Of all the benefits of presenting Another Country, by far the greatest is getting to ask questions to song writers about work they have produced. Often I’m gently probing around career paths and trying to persuade guests to explain how they arrived here. Sometimes the artist’s own life eclipses everything and the songs take a back seat; then sometimes it all comes together in an extraordinary way.

On this week’s Another Country we shall host a session and conversation with Sam Baker about what, for me, is undoubtedly my favourite record of the year. I love it because of the stories, I love it because of the melodies and I love it because it floored me when I played it from beginning until its final note was lost in the reverb. Part of my love for it was my surprise at the ingenious production and atmosphere created by Neilson Hubbard where songs explode into sonic delights deep into the track, disturbing and confounding me at every turn. But none of this would matter if the singer and the songs weren’t full of vitality.

Land of Doubt is an album bursting with life. Take the tale of the Vietnam vet in ‘Same Kind of Blue’ where the narrator recalls of the grim task of ‘Charlie fighting Charlie’ way down in tunnels ‘crawling into hell.’ It’s a story we think we’ve heard before until Sam hits with the confounding sucker punch: despite all of this his protagonist confesses, this ‘was the only time he ever felt alive.’ Then, over a military snare and a elegiac trumpet the song blows up into a gorgeous final coda.

Then there’s Sam’s monstrous ‘Feast of St Valentine’ where he sings above a track which Doves could have conjured up. Stirring, anthemic and ultimately life-affirming it’s tucked into the album so deep you are taken aback by its intensity. Early on we hear the simple beauty of the voices at the end of ‘Margaret’ and then there’s classic Sam Baker valedictory message of  ‘Peace Out.’

It really is this good. Sam’s own life means has the right to know the deep joy and gratitude in a simple phrase life Peace Out. In 1986 he escaped death in a train which was targeted by the Shining Path terrorists in Peru. He suffered life-changing injuries and his hearing is now so poor it’s miraculous he can make such beautiful music. But he does and he will make more. Join me for a very special Sam Baker session and conversation this coming Tuesday.

Elsewhere we’ll bring you some essential new Country Music from Carly Pearce, Luke Combs, Lee Ann Womack, Iron and Wine, Dean Owens (also produced by Nielson Hubbard) and John and Lily Hiatt.

We’re live from five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland on Tuesday evening. Join me if you can

One of the many reasons I never liked the video age (perhaps it has passed?) was less Mr Springsteen’s complaint that it was like ‘painting a moustache’ on your favourite painting and more that it took away the piece of magic any music allowed you – your imagination.

I don’t know how I would make a video for the Louvin Brothers singing ‘In the Pines’ but I’m pretty sure my ‘longest train’ would look a lot different to the next person’s. By the time the video age kicked in properly in the mid 80’s I had to start receiving ‘treatments’ for video plots for some of my own songs. I always liked the scripts which started, ‘I hope to shoot each member of the band individually’  – often the band ended up feeling the same thing. Moving images with music are hard to get out of our heads and the radio allows us some room for manoeuvre.

I love imagining where someone is listening when they send a message in. What are they looking at and where are they hearing? So, I suppose, the listener imagines too in their own way. Many people will chat to me and ask when we record the show, little realising that much of the joy of any given Another Country evening is being able to broadcast live. At this point the collective imagination goes into a top spin as listeners from across Scotland let the music take them some place familiar or to places they can only dream about.

This Tuesday I will bring you a vinyl selection from the new album by Randy Newman called Dark Matter. On so many songs from his back catalogue I’ve allowed myself to dream a little…that back yard with the dog in Rednecks, that bum on the street in I Love L.A. and the reflection of the golden girl in the spectacles of the child killer in ‘In Germany Before The War.’

You and me will both imagine the Music Row hangout of our Nashville correspondent, Bill DeMain as he brings us all the latest from Nashvegas and you will perhaps imagine the young Albert Hammond writing and selling songs in Denmark Street which would become the soundtrack to a million lives. There’s a lot of imagining goes on.

Your mind’s eye may like to think what it was like for Orphan Brigade in the caves below Osimo in Italy on their latest adventure – we’ll supply the soundtrack. We will hear some great new things from Courtney Marie Andrews, David Rawlings, Willie Watson and John Hiatt‘s daughter, Lily.

You will be pleased to know there will still be time to hear some familiar voices including The Dixie Chicks, Glen Campbell and Johnny Cash with the Carter Family.

We are back and live from five past nine this Tuesday on BBC Scotland FM. Join me if you can.

There were three of us. It was after a family dinner. We’d drifted through to the other room to have some coffee and watch the news. My wife, my mother and myself all half watching the TV and we all found ourselves absorbed by the memorial service from Paschendale.

Grandsons, great nieces and nephews all paid tribute to young men who’d been killed or gone missing 100 years ago. As my wife noted at one point, ‘it seems to move me more as I get older.’ Why is that?

Quietly the same truths confronted us in a much more understated way as we took our rented camper van round the North Coast 500 in early July. Like a cut-out and keep illustration of the themes behind Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s, ‘Sunset Song,’ no sooner had we pootled along the High St of any one of the many small towns and villages than we’d happen upon the war memorial. Often we’d be walking past and stop to read. How was it possible so many had gone from such a tiny place? How much harder to believe thy’d never returned.

What, I’m sure you ask, has any of this to bear upon country music? It’s the same question I found myself asking as I watched the choirs sing and the children laying wreaths on television. How insubstantial most of our choices seem when faced with people whose had only one option: to go over the top and be killed or refuse and be executed. It was the second fate which awaited the boy from the Mearns, Ewan Tavendale, in Grassick Gibbon’s novel. No comfort for any who waited on news.

It was then I thought of what was left behind: the turning of soil, the milking of cattle, a shop to run, a boat to sail. Nothing much greater than the routine rhythm of daily life, which, from only 80 miles away must have seemed further than the furthest place. A vision of heaven from the seventh circle of hell.

So we celebrate what we have, that which we would miss most and the tiny events which constitute civilisation as we know it. Every part of that is sacred.

Another Country may form part of that for you. I’m honoured if that’s the case. It’s not a matter of life or death but it is part of that delicate fabric we would all recognise had disappeared were we to be displaced and exiled in the way our forebears were 100 years ago. The absence of war gives weight and meaning to the prosaic.

We will be off air for the next three weeks allowing time for the endeavours of the Festival and Fringe to capture your artistic imagination. This Tuesday we will celebrate our last show in the present series by bringing you the best from Southern Fried 2017. Nick Lowe, Sam Outlaw, Chuck Prophet and Beth Nielson Chapman in concert. Oh how much we would miss all of those should our world be taken from us.

Join me from five past nine this Tuesday (repeated Friday) on BBC Radio Scotland FM.

I can’t really concentrate on this blog today. This is the second time I’ve started it. My mind is being drawn elsewhere. I hope you’ll understand as I’m trying to do this while also listening to a test pressing of a vinyl cut of my forthcoming solo record. It’s not multi tasking, it’s really just stupidity.

However there is a certain perfect symmetry too. The only reason I do any of this stuff is because of what I’ve heard coming from records…and in my case…vinyl records. In the old days it was simply a case of records arriving in the house and listening to all of them. They came in from my grandparents, my parents, my sister and her boyfriends and my visiting cousins. They ranged from Electric Lady Land to The Rolf Harris Show to Benny Goodman’s Countdown, and I listened and learned to love them all. Abbey Road appeared for a few brief months then disappeared as my cousin Pat returned to England and Thunderclap Newman got left behind by my cousin Brian; I never called to tell him but secretly treasured it. If someone left behind a great record there was very little motivation to return it.

One of the greatest joys for me is saying to someone, ‘sit down and listen to this.’ It’s probably one of the reasons I detest pop music being played in supermarket. I’m sorry, but God Only Knows was never meant to be played over Market St in Morrisons. So on Tuesday nights I love nothing more than a pile of records and a playlist to share some music with whoever happens to be listening. It really is a joy. I often feel I’m getting in the way just announcing what I’m playing…some night, I’m going to edit myself out all together.

For the next few weeks there will be no Another Country and no music in the evenings on BBC Radio Scotland. You can choose instead to hear the highlights of the Edinburgh Festival…go figure…it’s not my idea. So, for our last show for a month or so we’ll leave you with a bumper edition. Live in the studio we will be joined by Angaleena Presley warming up for her appearance at Perth’s excellent Southern Fried Festival.It’s the second time Angaleena has come to see us and she’ll be playing session versions of her songs from ‘Wrangled.’ She’ll be talking about women and country music which she’s singing about too as well as that final song with Guy Clark which appears on the record. We’ll also ask her about her fellow Pistol Annies, Ashley Munroe and Miranda Lambert.

In side two of tonight’s show we’ll catch up with our old friend but new recruit, Bill DeMain, the AC’s very own newly appointed Nashville Correpondent. There is so much news coming out of Music City we felt the need to have our own man on the ground. Bill is a songwriter, journalist and curator of ‘Walkin’ Nashville,’ so we feel we have the best man for the job.

In between all of that we’ll still play some new records and choice cuts. Look out for new records by The Americans, William The Conqueror, Heather Lynn Horton and John Murry. There will be much to love from the past too including records by The Carter Family and Clint Black. Join us live this Tuesday (repeated this Friday) on BBC Radio Scotland FM.

In a recent (excellent) interview in American Songwriter, Andrew Combs opined how much he never wanted to rewrite the same song. Having released 3 albums it is always his intention to keep moving forward.

Since releasing his second album, ‘All These Dreams’ Andrew has been played regularly on Another Country and he’s making his 4th visit to see us in as many years. His first was an outrider with Caitlin Rose on a session a few years back.

One beautiful thing which happens with Andrew’s songs as often as it happens with the best….Randy Newman, Harland Howard, Richard Rogers, Joni Mitchell…is the beautiful melodic shifts and patterns which still occur over, what my pal, ‘The Swan’ calls the usual chords. Harlan himself declared the secret to be ‘three chords and the truth’ and for that we must be grateful. Why is it however that these three chords can seem valid and simplistic in the wrong hands and wholly beautiful, moving and of God-like perfection with the right custodian? I have no idea, but I do know Andrew Combs to be in the latter camp. He makes these old changes sing.

Live and surrounded by his good musical companions he’s great too. At last year’s C2C he was the surprise opener to the second night and he won over many friends despite his legitimate concerns that he ‘wasn’t really very country.’ Of course, that tag is one which we often like as it usually means they are country enough to get us interested but not locked into the brainmash that is bro’ country. Andrew could not be further from that bold tradition if he tried. I love how much how much he follows where the song wants to go.

You can all of that for yourself as Andrew and his tour combo perform a session they recorded for us on their travels back in May. You’ll also hear how Andrew reminds me of so many of my favourite songwriters not least Canada’s Gordon Lightfoot…and how it seems it’s me and Andrew’s Dad who keep on about this. There’s much more too but you’ll need to tune in to hear all of that.

We’ll also have an interesting sequence inspired and including the late Johnny Cash which includes a great instrumental by the great Martin Belmont. Look out too for new music from Beth Nielson Chapman, Joan Osborne, Slaid Cleave and David Ramirez too.

All on BBC Radio Scotland FM this Tuesday evening from five past nine.

There was no blog last week. I took off at the last minute on a sojourn around the north coast of Scotland accompanied only by my wife and our dog, Alf. It was one of the most wonderful weeks of my life and I kinda forgot to pack music so we often travelled in silence in the cathedral of the highlands. I have no regrets and it felt brilliant to put everything on hold for 5 days and step out of the everyday into a a slower and certainly more scenic pace.

I can’t say no one has told me, as they most certainly have, but perhaps I’d never listened carefully enough to how beautiful Scotland really is. I’ve often questioned how much travel broadens the mind – especially when you encounter certain individuals who test the theory to the limits – but now I’m certain the only journeys (spiritual, mental and physical) we need to make are much closer than we imagine.

Within a few hundred miles of where I live in Glasgow is all the beauty of the world in such breathtaking variety it would be impossible to experience it all in one lifetime. Sometimes, it seems, heaven is a little closer than you think.

On this week’s AC we welcome the lovely Holly MacVe who found she didn’t have to travel far at all to find her muse or fulfil her true destiny. You can hear how singing in her local cafe in Brighton brought Holly to the attention of her dream label and the best home she could ever hope for her music.

Holly’s music has the empty purity of Kentucky bluegrass and contains the heartbreak and longing of all the country music you can remember with the added salt of something unique. Produced  close to home by Paul Gregory of her fellow label mates, Lanterns On the Lake, her debut album, ‘Golden Eagle’ is truly high and lonesome. I defy you not to fall in love.

This Tuesday you can judge for yourself as you can hear tracks from Holly and hear her in conversation with me. It’s a fascinating story of a young talent who may well become one of your new favourite artists.

Elsewhere we shall spin new records by Micah P Hinson, Danny and The Champions of The World and (finally) a new album from John Murry. Stay tuned for significant reminders of the greatness of The Cowboy Junkies, Slim Whitman and Hank Williams and some new names including Suzanne Santo, Angelo De Augustine and someone coming to Scotland very soon, Hannah Aldridge.

It all starts on Tuesday evening from five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland.

Cause I’m a Muswell Hillbilly boy
But my heart lies in old West Virginia
Never seen New Orleans, Oklahoma, Tennessee
Still I dream of the Black Hills that I ain’t never seen

Ray Davies 1971

America was a dream for Ray Davies. Like many post war British kids his leisure time was filled with images and sounds from the new world. At the pictures on a Saturday to the records on the juke box and the radiogram and eventually on television, America represented all we could imagine and everything we couldn’t get.

For Ray it provided the music which inspired him and which he would adapt and change and, finally, sell back. Eventually, along with his fellow band mates, he’d go to America and experience much of this, though not before he discovered the downside of the dream. Who knows how big The Kinks could have been on the other side of the Atlantic had it not been for their early repatriation and awkward brushes with US law. As it transpired they were banned from appearing in America for 5 of their most creative years: 1964 to 1969. At one point, and without too much of a stretch of the imagination they were one of three British groups fighting for chart supremacy. The other two were, of course, The Beatles and The Stones and it is still difficult to overestimate the influence and reach of both these bands in America.

For Ray Davies the American dream was going to have to wait a few more years. Eventually Ray toured, recorded and lived in America. All of that and the little boy who was a Muswell Hillbilly from his head to his toes explains why he has returned to the dream on his latest album. Recorded with the Jayhawks, Americana is Ray’s own attempt to make sense of that long, strange love affair he’s had with Uncle Sam.

On this week’s Another Country join me in conversation with Ray Davies as he talks about the songs from the album and his own memories and influences in Americana. For me it was one of the greatest joys I have had to sit down with someone I consider to be one of, if not the best, British songwriter of all time. It’s a fascinating listen littered with great songs old and new.

As an appetiser we have a mini celebration of Canada Day. Tom Russell has just released an album of songs written by the great Canadian duo Ian and Sylvia. You’ll hear some of that and the original recordings too. Keeping the tributes going, another Canadian, Catherine MacLellan has just released her own tribute to her late father Gene MacLellan – the man who wrote the Anne Murray and Elvis classic, ‘Snowbird.’ We’ll play Catherine and Gene as we celebrate the brilliant roots music we’ve enjoyed from Canada over the years.

There’s much more too. For all of that you’ll need to join me from five past eight this Tuesday on BBC Radio Scotland. It all starts at five past nine.

If the two years of the UK Americana awards were never to happen again then all of us lucky to have been there would, no doubt, reflect that what we once had was very special indeed. Looking back on both evenings there are events and encounters I’m truly grateful to have experienced. There are also some significant performances.

About those performances: I have to ‘fess up. This year, at the end of the evening, a number of people were all saying the same thing, ‘What about that song by Yola Carter, wasn’t she amazing?’ Richard Murdoch and I would look at each other and shift our feet around a bit……’Yes’….we’d mutter….’but we actually missed it.’

A week or so earlier I had encountered Yola Carter. As I walked into a Glasgow rehearsal room a figure was curled up, having a nap on a sofa and when she awoke she greeted me with the warmest smile I’d seen during that cold January. Later on that hibernating figure would turn out to be Yola and I would see and hear her for myself from the same stage as we both took part in Roddy Hart’s Roaming Roots review as part of Celtic Connections. It wasn’t hard to imagine how well she might have performed at the Americanas given how she brought the house down at the Royal Concert hall on that night.

A few months later and Yola Carter has a (fairly lengthy) EP out and as well as walking away from the Americanas as UK Artist of The Year. This Tuesday evening you can hear what all the fuss was about when Yola joins us in BBC Radio Scotland’s Studio One to play live in the first hour of Another Country. She’ll sing her own remarkable songs and play a cover that no one can doubt epitomises the true spirit of Americana.

As well as all of that we’ll explore Steve Earle’s claim to be a superior artist to Hayes Carl by giving you a chance to compare how much you enjoy both of their recent output. We will continue to celebrate the release of the major release in country this year, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit’s, The Nashville Sound. We will bring you some new recordings by two Sam’s…Beam and Baker. Mr Beam’s Iron and Wine have brought out a brilliant new single and Mr Baker will next week release perhaps my favourite album of the year. More on that when he comes in to see us soon.

Elsewhere we have some gems from Van Morrison, Elvis Presley, Gillian Welch and, as promised last week, something wonderful from Gregg Allman‘s late, great solo career so sadly cut short last month.

It all starts at five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland this Tuesday and repeated this Friday from seven. Join me if you can.

One of the great things about school lunch times for me was the possibility of leafing through albums in Dundee’s record shops. When I went to college instead of doing my 6th Year it was much the same except that lunchtimes occasionally became entire afternoons. Around that time country rock had begun to impact on the mainstream. Daytime radio was playing The Eagles and The Bellamy Brothers and, when Radio One stopped in the early evenings, we got Radio 2’s folk and country output. Around that time too came an alt country band called ‘The Outlaws.’ Outlaws as a theme was in the water.

As young people still slightly wary of country music the idea of Nashville outlaws intrigued us. Those people, we were reliably involved, had been drawn in and subsequently spat out by Music Row and had started the fightback for real country music. Cut their hair? Hell no.

The album which captured all of this and more was The Outlaws album. This wasn’t the band I mentioned above – though they did make an album of the same name – this was the collective of Tompall Glaser, Willie Nelson, Jessie Colter and Waylon Jennings. All of them were big country names and all of them were happy to be branded as outsiders. As far as Mainstream Country was concerned it was the perfect match. Wille and Waylon’s reputation was cemented as the country stars they truly well – the album went on to become a big winner at the subsequent CMA awards – and the names on the sleeves were allowed to continue on their merry, rebel way delighting their respective audiences in their disrespect for the rules.

It’s a well worn path which had been taken by Hank Williams and others before them and would inspire Steve Earle and others in the decades to follow. Though Willie had been a songwriting and recording star before all of this it was Waylon Jennings who would gain the greatest recognition from his time as an outlaw.

This week Waylon Jennings would have been 80 years old. Sadly he’s not around to celebrate that anniversary, but he would have become only a footnote in country history had he not decided to drive that long bus trip from Clear Lake Iowa to Moorhead Minnesota and give up his seat on the plane which crashed killing Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly.

In one sense the implications of that night never left Waylon Jennings and his subsequent struggles with addictions until his death in 2002 bear testimony to that.

This Tuesday on Another Country we’ll celebrate the music he made and the music he inspired. Hot off the press we’ll share a new Steve Earle track from his forthcoming album which ‘channels Steve’s inner Waylon’ and we’ll try to explain and celebrate Waylon’s unique legacy.

In the bits in between I’ll bring you up to date with some current music from Music City where I’ve been spending some creative time over the last couple of weeks.

It all starts at five past nine this coming Tuesday 13th June on BBC Radio Scotland and repeated this coming Friday evening at 7 o’clock. Join me if you can.

The weather here is America’s Music City is hot; humid in fact. Clouds are rolling in today and by tonight there will be a chance of rain. On the streets however there has rarely been more optimism. This is not based on anything life-changing or brought on by the new regime. It’s simply this: The Preds are on the attack.

Since I arrived last week Nashville has been hockey mad. No professional sports team from the city has ever won anything of significance in living memory, and for all I know, ever. The Ice Hockey team playing in downtown’s Bridgestone Arena have, however, made a serious attempt to change all of that. 2-0 down to the Penguins in the play-off for the Stanley Cup they have now drawn level after two home games which brought the downtown streets to a standstill. Rock ‘n’ Roll stops the traffic? Country? No…Ice Hockey! It’s all to play for till someone wins four games, but right now you won’t get anyone offering any opinions on anything else until this series has been resolved.

This coming weekend Music City may well have a perfect storm. What used to be called FanFare is now labelled CMA week. It’s when all the country stars come to town and play short sets at the football stadium and all over the city to meet and greet their loyal fan base. I can only imagine the chaos that might ensue given the possibility of all that combining with The Nashville Predators lifting the cup. ‘Go Preds’ as even the sign on the 12th Avenus Mosque reads!

I’m here for 12 days of so meeting up with some great songwriters and having my musical batteries charged. I’ve re-walked the city with Bill DeMain, visited some brilliant recording spaces including my good friends, The Orphan Brigade’s haunted house in Kentucky and found myself playing a song at The Bluebird. It’s the magic of Nashville and the city is as charming, friendly and full-on as ever. Always changing, always growing and often guilty of overlooking some of its better assets this, for me, is still the most compelling centre of music anywhere on earth.

Next week I shall be back in Studio 6 playing you some of the records I’ve discovered on some car rides and record shops but this Tuesday we’ll bring you an hour of country guitar music so it will put you in the mood for an hour with the great Duane Eddy.

Recorded in Nashville’s Musician’s Hall of Fame we’ve been saving this conversation for a suitable occasion. Perhaps this week, when Duane played a gig at The Station Inn with Dan Auerbach to launch Dan’s new album, would seem as good a time as any. It’s Country Twang all the way tonight…..join me from five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland.