The Way It Was
I was telling a friend this week about one of the smallest, but for me, most significant items on display at the Patsy Cline Museum in Nashville. Not much larger than a post-it note I was drawn for a good Read More …
Author: ricky
The Many Welcome Returns of Mary Gauthier
Perhaps you heard a few snippets of this week’s Mary Gauthier conversation on my Sunday Morning programme. If not you will be able to hear all of that and more on this week’s Another Country. I found myself thinking a Read More …
Outlaws and Armadillos
It’s over ten years since I first set foot in Music City. One of my early memories of that first visit is my final songwriting session of the trip. I was to go to the house of Nanci Griffith and Read More …
The Great Escape
In what must be the strangest interaction of my short life in my short history on Twitter I found myself having a barney with the wife of Miami Steve Van Zandt/Little Steven/Silvio-in-the-Soporanos. Someone had asked a question and I, oh callow Read More …
Names
I often think of my wife’s Uncle Joe. He’d spent a bit of time in Scotland and different parts of the UK over the years but essentially he stayed home and kept the small piece of land in Gweedore Co. Read More …
The Old Ways
It’s a funny old thing getting old. On one hand there’s much of modern life which eludes me and on the other there’s so much of the past I can enjoy for reasons of nostalgia which must seem incomprehensible to Read More …
It’s Only John Oates Folks….
In a fairly shabby common room within a college that no longer exists there was a juke box whose contents were seldom, if ever, rotated. Money being tight for students in the late 70’s it’s probably fair to argue that Read More …
The Searcher
As Patty Loveless (sort of said) I think about Elvis quite a lot these days. I blame the last ten years of visits to Tennessee where it’s hard not to let your mind wander a little towards the times when Read More …
Mums and Dads and that
We all know what Philip Larkin said about parents and there’s time when, as a parent, I’ve whole heartedly agreed with him. However over the last few weeks I’ve had a chance to think on all of this a little Read More …
Did That Just Happen?
Did that just happen? It’s a question we’ve asked ourselves a lot over the last ten years or so as we (metaphorically) sweep out the studio floor after a mesmerising session or interview. In Nashville this year it happened about twice Read More …