I remember reading CS Lewis’s autobiography over 40 years ago across a cold Easter holiday when my parents were away and I crouched against the radiator and for the first time, read a book continuously from cover to cover. Much of it was an introduction to the delights he’d found in his own youth, the ‘northernness’ he discovered in the Norse sagas, Robert Browning and well…I don’t think I remember much else in truth.

His own story, as I’m sure you know, was titled after a line from William Wordsworth: ‘Surprised by Joy; impatient as the wind.’ Much of that surprise came from his own conversion to Christianity which was the hook that pulled me in when I still sought the satisfaction of fundamental certainty later life seems to deem superfluous.

If certainty is too much to hope for it seems to me that the deep search for ‘joy’ is a life long quest which brings new twists and turns at every point in the journey. Sometimes it’s a literal path too. It was only recently we found ourselves on a week’s holiday walking a little cliff route I’d forgotten about and it was, for my wife, all new. On a sunlit early June afternoon it was joy unconstrained. I remember too the sheer exhilaration two years ago as we made our way along the north coast of Scotland and realised what beauty we’d been missing for fifty odd years. As the impressionists might have said, and Robert Louis Stevenson wrote: ‘The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.’

So it comes to the half-way point of another year and I look back and discover that again I’ve been bowled away by so many fine things I could easily throw away the past and rejoice in the new which this year has brought. Nothing is still quite as thrilling as finding a piece of music you want to play again and again. How much your heart leaps when you hear something and think…well that’s made my day. As I write I’m listening to Mattiel’s second album on vinyl and it’s so full of life I really don’t want to take the needle off…ever. It’s one of many records to have come out which, shortly on the AC, we’ll be celebrating as the cream of 2019’s crop of new releases.

On this week’s AC you’ll hear something wondrous from that Mattiel album as well as new tracks from Marren Morris, Hiss Golden Messenger and Midland in a two hour blitz of great new records you need to know over the summer. You’ll hear old favourites from Ry Cooder, Rosanne Cash and…Wings! You’ll also catch up on the latest news from our man on Music City’s streets, our Nashville Correspondent, Bill DeMain who has reports of the recent southern storms in the city as well as a night at The Ryman which all of us would love to have witnessed.

We do all of this in two hours and you can hear the programme on BBC Radio Scotland from five past nine this Tuesday evening. Join me if you can.

The other week, while on holiday in Fife we wandered past the students union at St Andrews University and I found myself remembering the first time I met Nick Lowe. He was part of Rockpile and they were playing the Union on one of those nights when you were glad to be alive and thanked the Gods that things like this still happened. More than that I can’t remember, but I was grateful for seeing such a great rock n roll band in such an intimate setting.

A few years later I found myself for the first and last time at The Reading Festival. I’d never quite understood why we were unlucky enough to be booked but, needless to say, the words of our production manager at the time did not augur well. ‘Listen chaps,’ they’re a little boisterous out  there and when the acts kick off they tend to throw a few beer cans towards the stage…nothing personal…they’re a great crowd.’ I’m old fashioned and frankly I didn’t need Reading or their cans of piss and I led our group off stage after a number and a half. That we never got back mattered very little to them or us. One lovely thing did happen however. On the sister stage, set up adjacent to ours was John Hiatt. I’d fallen for his music a year or so before after Tom Morton turned me on to his album, ‘Bring The Family.’ I decided to make myself known and knocked on his door to find, to my delight, an earlier visitor, Nick Lowe, was still there. In truth I was probably even more thrilled to meet Nick than I was to encounter John, but I was more than delighted to meet them both.

A couple of years later and I found myself in L’Escargot in Soho in the unlikely role of judging on an awards panel. It was a few hours of life I will never get back but there was to be a lovely consolation prize…Nick was also on the panel. By this time we recognised each other and he made a point of telling me I should have his phone number…I’d not asked..but he assured me I should call whenever. I, of course, never did but carried the number around in my old diary as a souvenir of the day we met.

From that day on Nick disappeared a little from view. I knew a little of his output but in all honesty lost track until nearly twenty years went by and he brought out a run of solo albums which re ignited all my earlier fandom. In the meantime Nick himself had been married and divorced to Carlene Carter, been welcomed in to the Carter Cash family, had his songs cut by Johnny and become an overnight millionaire when one of his songs was included on the Bodyguard film soundtrack.

Picking up on the late output I fell in love all over again with his songs on The Convincer, At My Age and The Old Magic. They make a beautiful trilogy and I really can’t recommend them highly enough. In 2011 all of this came together in the perfect way.

Booked to play at Glastonbury around this time of year I discovered to my delight that the act on before us was the man himself. We spoke, I watched his set and then we went on to enjoy one of the best nights we have ever had on stage in our long time of good nights. 

In the intervening years Nick has been a guest on the show but this week, in the middle of his first major tour in the UK for 20 years he has brought in the excellent Los Straitjackets (all the way from Nashville) and cut four live session tracks for us. That’s not all! In the second hour of the show I sit down with Nick and talk songs, stories and county connections…..and there are so many.

If you think you don’t like Nick Lowe you might just need to listen closer, if you think you don’t like country music you might need to hear about it through the songs and stories of a man who loves it.

It’s The Another Country Nick Lowe special and it’s on BBC Radio Scotland this Tuesday evening from five past nine.

This week’s blog celebrates the talent that is Yola.

It’s a delight to say that at (nearly) the half way point in 2019, for the second year in succession, the stand out record is by a female solo artist. ‘Walk Through Fire’ works because, in very simple terms, once you put it on you really don’t want to take it off. It’s peppered with delights all the way through. From the excellent, ‘Faraway Look’ though to ‘Love is Light’ there isn’t a weak song on the album.

There is so much to enjoy about Yola’s voice that she does, of course, deserve all the credit. However I need to talk about some of the great collaborators. Firstly there’s the production skills of Dan Auerbach, from the Black Keys. We’ve been big fans of The Black Keys and Dan’s various solo adventures for a few years now. His move to Nashville seemed to awaken him to the great strength of songwriting talent in the city and he’s harnessed all of that to assemble a brilliant repertoire of material for the Yola album.

What’s so impressive is the range of writers: Bobby Wood (Elvis Presley pianist), Pat McLaughlin (Songs by Bonnie Raitt,Tricia Yearwood, Lee Ann Womack) Dan Penn (Aretha Franklin,James Carr) John Bettis (The Carpenters) and Joe Allen (Glen Campbell, Merle Haggard).

It’s a dazzling array of talent that might, in other hands, seem a little overwhelming, but with the safe oversight of Dan Auerbach and the skills of Yola the whole project breezes along beautifully. It’s great too that the album has been recognised by the Americana community who have already nominated it for an award in September’s festival. There’s also acknowledgement of its impact as Yola joins Kacey Musgraves for a string of US dates later this year.

Yola wears all of this new high profile status lightly. She’s still the young woman from Bristol we knew and loved when we first encountered her a couple of years back and she’s as pleased as any of us that she’s moving in such exalted circles. We’ll have an extended conversation with Yola, play some great cuts from the album and then celebrate the songwriters and artists who have made such a vital contribution to the project. Listen out for Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt and John Prine.

Listen too for our tribute to a much loved Nashville songwriter, Ralph Murphy who died last week. No one had a bad word to say about Ralph and he looked out for songwriters wherever they were working. He’ll be hugely missed.

As ever we’re on air at five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland.

I’m writing this while people…a tiny minority within a minority who bothered to vote…are trying to make sense of the Euro elections. For most of us it seems that life just carried on. We didn’t bother to vote as we were too confused, irritated or apathetic to take the 5 minutes it usually occupies. I don’t understand that, but then there are so many aspects of modern life I fail to get that I can only put this information alongside the bin currently holding Game of Thrones, old-taxi-drivers-who-seem-to-love-dance-music and tanning salons.

I’m thinking more about it this week having spent a fair amount of time last week in Sarajevo, Bosnia. It’s a city surrounded by hills into which, for nearly four years, the neighbouring Serbian Republic placed soldiers to visit hell upon the population. Under siege for nearly four years from 1992, Sarajevo survived by transporting supplies through a tiny tunnel running underneath the International Airport. Despite this between 4- 5 thousand civilians were killed in the city alone due to the war.

As part of a delegation visiting Bosnia with Remembering Srebrenica Scotland, I walked through a section of the Tunnel of Hope (often called The Tunnel of Rescue or Life) and tried to imagine what life was like for people in that city. There was no electricity and no running water. On every day of the siege up to 100 bombs were aimed at the civilian population and snipers took pot-shots at pedestrians.

On the second day of our visit we took in the horror of what happened in Srebrenica itself. There thousands of men and boys trying to flee the Serbian army were forced to walk 60km to Tuzla. 8,000 of them were killed by shelling or by execution. Buried in mass graves their remains are still being identified. I visited the cemetery where over 6,000 of them have been interred. It was chilling and gave me cause for thought.

Is this what happens when we can no longer find ways of talking to each other, when we stop listening and when the spaces we inhabit become so noisy and confused the only voices we hear are the ones shouting loudest? If so, what happened there has a very real possibility of happening closer to home, and sooner than we might imagine.

Making informed decisions together, engaging in dialogue, understanding the perspectives of those on the other side of argument is vital for any healthy democracy. Listening is essential too. When the noise level reaches fever pitch it gets harder to hear the voices of the left-behind, the marginalised and stateless….but listen we should.

It’s for that reason I’ve always loved songs. When Woody Guthrie wrote ‘I ain’t got no home in this world any more’ and I find myself singing it and asking an audience to join in, it reminds us all of the humanity we have in common. When Johnny Cash explains he wears black ‘for the poor and the beaten down,’ that he wears it ‘for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,’ I’m thankful that singers and songs compensate for the voices we can’t hear because of all the other noise.

Maybe in these strange times it’s as healthy to stop and listen as it is to charge in with another argument, whatever it might be. That’s where music comes in and helps us understand the world a little better.

On this week’s Another Country we’ll hear some of those voices. We have an intriguing conversation with our special guest, Hayes Carll where he talks about the bits of his life he got wrong and the priorities he has now. He’s a brilliant satirist as well as writing songs straight from the heart. Listen this Tuesday to Hayes singing ‘In Times Like These’ and consider where we are going.

Also listen to the voice of the great sage and civil rights activist Mavis Staples as she sings “We get by on love and faith, no matter what happens I’ll be there for you.’ Listen too to Justin Townes Earle as he sings ‘Ain’t Got No Money’ and it reminds us that we may not be in the darkness that descended on Bosnia in the nineties, but if we fail to learn, the possibility that evil can triumph will always be there.

In Sarajevo, where they are pleased to see us and to tell us the history, they know how quickly tides can turn. The horrors of their own genocide were stirred up by the forces of injustice, inequality and economic hardship. How we deal with all of those things determines whatever happens next.

Songs can be a balm that binds the heart. They can also be a clarion call to action. This Tuesday evening we shall let the songs be both.

A few years ago I went for a songwriting excursion to Stockholm. I’ve been twice and both times I’ve loved every minute of the place and come back with songs which have appeared on my own and other people’s records.

My first visit was early summer when the long Swedish winter had passed over and the days I spent in the city were warm and almost too sunny to want to spend all the time I did in dark studios. Everyone speaks ridiculously good English and even my taxi driver was keen to tell me how delighted he was that June was here and the sun was out. As we travelled through downtown and he pointed to the pavements where beautiful Swedish girls walked with carefree abandon wearing far less clothing than would get them through the darker months he couldn’t contain his excitement. In contrast to the fluent English and the munificent liberalism of his fellow citizens his response of, ‘Much women’ was more prosaic.

The next time I returned it was December and the whole city and the harbour were frozen. It was then I heard people explain how heating is included in any rental agreement. I liked this but couldn’t help but notice that the heating hadn’t extended to my friend Tobias Froberg‘s loft where his studio was and we cut the two songs we’d written together.

It’s an inspiring place and of course there’s such a great artistic history and a deep knowledge of pop music. One of the things I loved most was the way hotels and trendy bars didn’t resort to bland electro jazz soundtracks or top 40 mixes on the stereo. I’d hear brilliantly curated song lists which emphasised a lot of cool Americana and singer songwriters. Sweden, I realised was my kind of place.

On this Tuesday’s Another Country I want to take you to the shores of the Baltic Sea for a little Scandinavian sojourn. Music from The Tallest Man on Earth, neighbouring Norway’s own Ane Brun (who worked extensively with Tobias too), Daniel Norgen and Sweden’s finest, First Aid Kit.

I realise how late to the party I am with The Tallest Man on Earth which is the alias of Kristian Mattson who grew up in Dalarna, Sweden but now lives and records in Brooklyn. He comes to Scotland and is playing Edinburgh’s Usher Hall and London’s Hammersmith Apollo later in the year. His current album I Love You. It’s A Fever Dream has been playing everywhere in my house for the last two weeks and I want to play you so much more.

It’s also a very special week for visitors to Scotland where we welcome Yola and Hayes Carl to Glasgow and in the next few weeks we’ll bring you extended conversations and music from both these artists.

Finally I want to tell you how much I enjoyed the Patty Griffin show last week in Edinburgh. Patty is the rarest of talent who will deliver you a set list you wouldn’t expect to love but still makes you feel you’ve just heard a greatest hits show. She has a voice you just don’t want to be parted from and last week she proved to me and a spell bound audience why she is one of the most significant singer songwriters of this or any other generation. I will tell you more and play you a particular highlight from that show this Tuesday.

There will be so much more too but you’re going to have to join me this Tuesday evening at five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland FM to find out more.

Forgive me if you’re not up to speed on this story. We announced last week we would perform an intimate acoustic show to help fund a new roof for a very special place on the Southside of Glasgow. It’s an expensive ticket as the venue only holds 120 standing. The Glad Cafe are facing a £40,000 bill and we hoped we might dent this figure a little by performing a small scale Deacon Blue evening there.

When we talked it over we always consider the pros and cons of such efforts. There is no shortage of worthy causes. Within a few seconds we could all name places and people who could use some help, so why did we plump for this one?

A few years ago one of my oldest friends popped round to tell me about a dream she had about opening a special place which would encourage the arts, be non-exclusive and become a community hub. It seemed like a great idea but it was beset with problems. They could never find the right location and the genesis of the project got off to a couple of false starts. Eventually they found their sweet spot on Pollokshaws Road and The Glad Cafe has become a fixture on the Glasgow live scene where the cafe and venue are a hub for art exhibitions, seminars, plots and celebrations. It’s run by Rachel Smillie with a little help from her husband Craig and the venue is imaginatively curated by her son Joe (sometime Modern Studies drummer).

What makes it special is what made the family special in the first place. The cafe is run along the same lines as The Smillie house. You’re always welcome…. even if they don’t share your views, music will never be far away and all serious business can be shelved at any point to make way for fun. As guiding principles go I can think of few better.

Since the Glad opened I’ve announced scores of interesting gigs of interest to the AC audience. As well as playing a couple of benefits there myself I’ve seen brilliant performances by Devon Sproule, Dean Owens, Anthony D’Amato and The Pearlfishers. It’s the perfect listening room which, for a long while, we’ve not been able to enjoy in Glasgow.

So here’s to Raising The Roof on The Glad Cafe. It’s not a matter of life and death as Elvis Costello once pointed out about The Hoover Factory’s inviting art deco lines, but what is?

On this week’s Another Country we will celebrate the kind of story tellers they love at The Glad. Craig Finn, Willy Vlautin sings songs about the forgotten and the misunderstood. We’ll play their songs as well as a few songs in that great narrative tradition. We’ll remind you there are only two days to go until Patty Griffin comes to Scotland, introduce you to the joy that is The Tallest Man on Earth and in the alphabet of country music we’ll declare that L is for The Louvin Brothers.

One final thought: Today the great Jean Vanier died aged 90. I had the joy of spending an hour with him once. He left ten rules for life. Today this one seems apt:

No.6. Ask people “What is your story?”

Vanier emphasises the importance of relating to people and listening to them. He says, “To meet is to listen: Tell me your story? Tell me where your pain is? Tell me where your heart is? What are the things you desire?” He adds, “I need to listen to you because your story is different to my story.”

For lots more stories. Join me on BBC Radio Scotland this Tuesday from five past nine.

By (what seemed) sheer chance my car decided to pack in on Friday morning. We’d already done the Easter climb up Ben A’an hours before the mad rush of central belters came nose to tail to escape the city. We were yards from home, three of my grown up kids, the dog and me and the car decided enough was enough. I can’t ever say these things are fortuitous but in retrospect it was the best thing that could have happened on this beautiful holiday weekend. I got the jalopy home and parked it up in waiting for the good Andy to open his garage on Tuesday morning.

It all meant I spent most of the weekend not far from my own front door. Even now I feel as if I want it to continue. It’s after nine in the evening and I’m just in from pottering round in the garden. The windows are open and the birds are celebrating evensong as the bats, who’ve taken up residence, circle their twilight aerobatic display one more time. I’ve turned the music off now and opened all the windows to surround myself with the sound of high spring. I long for it to come in the long, dark winter and equally I rejoice at its arrival. In the past I’ve found myself away from home in these weeks and I’ve vowed never to make that mistake again.

I love the energy of spring. Stand still and sometimes it feels it may trample over you. ‘You can never hold it back’, Tom Waits tells me and many years ago I first encountered Hopkins, the Jesuit poet who wondered aloud, ‘what is all this juice and all this joy?’ Sometimes it’s in the relentless will of the world to blossom into life from the unlikeliest of places that I take most comfort.

My enforced staycation meant I was never far from music too. Each week we face the dilemma of what to play and what to leave out. Increasingly I feel I’m leaving gems aside as new things have come in and, rudely, grabbed my attention. But there shall be gems: Scotland’s own King of Birds, Jim Lauderdale, Lauren Jenkins and George Strait. From Devon, William The Conqueror and from New York City the return of Leslie Mendelson and the return of last year’s discovery, Angelina with a brand new project.

We’ll also welcome a guest I’ve been needing to catch up with for a good while now. Marisa Moss works for Billboard, Rolling Stone and Nashville Scene. For a good while I’ve followed her on twitter as she chastises and encourages Country Radio to pay proper attention to female talent. She’s also a huge fan of country music and she, like the best of us, has eclectic taste. I spoke to her last week and recorded a conversation that takes in ‘Tomato Gate’, ‘Old Country Road’ and Margo Price‘s twitter feed. You will love her enthusiasm and her humour and she picks some blisteringly great new acts she’s been listening to. It’s a packed show and we’re live from 9 p.m. on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

Against most of my instincts I finally decided to go see ‘Wild Rose.’ What had put me off was the trails and (what I’d heard) of the music. It seems there’s more to the film that the soundtrack and there is at least one lovely moment of the soundtrack which we’ll share with you on this week’s show. The film itself? I think there’s a beautiful supporting performance by Julie Walters and a great thread of maternal love throughout the movie. I’m not sure it begins to understand country music or why women, in particular, make brilliant country music. It seemed to me the main character magnified all the cliches of bloke country without ever showing why the songs might have wormed their way into her heart. I enjoyed seeing my dear friends Mark Hagen and Bob Harris because, if there’s one thing that is true, Bob is as gentle and kind as the Bob in that movie and Mark would always rescue from the wrong BBC reception if you were lost. At its core however there is something true at the heart of the film. Rose-Lynn wants to get to Nashville, and for as long as I can remember that urge is something which has tugged at the heart of all troubadours.

I thought of this as Richard Murdoch (my producer) posted up a 1970 poster for a Mervyn Conn country tour to the UK. It was Conn who brought the huge country gathering to Wembley Arena every Easter back in the seventies and was, in truth, the parent to today’s C2C festival. Country seemed a bit like pop music and some of the artists even had long hair and wore jeans. Radio played its part of course. After Radio One stopped at 7pm we were switched to Radio 2 where the folk and country shows drew us in because they too had a few electric guitars and some killer songs.

It was a huge draw for me too. In 1985 I signed my first publishing deal with ATV Music. It was then a small company up for sale and about to be bought by Michael Jackson. My lawyer took me through the deal. ‘It’s not great,’ he warned me, ‘But on the good side.. it’s short and you’ll be out of it by the time any success comes round.’ He was right, and I was grateful for his advice when I signed a more lucrative agreement at the time when my songs were doing a whole lot better.

I couldn’t really claim any professional discernment in the matter however. What had sucked me into the deal was the letterhead on the initial offer. Emblazoned in gold lettering were the main offices of the company. London, New York, Los Angeles and Nashville. ‘There’s a Nashville office?’ I asked them. ‘When can I go?’

Like so many places, Nashville is a dream. I’m sure Hollywood must have had a similar mythology back in the thirties. Imagining a place is usually better than seeing it; with the exception of truly great cities like Paris, London and New York. In ‘Wild Rose’ they capture the buzz of Saturday night on Broadway, but in reality Music City is not one of the worlds grander metropolises. Highways cut up neighbourhoods and the only real external aid to folklore is the sound of freight trains moaning on their long slow snake through the south. Drive through it and you might well wonder what the fuss is all about. The truth is all the magic happens in small rooms where stories are imagined and brought to life. Compared to these jewels the rhinestone charms of Lower Broadway fade into insignificance.

So this week on Another Country we will again try to unpick some of the gems lurking in the backstreets of that old Tennessee town. Our country correspondent, Bill DeMain will bring us up to date on what’s been happening and what we should be listening to if our dream is to, one day, alight in Nashvegas.

Listen out too for a tribute to the late Earl Thomas Conley, some new music from Tenile Townes, Caroline Spence, The Long Ryders and Reba.….sometimes in Nashville (if you’re very good) you get to lose your surname. Bill will explain everything but in case you’re still not sure join us from five past nine this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland.