There’s so much to tell you…..

This week’s show is a game of two halves…as they say. I know all of this because, unusually we prerecorded the show on Monday. There was a very good reason for this. Beth Neilson Chapman is visiting Celtic Connections to play her first show in Glasgow for some years. The show itself is the first live showcase for the songs from her excellent new album, Crazy Town. Beth had half-settled on the title in the last days before the pandemic, then when the full force of Covid and 2020 hit home, she knew for sure she’d named the record correctly.

Beth had been in the studio with Ray Kennedy at his Room and Board studios in Berryhill Nashville cutting songs which had been written and redrafted then collated over the preceding years. Running parallel to all of this her husband, Bob Sherman, was suffering from Leukemia. In early December 2022 Bob died of the illness. Beth was with him in these last days and wrote in a public blog, ‘ He was funny, smart, and kind, and brought so much light and love into my life.’ In this week’s show Beth talks about the loss and, in one sense, preparing herself for that loss by doing the very thing which she does most naturally; writing songs. Beth is a true songwriter. Her songs have been cut by Faith Hill, Willie Nelson and many more. She and I have written together and she will wrestle a song to the ground before she is ready to say it’s finished. She is also a great interpreter of songs, fabulous singer and consummate musical talent. You can hear so much about this in this week’s second hour. It’s a must listen. Stay tuned too, as Beth unpacks the full meaning behind her most famous song, Sand And Water.

In the first hour of the show we’re celebrating The UK Americana Awards which took place in London last week. If you’ve detected a slight detachment about this even from me in the past, you are probably not mistaken. I’ve often felt the occasion tried a little too hard to reflect a tradition that wasn’t really there in terms of UK acts. I have to say if that was the case it is certainly not true now. There was a healthy spread of new, young artists playing on the night and the winner of all the categories deserved their gongs.

We will bring you music from these winners including Ferris and Sylvester, Hannah White, Allison Russell and Nickel Creek. As well as all of this we’ve found you some fabulous new records you may well want to explore further from The Mother Hips and Mary Elizabeth Remington. You’ll hear some classics too, chosen by ourselves and Beth Nielson Chapman. It’s a glorious two hours of country music, our way, and it all start at five past eight  this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland and whenever you like on BBC Sounds. Join me if you can.

Long ago, in another world and a different time I’d visit a little record shop not far from where I lived. On the southside of Glasgow, If I remember correctly it was called ‘Salvation Sounds,’  and was located in the Arcade at Shawlands and was, until this day, the only good reason I ever found for going in that dull sixties pile. I’d browse around for half an hour until I found a couple of things to add to my record collection then retreat home to listen to my new finds.

What made this shop so good was the guy who ran it rejoiced in celebrating new music and championing things he’d discovered himself. It was always a joy to return to see what had changed since the last visit. One one sunny Saturday, I saw a new section, which was simply labelled, ‘Americana.’ It was so good to find that the music I liked had finally got a name. No longer folk/rock or singer/songwriter or even New Country, the A label seemed simple, descriptive and inclusive enough to embrace much of the music I’d loved from way back.

In recent years I’ve become less fond of the term, but in the absence of anything better, I’m relatively happy that we have a name for something that seems to encourage songwriting as a primary asset. So it is that some 25 years on from that time, a great number of fellow travellers will gather this week in North London to celebrate a genre that’s as vague a definition as popmusic. Now it seems, and this is quite handy, if you want to be called Americana – you are, and if someone else calls you that, so be it.

It has been particularly useful when it comes to fitting things in to our two hour show every week. It’s often come down to how in or out of place the record sounds next to the one you’ve played just before it. There is, as you can see, lots of wiggle room. Interestingly the Americana festival in the US has used the term to draw together all manner of R’n’B acts from the sixties and seventies that seem to have been overlooked elsewhere. In a definition of mission creep, they also seem to have assimilated Gospel music….of a certain kind. No one’s complaining, least of all me, but equally no one seems to be arguing about what should or shouldn’t be included. In Country and Folk music some of these debates get a little more heated.

In any case the UK Americana people have their annual shindig this week in London. It’s been going for a few years now and I think I may be a member of something or other to do with it…but am not entirely sure what that means. They do give out awards to UK Americana acts, but again the long list is quite tricky to get your head round as even I, with a radio head-start, find I’m genuinely baffled by most of the names of the acts. I usually get to hear them for the first time on the night, and that can often be a very pleasant surprise.

So, on next week’s AC, I’ll be fresh back from Hackney with all the news of the night and a few new records in my bag. On this week’s show I’m going to play you some Americana gems I may have found at Salvation Sounds all these years ago and bring it right up to date by imagining what artists they’d be displaying in the shop window if (if only) the shop were there today.

Do join me this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland from five past eight or at any time you choose on BBC Sounds.

Looking back to two years ago i have a vivid memory for signing up to perform at my good friend, Roddy Hart’s Roaming Roots show at Celtic Connections. The trouble is, there really was no Celtic Connections, as the pandemic was in full swing and everything had been put ‘on line.’ I totally understood why this had to happen, but reflecting on it later with some of the pals, like Roddy and others, who played and sung with me that night, we all remembered just how weird it all was.

What I do recall is our deep desire to make some kind of music, any kind of music together. We’d been locked up/in/out (choose your preposition) for months. Music – which is about so many things – is certainly about common experience. Someone needs to sing or play and someone else needs to listen; that is the deal. For these long winter months of the pandemic there had been none of that and all of us were desperate to do something, anything together if we could. I signed up immediately when Roddy mentioned the possibility of performing. imagine all of our disappointment when we quickly realised we had to stand six feet apart and there would be no backstage area where we could chat or pass the time of day. So acute were the regulations that I missed friends coming in and out of the Concert Hall as I didn’t recognise their faces behind the masks.

Contrast that to this week when Celtic Connections kicks off in Glasgow and next week in Hackney Empire when we celebrate UK Americana Fest. This Thursday the annual CC fest starts a full run for the first time in three years and there is a host of Americana acts coming into Glasgow to perform. Look out for gigs by Lucinda Williams, Madison Violet, Bonny Light Horseman, Nickel Creek, Aoife O’Donovan, Amythyst Kiah, and Beth Nielson Chapman. It’s an exciting line up and, yes, you can also catch Roddy Hart’s full Roaming Roots show too, if you’re lucky enough to have bought a ticket.

I’m hoping to make it out to see a few shows myself and we’ll have some great CC guest dropping in over the next few weeks. You can hear some of the Americana acts from CC on this week’s Another Country. You will also be able to hear the voice of our very own Nashville Correspondent, Bill DeMain, who will be bringing us the latest news from America’s Music City.

Listen out too for more from Madison Cunningham and Adeem The Artist, both of whom we introduced last week. There will be new records from Morgan Wade, Doug Paisley, Lily Rose and HC McEntire. As ever we’re on BBC Radio Scotland this Tuesday evening from five past eight and any time you choose on BBC Sounds. Do join me if you can.

I’ve probably shared this before, (and I need to warn you that you may not want to hear this) but….I love January.

I think it may go back to school days. I didn’t enjoy returning to school in August as that was always much too long a break. A summer could change everything, and there was no way of knowing where your personal star would be hanging in the brutal new session. Some years you were up, but most likely you would be down. The new year – now that was different. There had only been two weeks holiday and, to be honest, no one had much chance to think about anything other than Christmas and Hogmanay.

The new year brought all manner of unexpected delights. If there was going to be snow then January was the best bet for delivering some good sledging, if not there were new football strips to show off or if the weather was very bad you got to bring your pals over to listen to the albums you’d bought on your record tokens. Hell…I could go on.

However I have to say how much I still embrace these early days of January. I would be the first to acknowledge that this is all very well for me as I have never had a proper job in the last 37 years and, at this point in my life, I think I may well continue to dodge being gainfully employed for a little while yet. The start of the year opens up like a blank page to a songwriter. All possibilities are there and, although you know that much of what you aspire to may well get crossed out or erased; there will, you trust, still be something worth reading come December.

I did a bit of photo browsing recently as I looked over the years our children were still with us in the family home and I was surprised at how much we all managed to fit into a calendar year. Similarly, as we picked out the best songs of 2022 to recap the radio year a few weeks ago, it was wonderful to remember how many great records we’d fallen in love with in the last twelve months.

So, with my optimism for another year in full charge, I will bring you some new names (to us) on this week’s Another Country. I don’t know if these will be familiar acts come December but I do know there is much to enjoy in some of their recent offerings. Get ready to hear some the female voices of Elle King, Madeline Edwards and Mackenzie Carpenter. Prepare yourself to be blown away by the songwriting sophistication of the first non binary artist I can recall us playing on the AC, Adeem The Artist. Listen out too for new recordings from Luke Grimes, Kameron Marlow and the truly exceptional Madison Cunningham. If this all sounds a bit challenging fear not. We will also be bringing you gems from Lainey Wilson, Caitlin Rose and Gabby Barrett plus some familiar songs courtesy of Merle Haggard, Don Williams and Bruce Springsteen. It’s the AC, that’s what we do every Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland and at a time and place of your own choosing on BBC Sounds. Either way, do join me if you can.

Happy New Year folks.

A long time ago in my hometown a friend suggested to my then girlfriend and myself that we should go to the pictures together. In Dundee they had just opened their first arthouse movie theatre in The Wellgate and we made plans to see a film featuring Sissy Spacek and featuring the great Levon Helm called ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter.’ Our friend’s pitch had intrigued us. ‘It’s about a country singer called Loretta Lynn,’ she enthused, ‘who is Crystal Gayle’s sister.’ In 1981 when we saw the movie, Crystal Gayle was more familiar to me and most of my friends than the coal miner’s daughter of the title.

Seeing that film confirmed something about which I’d always had a sneaking hunch: I really loved country music. I loved the simplicity, the honesty, the culture and I loved the songs and the stories. It also helped pull together some of the disparate strands of my country knowledge which flew around in bits and pieces of my slender record collection. When Loretta, played by Sissy, stepped out of her house and sang ‘In The Pines’ to herself I realised this song I’d heard covered by Gene Clark a couple of years earlier was a song which went way back. These days there is streaming and Google to answer your questions but back then there was only the radio, your friends records or happenstance. If you hadn’t managed to come across a song via your own albums or those of your siblings’ or pals’ collections the chances were that huge swathes or genres could pass you by. In some ways, there was a rawer honesty to these encounters than the open, free library we currently experience. For me, Coal Miner’s Daughter brought me into Loretta, Patsy Cline and The Grand Old Opry and planted the seeds of the deep love of country music I’d always knew was there. I just needed to find out a little more.

So it was that another twenty six years or so would pass and I would find myself deputising for a radio show called Brand New Country and, by coincidence, about to make my first visit to Music City. As I made my way in and around Nashville in 2007 I often reflected on how many of the country nudges I’d experienced had come from great movies containing timeless classic songs. Oh Brother, Walk The Line, Nashville, Midnight Cowboy, Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid, Sweet Dreams and the aforementioned Coal Miner’s Daughter. Putting theses songs together with the clues I’d been given by Gram, Emmylou, Wiilie and Johnny seemed to be the foundation of a country education.

On that visit and subsequent times there I’d listened to my favourite DJ, the great Eddie Stubbs and realise I would never have a deep enough knowledge of a genre that will always surprise and delight. What it confirmed however, was that I truly loved country music.

So it is that the first radio show of The AC’s in 2023 is a chance for you to rejoice in some of the great country moments from the wide and glorious country movie catalogue. From all of the above plus many more you’ll hear Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Ray Charles, Allison Moorer, Townes Van Zandt and many more over the course of Another Country at The Movies.

It all starts at 8 p.m. this Tuesday on BBC Radio Scotland or at a time and place of your own choosing on BBC Sounds. It will be the perfect start to the new year, so join me if you can.

It’s not yet Christmas Eve, but all is quiet in my house. It is however, beginning to feel like Christmas. As a freelance musician I can rejoice in the fact that my working year is over and there is nothing work related I really need to do. My last real duty will be to present this week’s Another Country live from our usual studio – but really, as I’m sure you know, that does not feel like working.

This week’s show will wrap up the AC for 2022. It will be interesting to look back in some years time to see what music was coming out in such a turbulent year. We will perhaps marvel that anyone could do anything as trivial as making a piece of art in such heady times and yet, it only takes a cursory leaf through the back catalogues to notice how much creativity emerged from years which we associate with war and strife. It was interesting to listen in to news recently about how so much music has been made in Ukraine itself over the last nine months despite/because of the Russian invasion. Music gets made and music is needed and as we celebrate the winter holiday we recognise that there have been new pieces of music that have caught our attention without which our lives would feel poorer.

As regular Blog readers will know I refuse to become the sad bloke who posts his top tens of the year and, at my ripe old age, I’m not about to start. I would say however that there have been some beautiful records made by regular AC artists and newcomers alike. As I suggested at the start of the year I think it will be hard to ignore Anais Mitchell‘s self titled album. Everything we heard from it before it emerged suggested it was going to be special and it was that and some more. Ian Noe‘s ‘River Fools and Mountain Saints’ has been another set of songs which has not disappointed. Everything that came out from that album has been played on our show with particular love from us for the title track, River Fool. Both records bear out the fundamental truth that any great song doesn’t have to deviate far from the model suggested by the great Tom T Hall all those years ago: Three Chords and The Truth still seems like a fine recipe for success.

Anais Mitchell

We had some wonderful guests on the show this year and we’ll celebrate the fact that Darden Smith, Lola Kirke and Joshua Hedley spent time with us and we’ll also pay tribute to the acts we’d love to have joined us but couldn’t quite fit in. Elsewhere we will play you the great Christmas songs you may not hear on those loop tapes in shopping malls or daytime radio. It will be two hours of glorious roots music, our way. Blink and you may not even know it’s country. We’re on BBC Radio Scotland FM from five past eight this Tuesday and anytime you choose on BBC Sounds.

Thanks for listening for another year. If you’ve had half as much pleasure listening as we have curating and presenting I shall be delighted. Have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year when it come around.

It’s Sunday evening and a time when I usually get to do a little listening and thinking. As I sit at the desk in my studio I can see a beautiful full moon making the frost on the trees, the grass and the deserted roads sparkle. At the dark end of year the constancy of the moon in the sky brings some small comfort for these uncertain times.

These are difficult days. We’re living through domestic political turmoil, economic hardship and the dreadful shadow of a war being waged on our own continent. There’s much to concern us. As I stare out at the moon, however I cast my mind back to two years ago, when I sat looking a a similar scene not knowing when we would all meet up again as the pandemic showed no signs of slowing down. That time has passed and, like yourselves, I feel grateful to get most of our old lives back. It’s not the same as it was, but to meet with friends, travel and break bread together without the fear of the virus is a small, but significant blessing.

So, 2022. We welcomed guests back into the radio studios. We hosted events for C2C at the BBC in Glasgow and artists performed again at The Hydro.  We recorded some visiting acts from the US and over the summer we made merry at a festival or two. However, there is a constant for all fourteen years Another Country has been on the airwaves; in the preceding twelve months we have fallen in love with new records and with new voices. Let’s start with the artists.

On Part One of our year-end round up we’ll remind you how we first heard Plains, Sad Daddy and Margo Cilker. We will also play a track from the excellent Dillon Carmichael whose album Son Of A is a must listen if you dig the music of Eric Church or any of the new traditionalists. More than this we can rejoice in the knowledge that many of our favourite artists did not disappoint in ’22. On this week’s AC you’ll hear tracks from Miranda Lambert, Tre Burt, Charlie Crockett and our good friends Ferris and Sylvester. We will have beautiful reminders of why you might want to include the names of Martyn Joseph, Morgan Wade, Luke Combs and Tenille Townes on your Santa letters and on that seasonal note we’ll play you some great Christmas songs which may well become holiday standards in years to come.

We’ll do all of this within our normal two hour time slot and you can catch the show live from five past eight this Tuesday evening or in your own time and favourite listening spot on BBC Sounds. Either way, do join me if you can.

Sometimes things have a way of coming together. In January I came across an article about an artist I’d been unaware of until that point. Although Lola Kirke had made one album and appeared in some successful movies and TV project her music had not reached us at the AC.

There were two things I noticed however. Firstly she was signed to Jack White’s Third Man label – always a quality trade mark – and secondly her sound was neither typically country or straight ahead Americana. Fizzing in and around the song arrangements were some 80’s synths and vocal reverbs that immediately reminded me more of a classic era of classic women country singers. So it was that when we invited Lola to join us for an hour’s special this week the first song she requested we play was Jo Dee Messina’s ‘Heads Carolina, Tails California ‘ a classic from 1996.

In fact every song you hear in the second hour of this week’s show will have a connection to Lola. She’ll be in session player with her travelling companion, Ellen Angelico playing songs from that excellent album we first heard about at the start of the year, Lady For Sale, as well as picking classic country songs that have influenced her. Those choices take us through the decades as well as including some contemporary country. What is interesting about Lola’s choices and her own music is how easily country and pop music merge together to make memorable records. If you have not yet discovered Lady For Sale, you may be lured in by her current live EP which also celebrates an original Christmas song. It’s my pleasure to declare the Christmas Country season open and expect more rootsy seasonal offerings over the Advent season.

Lola’s own back story is fascinating. From musical roots (her father is Free/Bad Company’s Simon Kirke) and, although holding a UK passport, she grew up in New York. As you can probably imagine she’s now a resident of Nashville and you can hear how she made that journey in some detail on this week’s show. If you are not listening live this Tuesday evening it may well be that you are heading over to the Southside of Glasgow to catch First Aid Kit as they start their UK tour. if so, get there early as Lola and her band will be opening the show.

We’ll play the excellent title track to the new First Aid Kit album this week as well as bringing you some new names. Listen out for M Lockwood Porter and Melissa Carter. We’ll also have music from old friends including Darden Smith, Caitlin Rose and Marty Stuart and his Fabulous Superlatives. As ever we’ll be love on BBC Radio Scotland from five past eight this Tuesday evening and available on BBC Sounds at a time and place of your choosing. Join me if you can.

p.s. If you do want to get in touch with me I won’t be on social media channels for the foreseeable future so feedback is probably easier via the blog or directly rickyross@bbc.co.uk.

One of the more delightful occurrences over the last couple of years has been the occasional encounter with an AC listener. It’s happened at gigs, sometimes after gigs but also in coffee shops, pubs and the odd train or plane journey. A natural conversation starts up and as a sign-off I get a kindly, ‘and I really enjoy the radio show.’ So pardon the self-affirmation  but I wanted to tell you all how lovely it is to find out that our wee wireless programme extends beyond the range of the BBC Radio Scotland transmitters.

The internet, which gets blamed for so many current  evils, can also be a fine thing when it allows people access to content they’d previously been denied. The quiet affirmation that the radio waves have reached a house in Kent or Suffolk is always welcome when passed on in person. I say all this because, from the end of next week when my solo shows are over, I am withdrawing from all my social media for a wee while and if you do want to say how much you enjoy the show then you’ll have to tell me in person or by mail. (digital will suffice) I’ve been keen to have a break for some time and there really is no better opportunity to withdraw from all of it than the next few months. I shall however be keeping my Radio Blog going as it has now been a presence for some fifteen years and it seems a safer place to express and receive views than some other corners of the web.

On this week’s show we will be playing a song by the man who paved the way for great country music to be played on BBC Radio Scotland. Many people have been grieving the loss of our very own Rab Noakes over the weekend. Although he’d had some very serious health issues Rab’s death was still a real shock for me, and judging by the reaction I witnessed, for a great many in and around music in Scotland. Apart from being a great singer and songwriter Rab was the originator and producer of The Brand New Opry which was hosted by our colleague, Bryan Burnett for some fourteen years before Another Country came on the air. Rab and Bryan’s mantra was to put on a country music show for people who thought they didn’t like country music. Like so many other listeners, I was an avid fan. I learned and loved what I came to find out and many are gathered here because of the great programmes they made in the 90s and early 2000s. As well as all of that Rab was a pioneering folk musician who was the first artist from Scotland to head to Nashville where he recorded in the early seventies. You can hear all about that adventure in next week’s programme when we will repeat the Rab Noakes special show we broadcast a few years back. It’s safe to say many of us would not be doing what we do now if it had not been for people like Rab beating a path to make so much music possible.

On this week’s show we’ll welcome our Nashville correspondent with his take on the recent CMA Awards, Nashvegas’s own Oscars night. We’ll also get some great new music recommendations from Bill DeMain as he dials in from Music Row. We will have some exciting new bluegrass for you on this week’s show, as well as introducing you to some fabulous new names  you might well wish to add to your collection as you begin to assemble your very own Santa letters. We will share all this from five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland (all frequencies) this Tuesday evening and on BBC Sounds whenever and wherever you like to listen. Thank you for doing that so regularly and so often. The Blog will be back without any supporting social media in a couple of weeks time and you can catch up with me here if you need to. Do join me live or on catch up if you can.

I read today about an event in Nashville which made me long to be in Music City. A group called The Long Players get together at various venues  occasionally and perform a complete album of their own choosing. This coming weekend they will assemble at 3rd and Lindsley (a great venue) to play a classic rock n roll album from the birth of the genre. Buddy Holly and The Crickets’ “The Chirping Crickets” will be given the full treatment and played in full by The Long Players with some great guests including (it says on the flyer) Steve Earle.

If you look back on the history of the Long Players you’ll find that that many of Nashville’s elite singers, players and songwriters have made their way down to the gigs over the years. Diverse albums from Pink Floyd and The Beatles to R.E.M have been reinterpreted but always as a complete body of work. It’s a testimony to the art of the album and to the joy of the cover version. How often have we imagined how good it would be to hear an album we love played in full by some great musicians and how often as musicians have we thought how much fun it would be to be part of such an evening?

A few years back I spent a day working with the great Bill Lloyd  (formerly of Foster & Lloyd) who is one of the mainstays and founders of The Long Players and I loved hearing his own enthusiasm for each successive project, so I can only imagine how excited he will be to be part of the band bringing Buddy Holly’s music to life again this coming Saturday night. We’ll be bringing you some Buddy Holly country on this week’s AC too.

As I trailed through the LP’s website I quickly came upon the video the band made during lock down. It occurred to me that two years ago at this time we were in quite a different place and so much music was about what could be done remotely from home. Amongst the general gloom about climate and the economy, it’s worth cheering yourself up by a reminder that we can once more get in a room and make music together and go out for the night to watch other people doing it. This weekend I’ll be doing just that by fulfilling a long held dream of seeing Anais Mitchell play live in Glasgow. Anais’s new album with Bonnie Light Horseman dropped through my door in a splendid vinyl package a couple of days ago and, on this week’s Another Country I’ll be reminding you why you might want to be joining me at the gig.

There’s so much more on this week’s show including a little meander through the connections between Daniel Tashian and Paul Kennerley and a little reminder of the genius of Mississippi John Hurt via the great playing and singing of Bruce Cockburn and John Oates.

Do join me live on BBC Radio Scotland from five past eight this coming Tuesday evening or at a time and place  of your choosing on BBCSounds.