It’s a small thing a record label. To most people under the age of 40 it’s something they may never have noticed. Growing up it was hard to avoid. The 7” single would be eased from its paper sleeve  – that bit would often be quickly discarded – and the record would be stacked up with as many 45’s as the turntable took for a solid 20 mins of extended play. There would then be a short break while you turned the pile over and listened to all the B sides. ‘It was a simple life but we were happy,’ I can’t help feel you muttering.

Discarding floppy paper sleeves was not a big issue as all the real information was on the label. It was the label to which we were attracted. The Beatles were on Parlophone, The Stones were on Decca and T Rex on EMI with Bowie and the glorious CBS label was host to Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan and Brooooooce. We were hypnotised as then spun round at 33 and 1/3. When it came to signing a record deal in 1986 I would be lying if I didn’t say that having our album on the CBS label didn’t carry almost as much weight as our signing on fee.

In amongst all this were the indies…..punk brought some brilliant new ones with many of us buying anything a good label wanted to throw at us. Stiff Records toured on mass on a train. How much we envied that? The Clash signing to CBS contributed more to the aforementioned signing myth and Rough Trade and Factory added an independent allure to the whole caper. In the US there had been hundreds of labels. Many of them, like Mercury still carry the same graphic and one has just released new product for the first time in decades. Stax – home to Sam and Dave, The Staple Singers, Isaac Hayes and of course the greatest of them all, Otis Redding, is so famous it has its own museum in Memphis. The founders and producers of that label have long since disappeared but the imprint is owned by the Concord label now home to Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats. It’s great to see such a great logo spinning around again as it was on vinyl on last week’s AC.

This week we get the band themselves in session and an extended chat with the man himself. Gone are the days of chamber-folk, tender singer songwriter please welcome born again R n B dancing boy with a horn-section in tow. Don’t miss it.

Also…..Kurt Vile, Lewis and Leigh and a new spooky project by Ben Glover and Nielson Hubbard (producer to Dean Owens too) called The Orphan Brigade. We’ll remind you why we love that Daniel Romano album so much and reacquaint you with the talent of Willie Nelson, Dottie West and The Grateful Dead. All sound good? Join us this coming Tuesday evening from five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland.

A couple of years ago or so I got to trace my family’s roots. I wasn’t expecting Arctic explorers or even Jacobite renegades but I was slightly dismayed to find that the entire movement of my father’s side of the family had been between Dundee and Forfar for the best part of 150 years! Sharing the story the children took it on board with characteristic Scottish phlegm. ‘So Dad,’ my 12 year old said, ‘Nothing interesting has happened to your family?’

I couldn’t demur. I stood accused and accepted the admonishment fairly and squarely, half-hoping a cat-burglar or an animal-trainer might suddenly pop out of the woodwork. I dreamed of the helpful chap from the Library in Dundee calling me up; ‘We’ve overlooked the Friockheim side of your family, Mr Ross. It seems they drifted off to South America in the late 1800’s after their gypsy caravan was burned down in Kirriemuir……never came back. But there’s a lot of them in Patagonia!’

All of this is in sharp contrast to my special guest on this week’s Another Country, Dean Owens. This year’s excellent album which has a number of songs which look back into some untold stories opens with the brilliant tale of Dora, a circus performer and traveller, just another member of Dean’s lineage. Into The Sea is the name of the album and with some excellent help in Music City, Dean’s record has a great collection of stories. Live he’s ably supported by The Whisky Hearts who will be with him this coming Tuesday evening when they play for us in Studio One on Another Country. Expect great songs, some magical playing and singing and a few stories from ‘what’s up there in the family tree.’

Dean is playing soon and I recommend you go see him. Thinking back now his show at The Glad Cafe was one of the gems of the year. Another was last Saturday’s, frankly brilliant, concert by A New International at the CCA in Glasgow. I’ll play you some more from their album, Come To The Fabulon. We’ll have Neil Young on vinyl and we’ll preview some artists about to appear at Glasgow Americana starting this week including Tom Russell, Betty Soo and Sam Lewis.

It all starts on Tuesday evening from five past nine.

It’s my last Sunday until Christmas time

I’m delighted to say my special guest will be Fife’s very own Cora Bissett. Cora is musician, actor and director who has created some of the most demanding and critically acclaimed theatre in Scotland over the last few years. Now associate director of the National Theatre of Scotland her determination to tell stories of the new Scots has brought some brilliant new work to the theatre.

I’ll also be catching up with Gordon Aikman and his husband Joe Pike. As you probably know, Gordon has written about his fight with Motor Neuron Disease. Gordon has been very open (in his Sunday Times diary) about the travails of his illness so we thought it would be good to pay him a visit at his flat he shares with his new husband, Joe and ask them both to share how the illness has affected them. Their commitment and honesty makes for a very moving story.

Join me on Sunday from five past ten if you can. Both shows are on BBC Radio Scotland.

One final but important Radio appearance this week. On Thursday evening I will be joining Andrew Marr and others on National Poetry Day on BBCRadio 4. I’ll be singing a song and reading a very appropriate poem!

Here’s the link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06g1nfr

If you’re going to work your way home from Edinburgh the chances are you’ll end up on Cockburn Street as you wind your way to Waverley. It was on this street one day in round 1980 I had a significant vinyl moment. In a window of what became Ripping Records was a Bruce Cockburn record I didn’t own. It wasn’t too surprising I didn’t own it, after all I was the only person in my world who had any Bruce Cockburn albums….I’d bought Sunwheel Dance from Groucho’s a couple of years before but there the catalogue had ended. We knew very little more about the man. My friend Doug had decided to drop him a post card and  – what do you know – he replied. So that day on Cockburn Street I went into the record shop to buy this missing record only to find there were four or five others waiting there in the racks. I went home to Dundee with two bulging carrier bags and a hole in my finances. In these days a cheque book was a handy thing. Years later I would meet Bruce a couple of times and enjoy his company as well as see his shows. Next week he plays a keynote show at Glasgow Americana and as a prelude to that I’ll be spending an hour talking music, faith, Central America, ecology and much more this Sunday morning.

By the way, I discovered reading his autobiography that he too has walked down Cockburn Street as a young traveller. As well as chatting I hope to play a lot of significant Bruce Cockburn songs from his 45 years or so of making some brilliant music. It all starts at five past ten this Sunday.

This Tuesday on Another Country I’ll catch up with an artist who is every bit as exciting as the young Mr Cockburn was on that line album I owned all these years ago, Andrew Combs excellent, ‘All these Dreams’ has been a significant album for us this year on Another Country. We’ve played a good few tracks and have been very impressed by the authority and maturity of his songwriting and singing. Andrew has passed this way before. A few years ago he was supporting Caitlin Rose in Glasgow but we managed to persuade him into the AC to record some songs and stay around for a chat. There are echoes of Jackson Browne, Gordon Lightfoot and Harry Nilsson in Andrew’s music and he has a few good tales to tell.

We’ll have some new music from Lewis and Leigh, Anderson East and 10 String Symphony as well as some lovely  returns to great records by Kris Kristofferson and Faith Hill. Our new favourite band A New International have a new single out too and we’ll hopefully have a few surprises along the way too.

Sound good? We think it will. Join us from five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland this Tuesday evening.

Once you get to the 3rd floor of the Country Music Hall of fame, and I really hope you do, you will find there a few key exhibits which will explain why country music is so popular and so rooted in the story of working people in America.

There is one little stop….shrine?…..along that top floor which caught my eye and, because I spent so long watching and re-watching, took up the time I’d meant to spend elsewhere. So even though I had to hurry through ‘Dylan and The Nashville Cats’ I don’t regret lingering awhile in front of a screen showing an excerpt from a 1950s music TV show introduced by June Carter. It featured The Three Musketeers; Webb Pierce, Carl Smith and Marty Robbins…..all singing George Jones’s, ‘Why Baby Why.’ There’s nothing particularly special about Webb and Carl – though there’s nothing wrong with any of it – but what kept me watching and listening was Marty Robbins. Seeing him in that TV clip I began to understand why he had been this great figure in country music. My eyes didn’t lie and I couldn’t take my eyes of Marty.

It was the Mid 50’s when this clip was filmed and many things would happen to popular music in the years between this and Marty’s death in 1982 aged 57. We don’t really need to make an excuse to celebrate Marty’s music but we should say he is probably one of the first country artist to make a ‘concept’ album. ‘Gun Fighter Ballads and Trail Songs’ from 1959 is a must-have in any country collection. It’s also 90 years since his birth and on Another Country this Tuesday we’ll celebrate his music through his own brilliant recordings and listen to the effect his music has had on Country Music. We’ll he’ll some great interpretations of his recordings from Johnny Cash, Kitty Wells, Johnnie and Jack and even the late Kirsty MacColl.

We will also have plenty new music to play you too. Currently I’ve been smitten by the new Dave Rawlings Machine, ‘Nashville Obsolete’ album which finally was released on Friday. We’ll hear from Low, Noah Gunderson, Joe Pug, Betty Soo, Neil Young on fine vinyl form…..and lots more.

Join me from five past nine this Tuesday evening.

On Sunday

I will be spending most of the first hour with a broadcasting legend. Gloria Hunniford knows a thing or two about TV and radio and her own faith has been severely tested in recent years. I will be asking the woman who has heard so many tales of others where she goes to reflect on her own story.

We’ll be speaking to Alistair McIntosh about a book he’s co-written with Matt Carmichael. “Spiritual Activism: Leadership as Service”  He’ll tell us what he means by this and explain how over the past half century the issues facing activists have changed, as has our understanding and awareness of spirituality. For activists, spiritual philosophy is rising up the agenda because it offers distinct, tried and tested approaches to deep questions: Where did it all go wrong? What does it mean to be human? What is the place of leadership? What is the nature of power?

Plus we’re off to the movies to see ‘Captive,’ in which a woman taken hostage and reads Rick Warren’s ‘A Purpose Driven Life’ to her captor.  Warren’s book is one of the biggest selling Christian books of all time. Spolier alert? We’ll try not to!

Music from Hem, Sandy Denny , Feist and Willie Tee and The Staple Singers.

It all starts at five past ten and both shows are on BBC Radio Scotland.

If you ever find yourself in Nashville you will doubtless find yourself taking a walk down Music Row, You’ll then realise it’s really two rows and and a few side streets. I often imagined these streets before I finally managed to arrive in 2007. On my first night there I decided to jog round the block. It quickly became clear that it was far too warm for that and I ended up strolling down 17th and 18th Avenue Sth on a warm Sunday evening when there was no one around. I loved the banners – ‘Fifth Straight week at #1 for….’ and the writers of the song’s names and their photographs would be beaming out from various offices of music publishers. Each of them would highlight their various successes and each banner would puzzle me a little further. Half-thinking I’d perhaps know a few of the names of the artists or even the occasional writer, I was dismayed to realise I knew nothing. Going round the block in 2015 there will still be many artists and writers who I haven’t yet discovered…so it’s an ongoing knowledge battle.

Of course, I did what I always do in these situations; I turned to the radio. I travelled around in my (over-sized) rental car and I trawled the megahertz to find country music I liked and didn’t like. I found country stations, top forty, college and I dipped in and out of all of them. When I’d had too much country I would find an oasis of soul or an obscure indy half hour with mumbled hipster DJs. I loved it. Following hot country songs isn’t difficult. When a song is hot it’s hot and you’ll hear it on all the FM Country stations. That may either prove a deterrent or a draw but when you find a gem the chances are you’re counting down the minutes until you hear it again.

On Tuesday night we welcome an artist who gave one of these moments a few years back. Chris Young’s Neon came on during a journey around Nashville one day and I went home and found it. It brings together two great things: a monstrously great country-barritone voice and a rather subversive lyric that implies all is not well, or it is if only you could share this lonely soul’s slightly skewed world-view. :

The windows are tinted
That’s why they invented

Neon, the light they always leave on
The weekend on the rocks
An old school jukebox
With a little Johnny Lee on
It’s the buzz I love to be on
You put a double on your troubles on line
This end of the tunnel is always neon

But wasn’t it ever thus? Neon – interestingly – stopped a run of 5 singles which went to the No.1 spot on the Country Chart. I wondered what the banners on Music Row that day. We will be honoured to have Chris Young and his band live in session on Another Country this Tuesday squeezed between their only two UK shows At London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire and Glasgow’s ABC. We will hear songs from the past as well as some exclusives from his forthcoming new album, ‘I’m Comin Over.’ It’s going to be a very special night indeed.

We’ll also hear new music from Craig Finn, Carrie Underwood, Tom Russell and Flo Morrisey. We’ll hear some pre-loved songs from Roy Acuff and The Louvins and we’ll please (at least) one of our regular listeners by revisiting that Delines album from last year.

Join us from five past nine this Tuesday if you can.

On Sunday

My special guest will be the BBC’s former India correspondent, Sir Mark Tully. We’ll talk about why he has spent his entire life on the sub continent and why he is happy to remain there even in retirement.

As politics fail again in Northern Ireland we’ll take the spiritual temperature from our Four-Corners friends across the ecumenical divide to ask how their own parishioners are getting on with the ‘Peace Process.’

Music from Trembling Bells, BB King, Joan Shelley and Sandy Denny. We’ll be on from five past ten and you can find both shows on BBC Radio Scotland.

The leaves are falling down….well the ones in my garden are. It’s been a long time coming but there have been a few trees which needed taking down a metre or two. As I write there’s a chipping machine in front of my window drowning the new Langhorn Slim album…it’s driving me nuts. It’s doing a power of work though. Trees have become dead limbs and those same limbs are being chipped into tiny bits of bark. What Tony Soprano couldn’t do with this machine doesn’t bear thinking about.

This Indian Summer we’re having isn’t confusing any of us. Summer has passed and we know that winter will come sooner or later. By nine it’s getting dark and the thought of being indoors and listening to the radio begins to make a lot more sense than it did in those high days of summer. As you can imagine that excites here on the old AC as we have a rather tall pile of records we need to prune a little too.

I’m quite excited by some of these and want to get a chance to play a few things this coming Tuesday. That new album by Langhorn Slim is called The Spirit Moves and I’ll be playing something to you without the noise of chainsaws to get in the way.  I’m hoping I’ll find time for something from the new Alela Diane record. You may well remember her from the Pirate’s Gospel a few years back. This time round she’s working with Portland Oregon based writer/producer, Ryan Francesconi. As well as Alela we will revisit the new album by Joan Shelley which really is very fine indeed. Like Alela, Joan is collaborating beautifully and in Joan’s case it’s the voice of Will Oldham we’re loving here. I’m also going to play more of that Jason Isbel album. Jason’s return to sobriety and subsequent solo albums have been a revelation and it seems that people are responding. This new album charted for the first time in the UK and went into the top 10 on the US Billboard Album chart. Not that we’re counting of course…

What else you say? We know you love a bit of bluegrass and, as Kirsten is working with me on the show we share a love of Cahalen Morrison and Elis West and want to play you a bit more from their album and a few Bluegrass treats. Look out for Jim Lauderdale, Crooked Still and Roscoe Holcombe.

We’ll be playing you some Neil Young on vinyl and heck yes we’ll certainly have some lovely old things which will remind you of why we all love country music.

On Sunday

With the Scottish Governments plan to prioritise education, we’ll be exploring what we want from our schools. What kind of citizens do we want our schools to produce; should schools be divided along gender or faith lines; is there any place for religion in schools – these are some of the questions we’ll be asking.

And I’ll be speaking to Justine Roberts, the co-founder and chief executive of the phenomenally successful parenting website Mumsnet.

Music from Soak, Paul Simon, Trembling Bells and Gurrumul.

All from 10 this Sunday morning on BBC Radio Scotland.

As I recall we were looking forward to one more of these summers we thought we used have as children. You know the ones; we left the house early and didn’t come home till our parents cries were heard over some sun-blessed meadow where larks and butterflies had flown around all day. Yeah….me neither.

The reality was that, in those days we saved our films and our rather expensive development costs for days when the sun was shining. We always took pictures with the sun behind us and very few of us took any photos indoor as we didn’t have these pesky flashbulbs. This summer, I suspect, may turn out to be no different when hazy memories are stirred many years on. ‘Look.’ we’ll point…’it was lovely that year.’ If you look at my photos you’d think we’d had a heatwave. At one point – and pretty well sober – I went swimming off the outer Hebrides with nothing between America and me but a pair of underpants and 5000 miles of ocean.

It was, in short, like so many summers full of wonder and joy. My children came home and we got to be together as a family for a glorious summer week, sharing stories, jokes and, of course music. So many nights we ended up outside our rented holiday house looking up at the stars and listening again to familiar songs. Some of those songs had arrived in the dead of winter but were now made to ring out loud on warm July nights where no one but us and a few bats could expect to hear them properly.

For us the joy was returning to a familiar haunt. It reminded me of one of my favourite poems by Norman MacCaig where he says,

‘So many summers, and I have lived them too.’

So, sooner or later, we accept that August is over and we embrace the changing season. It seems right that the Blog should return and once more we stay indoors to enjoy the wireless bringing music from across those 5000 miles to pierce the darkness. This coming Tuesday we’ll spend a fair part of our allowed two hours in the company of Angaleena Pesley. This year’s ‘American Middle Class ‘ album has made a very strong impression with us over at the AC. Perhaps it’s the honesty, perhaps it’s the reminder that country is at its best when it truly is the music of ordinary folk and over and above this perhaps it’s the high percentage of excellent melodies and carefully constructed performances on the one album. As well as all of this Angaleena is one of three Pistol Annies, she writes with some excellent collaborators and she gives a great interview.  We’ll play all of that as well as some great Angeleena associations including those Pistol Annie solo projects from Miranda Lambert and Ashley Monroe too. We’ll have Loretta Lynn and Townes Van Zandt on vinyl and we’ll play more from the new Langhorne Slim album and we will introduce you to a new voice who we like very much: Frankie Lee.

We’re live on Tuesday evening from five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland.

On Sunday I’ll be talking to self-styled social philosopher Charles Handy and getting to chat to Gerald Russell about his fascinating book ‘Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms – Journeys into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East.’ I’ve gone on about this so much in the house there’s a queue forming to read it next. If you want to understand what’s happened in the Middle East in the last 25 years and put that into a religious and historical context that stretches back to the earliest civilisations then you could do a lot worse than start with this book. The book is recommended highly by Bill Clinton…but don’t let that put you off if you don’t dig Bill. Have a look for yourself if you don’t believe me.

All this as well as some great music from 10 am this Sunday on BBC Radio Scotland. Do join me then if you can.

(photo by Kit Carruthers)

I’m sitting in our extension looking out at the garden as an apocalyptical rain storm beats down on the roof. It’s wonderful. In fairness I only say that because I’m not under canvas and I fear for those who are on this high summer night. It’s what I often have to tell myself is ‘song writing weather.’ Perfect for staying indoors and dreaming up another world where a different story unfolds.

You’d imagine we’d get enough rain in the winter to make any surplus summer downpours feel a little, you know, superfluous? But no. They have a magic all of their own. I remember a thunder, lightning and rain storm so dramatic  it kept me awake on one of my first ever sleep-overs in Carnoustie as a youngster. Years later I was staying with a pal at his auntie’s house in Inverbervie when it seemed the rain might wash the pillars of the viaduct away and all of us would be swept out to the raging North Sea. Sleep? We kept a watch all night, and it was as exciting as exciting gets in these parts for boy of my age.

Sometimes it takes a change in the order of events, time or place to write a song. It may be that different thoughts occur to the author when they are removed from all normal assumptions.   As a rule I experienced more rain and wind of summers than sunshine. I didn’t travel far, even as a student. I was working by the time I visited Greece for the only time in 1985. It was a package holiday to Crete and the time spent by the pool seemed to hang heavy on me. It seemed easier there to think about the place I’d just left rather than spend much time imagining how people there lived their lives. How different that might be had I made that trip 30 years on from that July holiday. Then I half dreamed and half remembered a story I wanted to tell. I wrote the words down on a jotter from the school where I taught. The song was called, ‘Dignity’ or maybe a Ship called Dignity. I don’t remember exactly now. But sometimes an unexpected turn of weather – in this case previously unimaginable heat – can make you do something different.

On Tuesday night we’ll find you a perfect mid summer soundtrack mostly imagined in far away places. Step forward Shelby Lynne, Tyler Farr, Buck Owens, Willie and Merle. We’ll introduce you to Flo Morrisey, Pharis and Jason Romero and remind you how good Valerie June sounds. Sound like we’re beating the weather?

It gets better. We have these fine gentlemen in session and conversation.

Cahalen Morrison & Eli West will tell us exactly where that phrase, I’ll Swing My Hammer With Both My Hands came from. Like their fine album they’ll do the whole thing with the help of wood, some wire and fine voices. It’s beautiful and it all starts from five past nine on Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland.

On Sunday….

I’ll be with you for the last time until later later in the summer. I’ll spend the first part with the great poet, broadcaster and now seeker. Ian McMillan is has written Neither Nowt Nor Summat: In search of the meaning of Yorkshire and he’ll be talking about this and so much more on Sunday. It’s one of the most enjoyable conversations I’ve had in a long time.

I’ll hear from Jonathan E Brown about his most recent book Misquoting Muhammad, we’ll hear some more Ramadan Diaries and, as ever enjoy music ranging from Richard and Linda Thompson via Blur to Alabama Shakes. Al from five past ten this Sunday morning on BBC Radio Scotland.

The Blog is going on a summer holiday. See you later in the summer.

I have busked once. It was a disaster of epic proportions. We had a rehearsal room just off Buchanan Street in Glasgow underneath the street level in an old print room. One day, when I really should have known better, I said to the rest of the band, ‘Why don’t we go out and busk some of our songs?’ There were ten good reasons why this was not a good idea. I refused to hear any of them. The other nine reasons were never needed really……the reason it was such a bad idea is that we really pretty awful at the busking lark. It’s a learned trade.

I was working with a young artist recently who told me he was about to give up his regular job so he could concentrate on his music. His plan was support himself through busking. He could, he’d noticed, earn quite a good income at this. I think that was because he was rather a good singer and sang the songs people wanted to know. If I’d listened to my wife that fateful afternoon I’d have known better. She pointed out that repertoire was of some important in all of this……mine was limited and obscure.

One day we emerged from our basement to see Lorraine in Buchanan Street busking with another band. The irony was they were doing one of my songs…but the secret was they delivered it with a punch. I guess there are some lessons you just learn the hard way.

I was thinking about this as this week’s AC majors in on the ultimate busking band, Old Crow Medicine Show. They were ‘discovered’ by Doc Watson while they busked outside a pharmacy in Boone, Norton Carolina. The rest, as they say, is history.

We’ll play the OCMS themselves as well as some of their offshoot projects – Gill Landry, Willie Watson – a version of their most famous song and something wonderful from the man who witnessed that busking gig back in 1998, Doc Watson.

We’ll thbe introducing you to some new names including this man  ….Rayland Baxter,

Margo and The Pricetags and Daniel Romano as well as show some considerable excitement about the new, excellent record from Jason Isbell. Enough already? Gather round your wireless and chuck a few metaphorical coins into our cap from five past nine on Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland.

On Sunday……..

I’ll be talking about to playwright Jo Clifford, hearing more Ramadan Diaries and talking to some wise guests about what happens when organisations and businesses lose direction.  How do they keep, lose or steer an ethical path for themselves, their coworkers and the people they seek to serve? As ever music …this week look out for Sly Stone, Sigur Ros, C Duncan and Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

There’s a song that’s been going round our house. You probably know it – especially if your listened to our show last week. Really I can’t get it out of my head. It’s Landslide by Fleetwood Mac. Last Wednesday at the Hydro it was performed by Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham as a duet quietly and beautifully to an audience that were in the palms of their hands. It was great. I went home to listen again and, as well as listening to the Dixie Chicks version I listened to that 1975 original version once more again and again. It’s the slight crack in Stevie’s voice that does it for me. Is it the note or the emotional truth? I’m not sure. She know longer has the same voice and though she does a great performance I there is something about the original that haunts me.

It was one of a night of individual moments that really proved the opposite to the old saying that the whole, in this case, is not bigger than the sum of the parts. In The Mac’s case this is simply due to egos that are stranger and bigger than most we would hope to encounter in any part of life as we normally know it. But, in their defence, it is also because they are a band which seem to delight in showcasing individual talents. The other ‘moment’ for me was Lindsay Buckingham’s quite breathtaking version of Looking Out For Love which, despite being a song which would have worked with the entire band, was a tour de force of individual guitar playing prowess.

It was interesting to compare and contrast all of this with the altogether more humble surroundings of The Barn at ‘Solas’ where I had the joy of seeing Blue Rose Code and Honeyblood play on Saturday evening. Having only seen BRC within the confines of the BBC sessions he’s done for the show it was great to see him surrounded by a  sound band delivering an enchanting set.  Shortly afterwards we experienced Honeyblood live too. Again a great set with two people making a big, warm beautiful noise from two instruments. Safe to say, I really did enjoy the focussed drive of these sets more than the high-end pomposity of Fleetwood Mac a few evenings before. Check them in a town near you soon if you can.

I should also add that ‘Solas’ is the most perfect summer festival you might hope to encounter. From their point of view a few more people would help hugely to make sense of the economics of the thing. But at the moment it creates, in a beautiful setting, a lovely meeting place for all ages to think about society, faith, culture and celebrate it all with music, poetry and art. In my book that’s really as good as it gets. Well done people you are curators of a Scottish gem.

This Tuesday we’re going down to our special place in Studio 1 where we’ll welcome back old friends, Woodenbox for a live set to celebrate the release of their new LP  ‘Foreign Organ’ which came out this month. We think we’ll have the biggest number of musicians yet to play a session and by the time I join them in the room there will be ten of us there! It’s going to be a great big sound, some fine new songs and a great cover too. Join us on Tuesday evening from five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland if you can.

On Sunday..

I’ll be speaking to the UK’s most decorated paralympic medallist Tanni Grey-Thompson. We’ll be talking to talking to Christine Toomey, the author of a new book, The Saffron Road: A Journey with Buddah’s daughters. We will also cast a cold eye on Syria as a group of experts gathers in St Andrews to look beyond the headlines at what is happening int hat country.

We’ll have some great music ranging from Teenage Fanclub to Lauren Hill. It all starts this Sunday from five past ten on BBC Radio Scotland.