‘See the bloke behind the bar,’ he intoned conspiratorially, ‘the biggest feet in Britain. Had to have his shoes specially made and sent to him.’

Looking at the barman the over the assorted pints and shorts nothing of this was glaringly obvious. Did I detect a quiet smugness and was he sending out a message? ‘This may not be the best pub gig in the world, I’ll admit the hours are long and I’ve seen better gantries but you know what…and nothing will take this away from me…I have the biggest feet in the kingdom and you’d better know that I know.‘

The pub in question was a working club in south Wales and this week’s visit by Ashley McBryde had me thinking on some interesting ‘Dive Bars.’ You may remember it was Ashley’s ‘Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega,‘ which started us listening to her music. That ‘dive bar’ title doesn’t necessary mean abject in Ashley’s opinion..in fact quite the opposite. I kinda know where’s she’s coming from.

There have been a few bars over the years where, for one reason or another I’ve found myself looking round thinking, ‘against fairly considerable odds, this night has turned out pretty well.’ I’m thinking of a secret watering-hole in Beijing on a cold December night which had no name or sign but opened into one of the more congenial taverns I’ve ever encountered. There was that little pub with the roaring fire in downtown Sheffield where my big pal Steph was finding it hard to work out how we could keep buying rounds and still keep getting change from a tenner! Memorably too a little street bar in the south of France where we waited as the owners strung up a wire across the main street above the traffic so we could all watch their national team progress to the next stage of the World Cup. None was what you’d call a dive bar…but there was always plenty of character.

On this week’s Another Country you can hear about the time Ashley returned to her own dive-bar in Dahlonega, The Crimson Moon which is situated 50 miles or so outside Atlanta, Georgia where one of those magical nights ensued. You’ll also hear her sing the song in question in an exclusive session and conversation which includes her talk of her father’s love for Townes Van Zandt and Don Williams and her own further adventures since we first met. Since our encounter in March in Nashville there’s been a lot of things happening to Ashley and you’ll love her stories of Eric Church, Jimmy Fallon and a very special night in Colorado with Little Big Town.

As well as all of this we’ll have music from Ruston Kelly, Mountain Man, Nicki Bluhm, Pistol Annies and classics from Glen Campbell, Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Presley. We will also play you something brand new from the forthcoming album by Rosanne Cash.

Our very own dive bar starts serving at five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland this Tuesday evening and we’re repeated on Friday evening too. Come on in and sit yourselves down.

I did a bit of rifling in a record shop the other day. It’s an old habit that dies hard.

For me as a young school boy it was so much part of teenage life. We went to school in the city centre and lunch times and meandering journeys home were often spent in record departments. From memory there were three or four shops in easy reach of our school playground and over time the number grew. When I moved through to work in Glasgow I worked in Maryhill and I often found myself ending my working day wandering in to the city just to nosey around in record shops. There was so much we only half knew. The fact was that some of what we thought we knew was gleaned by staring long and hard at the covers and only imagining what lay inside.

For years some of the contents of these records remained a mystery. I knew the cover art inside out and even surmised what the music might sound like on the basis of the photographs, graphics and song titles. A friend invented the great game of asking the square assistants in D.M. Brown’s (never top of the hip parade) if they could order albums of invented artists and names: Do you have Rick Wakeman’s ‘Wooden Horse of Troy’ or is it not out yet?

However the really deep joy of any album sleeve was looking, reading, supposing and listening in the glorious solitude of my own bedroom. It struck me that so many sleeves reflected people being free to make music at all times of day and night. I’d heard recording studios worked round the clock and I tried to imagine what it would be like to be in studios where these recordings were put together. An early purchase brought all of these things together: Elton John’s Honky Chateau…still a favourite …sent my head spinning. I liked the rough and ready, troubadour Elton much more than I ever embraced glam Elton. The stubble and the semmet suited the music better for me. There was also another magical element to all of this.

I loved the photograph of the raw unploughed fields of France on the inside gatefold. Unglamorous, wintry and forbidding they spoke to me of freedom….these people had gone off to France (in winter!) to make music when we were all captive in classrooms. How decadent was that?

In all the sleeves the message was the same: Freedom. Led Zeppelin IV, Stephen Stills 2, Ram, Tapestry…I imagined into all of them people who were no longer bound by the deadly duties of the daily drudge but free to be roving troubadours going wherever and whenever with the muse. It was a lovely dream and I have no reason to be disabused of it now.

The album was and, hopefully, still is a beautiful thing. However it’s probably closer to its demise than its ever been. Don’t be fooled by the resurgence of vinyl..these figures only show an increase in what is a dying market. People got out of the habit of buying records and it’s going to be a long way back to convince nearly two generations of people that they need to pay serious money for stuff that’s been almost free for years.

This Tuesday we will celebrate the album. We’ll bring you some country albums we think worthy of owning in their entirety and we’ll play as many as we can from the original 12″ pressings. I’ve put some visual clues here for you. It’s going to be full of great country music..our way.

We’re on air from five past nine on BBC Scotland FM and repeated this Friday too! Join me if you can.

I’m not sure how it happened, but it happened somewhere on a humdrum  street towards the end of last week. I crumbled. I didn’t crumble slowly…it took an introduction, a verse and a chorus of a song that only lasts just over 3 minutes. By about a minute in my heart was broken again.

Is that what it takes? I suspect it is. I can remember it happening before on so many occasions. As ever when I crumbled this time it came just when I wasn’t expecting it (isn’t that the best way) and it came via the new record by John Hiatt. The think about getting your heart broken is you are never ready for it. If, like me, it usually happens in a musical moment, you’ll know that timing is everything. It’s that playout on the end of The Sopranos or suddenly in Jackie Brown…it just comes along and kills you. I remember being re-floored by the power of Who Knows Where The Time Goes as I sat alone in the theatre watching Mark Rylance put the needle down on the vinyl in Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem. Now there’s a moment.

John Hiatt’s about to release a significant new record. Stronger than anything I’ve heard from him a while and emptier and rawer too. You’re there early on on this album but when the acoustic guitar riff starts on the third track in and he sings the opening lines to Aces Up Your Sleeve, you know it’s a song you just can’t ignore. And maybe, just maybe, that’s what happens when songs sneak in there. Try as you might, you just can’t ignore them.

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On this week’s Another Country we will try to bring you some of those and there will be plenty to choose from. However we’re going to clear some space for a special session and conversation with someone who knows what heartbreak feels like. Ruby Boots asks for her heart not to be broken once but twice on her new, excellent album, Don’t Talk About It.

Ruby Boots is the headline name for all the music made by Bex Chilcot and she came in to see us a few weeks ago when she was in Scotland on tour. Talking to her that afternoon  I got to hear about her long journey to Nashville which came via  a spell in Scotland and started in her home town of Perth, Western Australia. She recorded songs from the new album and told us about the music she loved and is still loving as well as her good friendship with her fellow music city alt-country queen, Nikki Lane. We think you’ll love spending some quality time with Ruby too.

Elsewhere we’ll hear from The Pistol Annies, Eli Paper Boy Reed, Anthony D’Amato, Dawn Landes and Shakey Graves. There will be more music from that Jason Isbell Live release too and we’ll have some cool things on vinyl as ever. We can’t promise you won’t get your heart broken; after all this is country music.. our way.

Join me from five past nine this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland.

It’s a calm autumnal morning, I’m sitting at my kitchen table and I’m listening to The Nashville Sound. To many that’s the recent (and very good LP) from Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit but it’s also the title to the records produced in the 50’s and early 60’s by Chet Atkins. So there can be no confusion I’m listening to Jason.

I found myself thinking a lot about Chet Atkins over the last while. I was watching some of my friends play a gig recently and my guitarist buddy was sporting a very fine Chet Atkins model Gretch semi-acoustic. Heck it looked so good you’d be broken-hearted if it didn’t sound brilliant. It did though.

On this week’s Another Country we’ll welcome back our regular Nashville correspondent, Bill DeMain who is a songwriter, fabulous musician, journalist and host of the, increasingly popular, best thing to do in Music City, ‘Walkin’ Nashville’ tour. Bill’s been telling us that there is a growing number of folk joining the tour who’ve heard about it from Bill’s appearances on the old AC. We’re proud to be part of the success story. It really is a great experience.

For those of you not lucky enough to have had Bill’s Grand Tour (why did he never call it that I wonder?) let me tell you a little about it. You need to meet Bill on a particular corner of 5th Avenue and Union St in downtown Nashville. That’s the site, outside The Bank of America, where, in 2003, the bank unveiled a life-size statue of the man himself perched on a stool picking his legendary Gretch. Beside the statue is another stool where you can have yourself framed picking alongside the great man himself.

Bill will tell you all of this much better than I ever can of course. He’ll then lead you on a walk of wonders around the lower downtown and Broadway through Printers Alley, tell you about a Grammy Award album recorded right on the street and escort you into Skulls Rainbow Room before winding you through the back streets to the Mother Church of Country Music, The Ryman. Your mind will be exploding with brilliant country stories before you come out of Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge blinking into the sun on Broadway. It’s two of the best hours you’ll ever spend in the city and from there you’ll want to follow up all the stories by buying the records, visiting the museums and catching as much live, music as time will allow.

I thought a lot about the thread of Bill’s walk over the last while as we put together this week’s show. Starting at that statue and going through some of these landmark places is, in one sense, also the narrative thread of country music. These landmarks we pass on Bill’s odyssey signify the bumps and notches that old Gretch picked up bringing the music we get today. It’s changed but it’s still country music.

It’s hugely significant that The Americana Festival which Bill will tell us about this week uses the Ryman Theatre as its centre too. That old church still resonates with Hank Williams, Dottie West, Tammy Wynette, Charley Pride and so many others. Increasingly too it’s the home of the alternative country stars and the those who consider Americana their natural section in any record store.

Significantly, Jason Isbell and his Nashville Sound walked away with all the honours last week. Its no surprise that phrase still resonates all these years after Chet.

On this week’s Another Country you can enjoy music from the Americana Festival from Gillian Welch, Wood and Wire, Roseanne Cash and Brandi Carlile. New things from First Aid Kit and John Hiatt too. All that and Bill too. It’s only live on BBC Radio Scotland FM from five past nine. Join me if you can.

I’ve never seen a promo video for any Gretchen Peters song and I’m very glad I’ve been spared. It’s really because, over the last 15 years or so, her songs have inveigled their way into my life without any added stimulus; so often I’ve seen them play out in my head and imagined where they might take place.

It started a few years back when the late great broadcaster Terry Wogan (a radio genius in case anyone thinks of him as TV light entertainer) would seamlessly drop Gretchen’s ‘When You Are Old‘ on a mid-week morning…oh for some of those radio days to come back.

It was probably ten years ago when the real force of Gretchen’s story telling really impacted. The Bluebird Cafe, a homesick Scotsman and ‘On A Bus To St Cloud’ is a pretty potent brew.

I was thinking of these songs again this week as I listened in the car to Dancing With The Beast, Gretchen’s current record. I love the element of mystery she always keeps in her stories. Who did she think she saw on that bus? What did that bumper sticker say in Lowlands? How did this woman end up terrified but still dancing with the beast? We, of course, understand the thread and the suggestion but we never fully know; and that’s what keeps us interested.

When the age of video first dawned there was a famous interview with Springsteen where he likened the art-form to painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa. Thirty odd years later I think he, as is often the case, was spot on. Gretchen may have made a video or two (I really have no idea) but I doubt any of them will ever be required.

On this week’s Another Country you’ll understand a little more about the art of Gretchen Peters. A couple of months ago at Perth’s Southern Fried Festival I caught up with her to talk songs, #MeToo, Trump and all the elements going into her music. It was, as ever, a fascinating and revealing conversation which we’ll broadcast in full on this week’s show.

Elsewhere listen out for Dawn Landes featuring Bobby Bare and Bobby himself on glorious vinyl. We’ll have more from Mountain Man, a new track from Beer Jacket and an exciting new harmony group from Oklahoma called Annie Oakley. We’ll feature a lost song from Gene Clark and more from that Big Red Machine record we’ve been raving about.

Country Music? Yes…… our way. We’re live from five past nine this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can

I love Guy Garvie’s show on 6 Music. Yesterday, driving back to Scotland from a brief visit to London we listened in the car as we came through the Lake District. Perfect soundtrack to a perfect setting.

On the show Guy has a feature called Becapedia in which someone called – Becca…shares her musical knowledge. In the end the feature redeemed itself by playing a classic song by Marty Robbins. Getting there however she told us that country music ‘only appeals to me on a comedic level, thanks to its many overly dramatic scenarios involving gun slinging strangers, lame horses, righteous sheriffs and sweethearts waiting back returning back at the homestead to cook up some biscuits and gravy.‘

Oh dear. For someone so keen to avoid the cliche, she seemed more than happy to trot out a few of her own.

Country music is an easy target. But because of that brighter people should know it’s lazy to equate all of it with the worst examples of the genre. One can only imagine how easy it would be to dismiss pop music by imagining it existed within the confines of re-runs of Top of The Pops.

I say all of this by way of introducing two significant radio events this week. Firstly, on Tuesday night’s Another Country we welcome Lee Ann Womack as she showcases songs from her brilliant 2017 album, ‘The Lonely, The Lonesome and The Gone.’ In the title track itself it refers back to the classic country catalogue and within a dozen or so tracks she creates a sultry alt-country noir which makes for a brilliant listen. It’s brave too. Lee Ann’s own career has gone from crossover pop-country in the late 90’s by way of CMA and Grammy awards to a nuanced, darker styling which she recreates with her acoustic trio in session for her this week. It’s playing and singing at the highest level and really not to be missed.

On Wednesday night I’m back on BBC Radio 2 for the final programme of my New Tradition. As most of my radio life involves country music we’ve decided we should go out with a programme titled, ‘So You Think You Don’t Like Country Music?‘ For people who imagine country is Garth, glitter and gulches I recommend it to you. However I’m well aware those reading this blog will be wholly disabused of that notion.

What I do know is this: Country music is the raw, human stories of ordinary people. It’s the high lonesome sound of rural folk who’ve carried their own strains from different parts of the world and, at its best, it can make you laugh and carry you through the darkest of times. It’s too varied to be easily dismissed and without it there would be none of the great songs or artists we consider to be part of the canon of popular music today.

You think you don’t like country music? On our show, we love it. Join me if you can live this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland from 9 and at the same time on Wednesday on BBC Radio 2.

This week I get to  spend an hour with a man who has produced some of the best records of any genre over the last 15- 20 years: Ethan Johns.

Ethan was in Scotland recently performing solo in record shops (yes there are still some) to promote his new album, “Anamnesis.”  On his visit to our studios he explained the title of that album and also why it was so important to visit the record shops in an age of streaming. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Ethan still believes in that wonderful thing, the long player. He doesn’t insist on vinyl but he does want you to listen to his record on a stereo that can play a CD or something that spins at thirty three and a third revolutions per minute.

Last winter he gathered some of his good friends together in his garden shed and made a new record. Nothing unusual about this other than it’s Ethan’s normal ‘day job’ is to be the man on the other side of the window in the control room. So when you hear our conversation on this week’s show you’ll also hear us talk about how he has produced some of your favourite records of all time. Most people reading this blog will own one or two of these: the first few albums by Ryan Adams, Kings of Leon, Ray LaMontagne and Laura Marling. All recorded, contributed to and produced by Ethan. More recently he worked with  White Denim and was midwife to these late great Tom Jones albums from ‘Praise and Blame‘ onwards. I’ve skimmed through the details here and you really need to hear the full conversation to get a sense of the scope and depth of his work.

Apart from producing the albums Ethan is a multi instrumentalist moving through drums, bass, keyboards and guitar on many of these records too. He learned the skills and discipline of all of this from his father, Glyn Johns who also produced many of the records you probably cherish. Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, The Who, Joan Armatrading, The Faces….I could go on….but you can hear more about all of this in the second hour of this week’s AC.

Earlier you’ll hear great new songs from Loretta Lynn, Trampled By Turtles and, as promised last week, some more from the new Ruston Kelly album which is already becoming one of the albums of the year for me.  Did I mention we’ll have something from Taylor Swift too? It really is going to be a great night you know. Do join us this Tuesday when you can hear all of this on BBC Radio Scotland from five past nine.

In between bouts of monsoon rain at that John Prine gig recently a pal told me how much he’d been enjoying Willy Vlautin’s music and writing over the last couple of years. I think he (correctly) was really thanking my wife for turning him onto Willy’s novels in the first place.

I was thinking about my early conversations with Willy Vlautin this week as I listened again to the ‘Sweetheart Of The Rodeo’  by The Byrds, 50 years after its first release. It really is a remarkable album and also an incredible audio snapshot of the time of its release. The sheer country swagger of the album must have caught quite a few people on the hop. As much as this would bring people like me to the party there are a few people for whom the idea or general sound of country music is enough to make them run a (non-country) mile. It was Willy Vlautin who explained to me a few years ago how he saw country music as a bit of a red-neck thing and reacted against it taking more comfort from his post punk records. It was only when a friend introduced him to The Red Headed Stranger by that significant other Willie (Nelson) that the penny dropped. This too, he realised, was the music for the outsiders.

I’d love to have been in the room when The Byrds first met Gram Parsons. Five albums into a successful folk/pop/rock career and a guy comes up from Georgia to suggest they change direction. We’ve played the radio ads for the Byrds album before and they perfectly describe how many people must have reacted at that time. ‘That’s The Byrds?’

Recently on Bob Harris Country, Bob celebrated the 50th anniversary of the release of SHOTR by playing an hour’s worth of country rock. He, of course, was not wrong. When the Byrds told the world to keep it country and covered the Louvin Brothers, Merle Haggard and debuted Gram Parson’s ‘Hickory Wind’ it changed the direction of popular music. The Grateful Dead, New Riders of The Purple Sage, The Burritos, The Eagles and so many more followed along. It’s pretty fair to say that if Gram hadn’t met The Byrds I’d probably not be the country fan I am today.

So, on Tuesday night’s Another Country (repeated on Friday) we will hook up with our Nashville correspondent, Bill Demain and we’ll remember how Bill and I sat rapt at The Ryman until 1 a.m one wonderful night waiting for the moment when Roger McGuinn came on stage to join Marty Stuart at his Late Night Jam and we could get a glimpse of country-rock first hand. We’ll ask Bill about all the latest country stories too including as much as we can understand from Eric Church‘s recent media musings.

One final thought: Last week I tweeted out that we would be celebrating The Byrds classic album from 1968. One man who heard the album soon after was our great friend, Rab Noakes. He told me, ‘It was a new sound. There were Bob Dylan songs we hadn’t heard, (from The Basement Tapes – a 1/4 inch bootleg in those days), great songs from Cindy Walker et al, plus of course, Clarence White and Gram Parsons. It set a tone for decades to come.

I also heard a great tale from Barbara Dickson who tells of seeing Hillman, McGuinn et al in the early seventies….. how envious am I?

However you can hear much more on Tuesday on the AC, with cuts from our vinyl vault and original versions of songs from the album at our usual time of five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

Sometimes  I get over enthusiastic. It’s not a trait we Scots excel at usually, but there are times reader, there are days I gush. It usually comes when someone expresses disappointment on my behalf that I’m not available on a Tuesday night to go to football/ gigs/ ballroom dancing/ attend real-life drawing (I made some of these up).

As I slowly let down those seekers of my social attention I confirm that they mustn’t feel in any way sorry for me. I, I tell them, am the happiest cove alive. If my 16 year old me….hell if my 25, 35 or 35 year old me could imagine old-codger me getting to bring in a pile of records and share them with my chums over the airwaves all of these ‘Mes’ would  have clumsily and collectively punched the air.

I remember the summer of 75 so well. I worked in McGill Bros. Sports Department (bottom of the Hiltown, people) where, through my high-end skills in keeping the Tayside public dressed in Adidas T Shirts and convincing them they should spend the Dundee Fortnight in one of our tents, (we sold camping gas and sleeping bags too) I was able to purchase my first real stereo. Record deck by Garrard, Pioneer amp and Wharfedale speakers, thanks for asking.

There wasn’t much left for buying albums but sometimes sacrifices were made and records were bought anyway. On last week’s show one of the albums purchased that summer was played on vinyl – oh the joy. At that point the only people I could play records to were the occasional unsuspecting visitor to my lonely downstairs den. My big sister once got so frustrated at my changing albums over she implored me to keep the record playing. It felt like she was suddenly speaking Klingon. Surely she could see the joy was in picking the tracks and mixing it all up? How wonderful, I imagined, it would be were I able to fade out one song and surreptitiously drop in another from a different record. When I heard the term segue-way I felt my life began a new chapter.

So this Tuesday and as a bonus for me, on Wednesday too, I’ll be in our studio in BBC Scotland playing out the records which most excited me over the last seven days. In fact some of that is not true – I’d have to have a much longer time on air to do that – but I shall try to self edit and bring you the highlights. 

Kenny Rogers then….

And now..

On this week’s show we’ll be celebrating the 80th Birthday of the great Kenny Rogers. We’ll bring you new music from Phosphorescent, Joshua Hedley, our fab new discoveries, Mountain Man and The Nude Party as well as welcome return visits to Maren Morris, Madison Violet and Richmond Fontaine. We’re allowing ourselves a little nostalgia this week too as we celebrate our ten years on air.

So…it’s not that I don’t enjoy special nights, sessions or live concert shows. It’s really just that playing out records over the airwaves is still the best part of this job. Join me if you can. Tuesday on BBC Radio Scotland from nine and, for the next few weeks, BBC Radio 2 on Wednesdays at the same time where you can hear my New Tradition.

It’s a summer’s day and I’m listening to Roger Miller. I really can’t complain.

Roger Miller is one of these artists who was swept into our pop consciousness by the random nature of British radio and television. Any one of my age (that’s old, folks) can remember almost everything they ever watched on Top of The Pops. Roger’s performance of King of The Road was one of these ones we never forgot. Later in the sixties there was the joy of hearing his voice as the troubadour in Disney’s own version of Robin Hood. In truth I never really got the ‘Disney’ Roger until I had young children and a pile of Disney VHS tapes. Oh the unknown joys of parenthood.

Later this year we’ll bring a wonderful conversation we recorded a few months ago with Jerry and Gordon Kennedy. Jerry, the man who produced many of Roger’s records and Gordon, his gifted ace guitarist son, have the best collection of Roger Miller stories I’ve heard so far. (*Puts hand on chest...’I’ve had little Jimmy Dickens up to here.*) Roger Miller was one of that great group of writers hanging out at Tootsie’s in the early 60’s which included Harlan Howard and Willie Nelson. Gordon remembers his father changing one of Roger’s B sides to an A on the basis of his brother and he dancing around the living room to the acetate pressing. Music was simpler in these days!

There’s a new album of Roger Miller songs coming out this month and we’ll play you a gorgeous duet featuring two country greats from that record. The album is called King of The Road – a Tribute to Roger Miller. His old friend, Willie Nelson too has a significant anniversary as well as a new album of songs made famous by Frank Sinatra. We’ll give you a little taste of both of these things this Tuesday.

After the excitement of Southern Fried I’m delighted to be in the studio with a pile of old and new records- including some vinyl this week. Beautiful cuts from Tiny Ruins, Cordovas, Sam Morrow, Lee Ann Womack and the man who will be supporting on her visit to Scotland in September, Charlie Worsham. We’ll discover why there’s not one but two albums available from Jim Lauderdale this August and will hear more from that fine Sons of Bill record as a little taster for the band’s visit to Glasgow this coming weekend.

There’s going to be so many good things coming your way on the old AC over the next few months I thought I’d freshen up the Radio Blog too. Hope you like the new look. Always glad of your comments which you can add in. As ever we’ll be live this Tuesday at five past nine and repeated on Friday at 8. You see, it must still be summer. Join me if you can on BBC Radio Scotland FM.