One of the interesting ways each week unfolds for me is how we end up with our running order for any given Tuesday night. As I drive home from the studio late on an AC night I often wonder what we might play next week. Sometimes there are piles of new things to listen to and on other weeks it seems nothing is really jumping out and demanding to be included. We always say (as it’s true) that there are so many things we don’t get round to spinning and we really could stay on air for a couple of hours longer. This week is no exception.
However there is a session and conversation we’ve been dying to share with you and we’re delighted that The Orphan Brigade‘s visit will be at the heart of this week’s Another Country. As I’ve played significant tracks from their current album for a few weeks I’ve probably bored myself by telling anyone who has cared to listen that ‘To The Edge of The World’ is one of these album where you just don’t want to skip any tracks. It’s full of beautiful surprises and it feels like a very natural successor to their two other albums.
In case you haven’t caught this story yet Ben Glover, Joshua Britt and Neilson Hubbard are three friends and musicians who like to find inspiration in very particular locations. Their first record took them to a haunted civil war era house in Franklin, Kentucky. So spooky were the surroundings that two of the band found themselves unable to spend the night in the house and took refuge in their car! Next up it was Italy and the caves under the streets of Osimo. This spring the trio headed over the ocean to Ben’s home county of Antrim and the spectacular north coast of Ireland. They wrote in diverse locations including boats, forests and mountainsides and recorded all their songs in a local church. You can hear more of these remarkable stories and some live versions of the songs this Tuesday night and honestly…it’s a great listen.
Elsewhere we’ll bring you new things from The Milk Carton Kids, Clint Black, Dori Freeman and Frazey Ford. We’ll introduce some new names like Kevin Daniels and from Scotland, Keri Watt.
We also reach the end of our year long walk through the Country A to Z. We have tried to avoid all the obvious choices and land on some names you may not have always picked first time round. We hope it gives you a sense of the great dynamic and sheer weight of great singing, songwriting and playing that’s out there in the country catalogue. What I love most of all however is it opens up one of the great stands of this genre – the stories. Country is nothing without a story. So we’ll close the book tonight, as we near the end of the year, with one of the great story tellers and country troubadours whose name is synonymous with the catch-all phrase of Americana. Sometimes that means blues, folk or soul and it’s easy to make the case that Townes Van Zandt had all three. There will be Townes and it will be on vinyl.
