ramblers of us all?

All of this came together the other morning for me. Driving back from the park I happened upon a new song by Kevin Morby,the Kansas song-smith, which included a burning camp fire right in the centre of the track. It was a beautiful, fall-full moment which delighted me with its sonic crackle as much as it pleasantly surprised. Like the sea there is something important and unique about the sound of flames tearing through wood and leaves on an open fire. In this instance there was also something pretty essential about it being in the song. Listen out for the moment on this week’s Another Country.

As ever we’re juggling many choices to bring you the best of what we have been listening to over the last seven days or so. We’re going to remind you again about the Ferris and Sylvester session still available on BBC and play you a little of the music they recommended to us on their session a couple of weeks back. We’ll mourn the passing of legendary Nashville artist and seminal writer, Mac Davis whose back catalogue included one of the greatest Elvis Presley songs of all time. In the same vein we’ll bring you another track from the Elvis album of his 5 day/night Nashville session of 50 years ago. It’s another magical moment and you can catch up with the whole thing next month when the 4CD box set arrives just in time for your Santa lists.

There’s so much more too, but you’ll need to join us this Tuesday evening from five past eight for the full experience. We’re on BBC Radio Scotland FM and thereafter on BBC Sounds. Join me if you can.

There’s only one name you might not know in this week’s Another Country. You’ll be familiar with the artists we are playing… Faith Hill, Little Big Town, Tim McGraw, Brandy Clark, Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert and…Lady Gaga! You’ll recognise the songs too. From Tim’s Humble and Kind, a country #1 from 2016 to last year’s anthem to faith in community, The Highwomen‘s ‘Crowded Table’ you’ll know so many songs on this week’s show from the opening bars.

The only name with which you may be less familiar is the writer of every song you will hear: Lori McKenna. Over the course of the last dozen or so years we’ve played the songs Lori has written for other artists. In recent years too, we’ve played the songs she has written for her own career. Interestingly it’s her own life as a solo artist which kicked off her songwriting career. Hailing from the same part of the world, Mary Gauthier who was based in Boston in the early part of her career told the Nashville people about Lori McKenna and encouraged her to come down to Music City to consider something which she admits she then found a difficult concept: co-writing. To say she warmed to this is a vast understatement. Since she first made the trip her co-writing credits are on songs cut by the list of artists I mentioned at the top of the blog as well as so many more. Her regular gig is the three-way session writes she conducts with her Love Junky friends, Liz Rose and Hillary Lindsey. Though she now collaborates with a wide range of other Nashville writers, she is however almost unique as a successful country songwriter who has never lived in the city.

LORI MCKENNA
http://www.sacksco.com/pr/lori_mckenna.html
Credit: Becky Fluke

Lori is a native of Stoughton, Massachusetts and it was there she spoke with me from her home studio a couple of weeks ago. We talked about her family who still live nearby and the recurring theme in her own work: the loss of her mother at the age of her seven. It’s a theme which comes up again in a beautiful song on her new album, The Balladeer, dedicated to her elder sister, Marie. Her own family come up again and again in her own work and as someone who wrote songs for her young children it’s a practice she’s continued even as they have grown and flown the nest. No parent couldn’t be moved by ‘When You’re My Age,‘ and no one who has experienced their own parent’s ageing process couldn’t be unaffected by ‘People Get Old’ from 2018’s The Tree.

On this Tuesday’s AC we’ll celebrate the songs Lori McKenna has written for other people and her own eleven album solo career which is completed by 2020’s The Balladeer. It’s going to be a glorious two hour celebration of song which starts this Tuesday evening at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

Peeling an orange this morning I remembered how I’d been taught by my mother who, in turn, had learned how to do it from her father. My grandfather (among many jobs) sold fruit and vegetables between the wars. Nuggets of advice filtered through to us about skinning oranges and packing bananas last…I am still careful when bagging my shopping at the checkout. I guess there are certain things you can’t unlearn. There’s a family saying I’ve even managed to pass on which involved a young schoolboy’s visit to a distant cousin of my mother’s. It all happened so many generations ago it’s impossible to clarify the true origin of the tale. I’m sure the main players in the story would be surprised at how a simple comment at the tea table has become immortalised into family folklore.

Some of this came back when I happened upon an advertisement on twitter for Peugeot cars. Latching on to our innate love of nostalgia they printed an image of a 60’s estate car and asked people to share their Peugeot memories. As I looked at the picture I remembered the visit of my father’s cousin and her family home from the Belgian Congo in their own vehicle which (apart from the colour) looked exactly like the one in the photograph. There was something very exciting about a car which had made it all the way back from Africa and contained so many people. In the haze of memory they looked not unlike the family in the advert.

Memories are incredibly important to us. Our photo feed on our computer wants to remind us and our social media does the same. ‘Look what you were doing this time last year. Do you remember this special day? It’s a birthday.’ In truth I gave up on Facebook for fear I couldn’t keep up with the anniversaries. I like to pick and choose my moments of nostalgia; but memories sneak up from behind. Songs in films and TV shows are great at putting the emotional energy into a scene that can often just be a face or a still shot. Match it to the music and suddenly we’re back where we first heard it first. One of the best ever was Tiny Dancer‘s moment in the sun in the tour bus during ‘Almost Famous.’

How will your photo albums remind you of 2020?  Mine will have an absence of friends, foreign travel and a surplus of sunny Scotland shots and garden improvements…it could be worse. For those of us who like to spend a few nights of any month at a gig we’ll perhaps notice the blank spaces in our diaries and the lack of live shots from our nights out. It really has been very quiet. Until now.

This week on BBC Radio Scotland we’re inviting in some special friends to make a bit of a racket again. You may have already heard some snippets on some of your favourite shows. There’s been jazz, classical and rock so far and on this Tuesday’s Another Country we will welcome Ferris and Sylvester into the BBC to entertain you with a live set recorded earlier in the afternoon at the Quay. We’re excited to welcome the band in as we’ve been playing their music for the last year or so and we can’t wait to hear the session, a great choice of cover version and spend a bit of time chatting over their own story. As well as that we’ll have some fab music from Brad Paisley, Luke Combs, Darlingside, Emily Barker and The Long Ryders.

It all starts at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

It was a quiet Sunday evening and I was doing that thing I often do at that time of week; going through the large CD pile of recent arrivals. There are good weeks and bad weeks and, if I’m honest, this wasn’t a bumper crop. An email popped in from my sister. An old school friend had spotted our old family home coming on to the property market. It was impossible not to look at the photographs and to try to reconcile memory to new reality. I think I managed to identify the rooms and occasionally the geography of a cupboard or wardrobe and even the space where a first song was written. Little else made sense…my sister admitted she recognised nothing. How dare they throw out a bathroom fitted in 1963?

I once got to visit the house myself. Twenty years on from when we left it I was asked to make a TV documentary about returning to my hometown and the producer managed to get me access to see round it. In a strange coincidence the chap who then owned it had also taken a job I once had in the city…..all too much happenstance for comfort. When I went home I got so excited I eagerly invited my mother and sister to join me for a visit. Wisely, they shook their heads, ‘We don’t really want to spoil the memory.’ I wished I’d never gone and had never mentioned it.

At my age there are many homecomings over the ages. The first true one I experienced was a show we did in Dundee in 1988 where our old, dear friend Johan Mrvos (then our US A&R guy) accompanied us on the dates through Scotland. After a home town show in Dundee we took him the long way via the East Neuk to the last night of the tour in Edinburgh stopping in Anstruther (I think) before being very late for our sound check in Auld Reekie. So keen was I to show Jovan my home patch, I’d almost forgotten we had a show to do that night. As it turned out we were driving into Edinburgh listening to the chart countdown as it became clear that we were about to have our first ever proper hit song. That day was remembered recently as my wife and I wandered along the East Fife coastal path. I remembered too Jovan’s comforting words…’You can’t go home again,’ as he pointed me to Thomas Wolfe.

It’s a theme that comes up a lot in country music. The return of the native to make sense of where they came from and how they got where they did. In Nashville almost everyone comes from somewhere else and in a life of song they either try to eulogise the place they came from, make sense of why they left or pay tribute to the values home gave them. There are so many great examples to choose from but a particular favourite is Miranda Lambert’s, ‘The House That Built Me.’ I loved the retelling of the writing session we got when Allen Shamblin joined our songwriters ’round’ in Nashville a couple of years back. He remembered his co-writer Tom Douglas talking about the small town he grew up in and how, during that writing session he walked himself around his childhood home. The song, of course, starts with the sage advice, ‘I know they say you can’t go home again,’ but adds the beautiful rejoinder, ‘If I could just come in I swear I’ll leave, I won’t take nothing but a memory from the house that built me.’ A perfect couplet but a difficult act to pull off.

On this week’s AC we will play out another bit of song writing self reflection as we celebrate the place where so much magic has happened over the years – Music Row. For many song writers it’s a place where there is as much disappointment as triumph but recently the very talented songwriter, Luke Laird has brought out his own album of the same name. In the title song he tells the story of how a family holiday brought him to Music City where he found out what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. How he’s succeeded too! We thought it was a rabbit hole worthy of further exploration so with the help of Dolly Parton, Bruce Springsteen, George Strait and Margo Price we’ll take you to 16th Avenue South, better known as Music Row. After that we’ll also bring you a celebration of Luke Laird’s own successful cuts. Listen out for gems from Tenille Townes, Brandy Clark, Kacey Musgraves and Tim McGraw.

With the special news briefing this Tuesday evening we plan to be on air a little later at 8:30 on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

One of the things I’ve always loved about country music is the fact that the lyric is as important…sometimes more important..than the music. In truth, when people talk about country music classics I find they are very often referring to the narrative of the lyric over against the structure and hook of the melody and chords. We probably all agree that we need both, but I remember being in a writing session in Brixton one day when the subject of country music came up. I was working with a writer called Fingaz…. a great Ugandan keyboard player/programmer who had produced for BigBrovaz (don’t even ask). At one point Fingaz declared his love of country music. I was intrigued.

‘What is it you like?’ I asked

Without even missing a beat, ‘It’s the stories.’

I thought back to that conversation when a listener messaged me via twitter to ask if I’d come across the recent Daniel Tashian/Burt Bacharach collaboration. Having had my attention drawn I have been playing tracks around the house and car for the last couple of weeks. There’s much to love, but as my correspondent said when requesting we play something, ‘Is it country?’ It’s probably not, but both Burt and Daniel have great country credentials, as you would expect. Daniel’s back story is as singer and songwriter for The Silver Seas – Nashville based band who, though never massively successful drew the attention of those who knew. One of those was Kacey Musgraves who engaged him to cowrite and produce her Golden Hour album. That led to a Grammy Award and he’s even more in demand as a writer for Tenille Townes, Little Big Town and more.

Daniel’s collaboration with Burt Bacharach is a beautiful thing; in truth it brings out the best in each of them. It got us thinking about Bacharach and David’s own country connections and we think you’ll be delighted to be reminded of how far their songs have travelled west.

It’s often irritated me how people lazily refer to Bacharach songs when they really mean Bacharach and David. It’s not that either of them didn’t write before or after they met but simply that when people make the error they really are seldom referencing songs where Hal wasn’t present. The great catalogue – and it is truly great – is a testament to the combination of two unique talents. Great records can happen despite the lack of originality in the music or the lyric. But a great song  without a great lyric? I’ve yet to hear it.

We’ll also remind you of the talent of Hillary Lindsey. One of the songwriters mentioned in last week’s Chuck Prophet special, you’d be amazed that, despite her name perhaps being unfamiliar, a great number of songs penned by her would be recognisable to any regular listener to the AC. If you are one of our regular listeners I feel confident enough to predict that this week’s show will bring joy, a few surprises and a necessary dose of familiarity to keep you company this Tuesday evening.

As ever we’re on BBC Radio Scotland and we’ll be on air just after eight. Join me if you can.

I remember conducting an interview in the early months of my recording career. It was with a foreign TV crew (maybe Japan) and our own record company were fussing around and overseeing the whole procedure. At one point the interviewer asked about our ambitions. I suggested that we’d probably make about three albums then split up. The sound of coffee being spluttered out from collective mouths of the surrounding suits had to be erased in the edit. However my ambition was no different from most musical artists, who really don’t have long term plans.

So it’s been interesting for me to reflect a little on the 70 (seventy!) album career of Willie Nelson who, if anything, has speeded up his rate of creativity since he turned 80. I read Willie’s own autobiography recently which, if no ‘Chronicles’, is a useful guide to how Willie himself sees his own career. Inevitably and gladly, for me, there is more space given to the early lean years than the Grammy laden ones. What I enjoyed most about filling in the gaps in Willie’s career was how much he loved being a radio DJ in the early days. From location to location starting in Texas and moving north and south again Willie made a living on the radio. It confirmed something I’ve always half-known: singer-songwriters enjoy sharing songs we love by others as much as we enjoy playing our own music.

On this week’s Another Country we will celebrate some of the highlights from those seventy albums which have brought so much pleasure. You may have a favourite Willie Nelson album of your own. I have so many, but I still love the album that coincided with his freedom from the constraints of Music Row – The Troublemaker. You can let me know which albums still work for you, but it would be remiss of me not to point out that, like Bob Dylan, Willie’s late life catalogue brings particular joy. Country Music,  Heroes and Django and Jimmie have all brought pleasure. The new album, there’s always a new Willie album, is spinning and bringing joy as I write. I don’t expect to see Willie play live again, but I’m grateful for the nights when I saw and heard him.

We will spend a little time on the water in the second hour of the show. Most of us are doing our holidays nearer home this year so we thought it might be good to let our imaginations do it a bit of sailing so we can dream a little. It all started a couple of weeks back when we were reflecting on Lyle Lovett’s, ‘If I Had A Boat’ and I promised a little voyage one of these nights. Well, this week’s the week. So get ready to embark. The boat sets sail at five past eight this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland and we need all the passengers on board on time. Join us if you can.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that it’s far better to ask the question than assume you have the answer. Actually that was completely made up. There is no such axiom, but how I wish that kind of thinking was the international gold standard.

We live in the age of outrage and supposition. The two have never been closer and their propagation is widely and wildly encouraged by so many of the leaders we seem to have had visited upon us. There is hope though, folks. Unlike their male counterparts it seems women are better at asking, thinking and listening than we blokes. I’m only glad that half of the world seems to be on the right track.

It’s perhaps why I’ve taken more interest in the voices of female country and Americana artists over the last few years when so many of their male counterparts still seem happy to have their emotional arc contained within the world of a truck, a beer and the only bits of the Bible that confirm their narrow world view. Over the last few years, when asked which country artists I’d recommend my answer usually contains the words Brandy and Clark.

On Brandy’s 2020 release she asks that all important question: If your life is a record what track would I be? Helpfully she also comes up with a good answer and on this week’s AC you can hear a conversation I managed to record with Brandy while we were both locked down a few weeks ago. It’s been a frustrating time to be an artist this year but Brandy is one of the few artists who managed to cross the Atlantic and play her new songs to a UK audience before the gigs all stopped. She’s on great form on this new album and in the conversation we talk about her new producer Jay Joyce, that great duet with Randy Newman on the album and why, even though she’s at the top of her own game she still loves collaboration when it comes to songwriting.

We’ve been away from the coal face of new releases for the last couple of weeks and I’m still on Twitter holidays, so I’m enjoying more self isolation than ever, but I still have access to a fabulous pile of new releases. I can’t promise them all in the one week but I hope you might hear something from Ruston Kelly, The Avett Brothers, Laura Veirs, Tenille Towns, Randy Travis and Willie Nelson.

Finally…what have you been reading this summer? I’ve been hugely enjoying Barney Hoskyns’ Band biography, ‘Across The Great Divide.’ Listening as I read I’ve reaffirmed my opinion that The Band were the best band ever. If anyone defined Americana it’s these Canadians! So, I’ll play you a little favourite if we have time.

We’re live on BBC Radio Scotland  from eight o’clock this Tuesday evening. Join me if you can.