If I can play one note and make you cry, then that’s better than those fancy dancers playing twenty notes. Robbie Robertson

One should know better. It should no longer surprise any of us when any member of the big league of artists who we loved growing up pass on. Robbie Robertson was eighty years of age and despite all our best wishes, turned out to be human after all. What has surprised and disappointed me is how poorly the news people in all types of media have failed to grasp just how significant his contribution really was.

For those who don’t know, Robbie Robertson was the spiritual leader, guitarist and principal song writer for (in my opinion) the greatest band that ever was. The Band. They were so well named. The emphasis should always be on the definite article.

A few years ago, when the complete Basement Tapes came out, I interviewed Sid Griffin from the Long Riders about the project. Sid wrote an excellent companion piece and guide to the whole project, which I highly recommend to you. In conversation with Sid around the time he made a very good point which essentially said this project and indeed The band themselves invented Americana. They, of course, didn’t call it that and may well have seen the very term as a little limiting as they really knew no boundaries to their music yet knew exactly where it came from. That place was the great melting pot of blues, folk, hillbilly and soul music which they all absorbed growing up. That Robbie was Canadian too was significant. Perhaps it was that northern detachment married to Levon Helm’s southern stew of influences which made the sound of The Band so unique. Or perhaps it was just that they were all so good and all knew what they should and should not be doing. For Robbie it was the spaces; what he left out as much as what he put in. How often have you had the misfortune of hearing a music-shop guitarist mangle a tune and wish he’d lift his head up and listen? I know it’s happened to me too often to know I rarely want to listen to unnecessary axe grinding.

Robbie’s playing was different. Despite sixties contemporary players being drawn towards the old thirties blues masters, Robbie leaned towards different craftsmen. In his own word he explained it here: “I wanted to develop a guitar style where phrases and lines get there just in the nick of time, like with Curtis Mayfield and Steve Cropper. Subtleties mean so much, and there is a stunning beauty in them.”

How glad we are that Robbie took the time to listen and learn. We will play a couple of beautiful things with Robbie’s name on them on this week’s AC and it may well cause you to go back and listen yourselves. I’m so grateful he left a deep chest of music to enjoy again and again.

Elsewhere we will spend time celebrating an instrument that’s essential to the sound of country music – the mandolin. In the second part of this week’s show we celebrate the mandolin 100 years on from Gibson manufacturing the F5 made famous by Bill Monroe. Listen out for songs old and new which highlight this beautiful instrument. We’re on at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland and whenever you prefer on BBC Sounds.

I still have a few shows for you before I hit the road in September but I’m going to give the blog a little holiday for a couple of months . I’ll be back with you in October.

Summer arrived fairly early and late this year. Last Friday, as we drove east, my son and I, it seemed we were chasing the sun all the way. It arrived by the time we reached Arbroath where we were to spend the evening watching our team (the fabulous Dundee United) start their league campaign. Football chat is for another place and time. What it was really about was dad and lad getting some quality hours together, a drive east, fish and chips at the harbour and some stories and song in the car.

The only son is also (for now) the only pedestrian. Taking driving lessons but unqualified to drive,  it falls upon me to be the chauffeur on all occasions. So it’s up to him to be the DJ on the journey. He told me a great story about Brian Eno’s album Apollo as he played me a track from it. It turns out that when Brian Eno was commissioned to write a soundtrack based around NASA’s Apollo missions he found out that each astronaut was allowed to carry one cassette tape onto the flight module. In an interview in The Guardian in 2009 on the anniversary of the first moon landings, Eno was asked about the pedal steel featured in the tracks. ‘Every astronaut was allowed to take one cassette of their favourite music. All but one took country and western. They were cowboys exploring a new frontier, this one just happened to be in space. We worked the piece around the idea of zero-gravity country music.’

Country ambience. It’s a beautiful thing and on that lovely stretch of road between Glencarse and Invergowrie I was overtaken by the majesty of it all.

Shared music and the surprise of something that you weren’t expecting popping out of your speakers is surely still one of the great joys of listening to music.  That’s why I still believe in the power of a curated radio show which will slay you with a track at just the right moment. I hope there might be a few of these moments coming up for you this week.

Photo by Ebru Yildiz

In the early days of Another Country we enjoyed a visit from The Carolina Chocolate Drops. It was one of those sessions and conversations which made a huge impression. On this week’s show we will tell a little of the story of what happened to the core members of the band and what they are up to now.  CCD were a creative hub so we will play some of the creations from the subsequent solo projects of Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemmons and Leylla McCalla.

Without spoiling things you can also  expect to hear music from Jason Isbell, Caylee Hammock, Jenny Lewis and Josh Ritter. As ever we’ll be on the wireless from 8 this Tuesday evening and available in your own space and time on BBC Sounds whenever you fancy. Do join me if you can.

If you think we’re in a circuitous round of culture wars in this country then you might like to take your mind off things a little dwell on life over in Music City USA. If you do allow yourself to take an interest in affairs there you might well return to our own social scuffles with a lighter heart.

For in the land of country music there seems to be no end of outrage, protest and inevitable cancellation. Even relatively benign stories seem to be causing offence somewhere. Let’s take the recent example of Luke Combs’ cover of Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car. This is a song which Luke remembers loving hearing from a cassette in his Dad’s car when he was growing up. A few months ago he released a cover of the track which (inevitably, given Luke’s fame) became a country hit song. It gave Tracy Chapman her first ever country chart topper and led to some discussion about her ‘discovery’ by a new audience.

In the wake of all this I came upon an article in The Washington Post that included this quote: “On one hand, Luke Combs is an amazing artist, and it’s great to see that someone in country music is influenced by a Black queer woman — that’s really exciting,” said Holly G, founder of the Black Opry, an organization for Black country music singers and fans. “But at the same time, it’s hard to really lean into that excitement knowing that Tracy Chapman would not be celebrated in the industry without that kind of middleman being a White man.”

Now my memory of Fast Car coming out (and I bought the album) is of a world wide hit in 1988 which overnight, turned Tracy Chapman into a serious artist/star who went on the Amnesty with Springsteen and others to cities across the world. So I’m not entirely sure how accurate the above statement really is. However it’s one of many talking points we will address with the man who reads the runes of Music Row better than anyone else, our Nashville correspondent, Bill DeMain.

Bill will be down the line with me this week as there are a good few things to talk about including the recent hooha over Jason Aldean’s Ode to small towns which saw his video being banned by CMT for being a ‘dog whistle’ to  racists. See what I mean? And you thought country music was a place to switch off!

On a gentler and sadder note we’ll also pay tribute to Jerry Bradley, son of Owen Bradley, who died last week. The Bradley family are one of the great music families of Nashville and we interviewed Jerry, his sister Patsy and his uncle Harold who played guitar on so many of his brother’s productions, a few years ago on Music Row.

However we will also bring you some great tracks and new names. Listen out for Meg McCree, Tyler Childers and Roseanne Reid who are all on fine form. There will be records too from Dolly, Buck and Merle so believe me when I tell you you should join us live this Tuesday evening from 8 on BBC Radio Scotland or on BBC Sounds if you possibly can.

It’s the warmest summer I can remember. It’s 1976 and I’m staying with my cousins in the beautiful Somerset town of Bath. The summer seemed endless and, although I have finished school, I really hadn’t a clue about what I would make of my life. But, and this is a big but, the only thing that filled my imagination was music. I’d discovered Joni Mitchell by this time but had only one album and was really ignorant of the early albums which had made her such an essential artist.

In these days, when in a strange house, you always gravitated towards the record player. Staying with the cousins was no different and I immediately found myself leafing through their albums to see what I could discover. It was then I found a copy of Joni Mitchell’s Blue, possibly, and easily arguably, the best album of all time. (I don’t think there is such a thing, but if there were, I’d say many would vote, Blue.) There was so much, mood, truth and raw emotion on these tracks that brought a timeless quality to the album. If I wasn’t sure what I was looking for then, for whatever reason, Blue gently but firmly explained to me that I’d found it nevertheless.

The timeless nature of the album is really in the simplicity of the production and the complexity of the songs. What a trick to pull off. A voice and a guitar or a piano or a dulcimer and sometimes, most times, very little else. I’m listening again now as it’s some time since I listened all the way through and I’m back in that front room in Forrester Road in Bath, but more importantly an entire lifetime has passed in between and the songs hit home as accurately and poignantly as they did all these years ago.

NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND – JULY 24: Joni Mitchell performs during the 2022 Newport Folk Festival at Fort Adams State Park on July 24, 2022 in Newport, Rhode Island. (Photo by Douglas Mason/Getty Images)

I thought of all of this the other day when one of our regular record promoters sent us through three songs from Joni’s forthcoming Live at Newport album. One of the songs is that timeless classic, A Case of You, and just when I thought I knew my favourite version to be KD Lang’s stunning reinterpretation from Hymns Of The 49th Parallel, Joni and her collaborator and prompter, Brandi Carlile, trump them all. On this week’s AC we’ll share a moment from the album which becomes available this Friday. I suggest you make a visit to your local record shop.

Talking of Brandi, we’ll have two other Brandi Carlile collaborations on this week’s episode of Another Country. Listen out for Brandi with Tanya Tucker and her namesake Brandy Clark. Sometime I do hope we will have Brandi Carlile on the show before too long to talk about the many records we have loved in which she’s had a key role.

There’s much more too on this week’s AC with great new things from my current fave, Nick Shoulders as well as Hailey Whitters and our old Nashville pal, Jeff Cohen. It’s also a very significant birthday for a man who loves country music almost as much as we do, Mick Jagger. We shall celebrate in appropriate style.

We’ll be on the wireless from eight this Tuesday and on BBC Sounds whenever you fancy from the same time. Do join me if you can.

The middle of the road got a bad name. Like the word, mainstream, it’s been used to decry anything not ambitious or daring enough to be true art. As I was growing up it was even defined by that hit Scottish beat combo of the same name who released the MOR anthem, ‘Chirpy, Chirpy, Cheep Cheep.’ ( I danced my socks off to it at Rosemary Lothian’s birthday party in 1971).

The phrase was finally buried by Neil Young who  dismissed two of his finest albums as being in the middle of the road as he merrily described himself as heading towards the ditch. As much as I’ve enjoyed Neil’s output (and I have almost every album) I think that middle land wasn’t nearly as bad as he made it out to be. I, for one, would have taken  few more miles on the clock.

So it was with interest that I read an interesting interview on my current fave blog site, Bluegrass Situation, about Caitlin Canty and her take on being bang in the middle. Here she wasn’t talking about some type soft rock she’d stumbled into but simply the age where she found herself.  Her new album Quiet Flame it says, …’ is a dispatch from — and a celebration of — the middle; it is a testament to the in-between, to the precious spaces between day and night, birth and death, here and home. It is also a rallying cry, a call not to run from middle moments, but to revel in them. ‘

I liked this so much I spent an early morning walk listening through to her new record and I’ll be bringing you the opener on this week’s AC. We will have lots more new and wonderful records to play including takes from Morgan Wade, Hailey Whitters and Bobby Bare.

However, the main reason we are gathering this week is to listen to the remarkable interview I recorded a few weeks ago with Amanda Shires. I’d interviewed Amanda some ten years ago and as I recall it she was someone who didn’t reveal a huge amount about herself or her songwriting. How things have changed! She too is now in that interesting middle ground. Around the same age and experience as Caitlin but also between so many varied projects.

I knew I wanted to speak to her about these many aspects to her life. First up was her own solo career which centred around the songs on her most recent LP, ‘Take It Like a Man.’ It only takes a couple of listens to the record to pick up the central theme of sexual politics which courses its way through the songs. It also didn’t take Amanda long to explain where these songs came from and how honest she was being about herself, her marriage and the careers of herself and her husband, Jason Isbell.

Into this mix we need to add that Amanda also played some brilliant acoustic versions of her album tracks and talked about life in The 400 Unit, her role in The Highwomen and her recent collaboration with Bobbie Nelson. In all the years we’ve been on air (fifteen and counting) it is one of the most remarkable and moving conversations I’ve been lucky enough to record.

You can hear all of this in two special hours of radio from this Tuesday evening onwards on BBC Radio Scotland or on BBC Sounds. Join me if you can.

I do like a wander around a graveyard. I’m lucky because my wife holds a similar enthusiasm for hanging with those who have gone on before and we often spend time in strange countries just looking at the names and, if they share them, the faces. The names, the birthdates and the places always tell a story however, so imagining the face and the character is the creative part of churchyard stroll. If you find yourself with similar feelings I recommend Peter Ross’s excellent A Tomb With a View as a good summer read.

We went to Normandy with the family some twenty odd years ago and I overheard my youngest daughter (5 at the time) showing the holiday snaps to her pal from down the road. ‘That’s a graveyard. That’s another graveyard,’ she commented to her surprised friend, ‘we usually went to one each day.’ This, of course was not true, I’m sure it was more frequent than that. It was Normandy, mind you, and it is difficult to get through the main towns and villages of Calvados without stumbling upon a cemetery or two. The point of such places is to remember our family and our friends but in the case of these graves the poignancy was in the average age of the fallen. All far too young.

When we go to Donegal, where my wife’s family come from, we often spend time in the most beautiful graveyard of all. Set beside the Magheragallan Beach below Bunbeg, it’s a peaceful resting place for so many familiar faces we have known over the years. I’ve been going over to that part of the world the last thirty five years or so and I’ve been lucky enough to visit twice in the last few weeks.

Last week I visited HomePlace, the Seamus Heaney Centre in Belaghy Co Derry which is dedicated to making the connection between the poet and the place in which he grew up. It’s a wonderful museum which constantly draws you back to the poems. Before we travelled on to Donegal we visited Heaney’s grave in the local churchyard. There amongst the granite marble edifices and the glowing tributes to lost loved ones, along a gravel path and set back from all the other plots stood a simple headstone with the poet’s name, birth and death dates and an inscription reading:  Walk on air against your better judgement.

A couple of days later we took a short road trip down the west coast to Sligo and stopped in a small churchyard in Drumcliffe where, under the shadow of Ben Bulben, the poet WB Yeats is laid to rest. Similarly, the plot is marked by an undistinguished stone plaque set slightly apart from the other gravestones. He, of course, set down in verse his own inscription: Cast a cold eye on life on death. Hosrseman pass by.

I liked the otherness of the poets spots. Neither quite belonging but neither completely set apart. It seemed to me wholly appropriate they should straddle that middle ground. It is the poet’s role to be from us but not always of us. Not for these great poets the glory and splendour of poets corner in The Abbey, but rather their own particular corners.

I thought of all of this as I went through some great singular songwriters who we’ll play on this week’s AC. Listen out for Jason Isbell, Briscoe and Josh Ritter. Hang in for some country post punk from The Countess Of Fife and listen out for glorious re imaginings of classic songs from Teddy Thompson, Kate and Anna McGarrigle and (for the first time ever on The AC) The great Howard Tate.

There’s so much to love and each with their own particular unique voice. It’s not poetry, it’s country music but it has a way of nestling just as firmly in my heart. Join me to listen in on BBC Radio Scotland this Tuesday evening or in your own time on BBC Sounds.

There was a lovely radio moment the other day. Driving across Glasgow I heard  Carly Simon’s ‘You’re So Vain’ with fresh ears. I’m not sure whether it’s the remastering or hearing it in better stereo since the days of medium wave radio, but I noticed elements of the production I’d either forgotten about or missed first time round. There’s these gorgeous strings which seem to be a nod to Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. Then there’s that male harmony which sound a bit like the voice of Mick Jagger on the choruses…(just checked….apparently it was!) Then there’s the construction of the song itself; just when most pop singles would be signing off and heading to the final play-out , Carly begins another verse. What the hell was she thinking? It was the seventies, she could do what she wanted and we listened and celebrated the song.

Great songs follow their own path and if any of us knew how to give advice on writing a hit we’d surely have written one ourselves. On this week’s Another Country we have a brilliant case in point with a classic song by Warren Zevon. It was my old friend, Darden Smith who was pointing out how perfect a lyric, ‘Hasten Down The Wind’ Is on his recent songwriting blog. A complete story which unfolds in thirteen short lines. We shall play Linda Ronstadt’s fine version of the song and you can hear for yourselves how perfect the writing is. If you think it’s just the lyric that’s great, listen again to the melody. It’s majestiic.

Elsewhere we celebrate some significant live events happening in Scotland this week. Allison Russell, Maren Morris and The Chicks will all have played Glasgow by the end of the week and I suspect those of us lucky to hear any one of these acts will have learned something about the art of the song or the nature of live performance. We shall also have some exclusive information regarding the next step of a country supergroup courtesy of a conversation we hope to broadcast in full over the next month or so with recent visitor, Amanda Shires. You can hear a sample of Amanda’s latest record which she’s made with the late Bobbie Nelson (sister Bobbie, to all Willie fans).

We’ll also have a new Glasgow artist, some English Americana and we will return to that List courtesy of one of the artists Johnny Cash loved, the one and only Jimmie Rodgers. There is also a new collaboration by M Ward and First Aid Kit which is perhaps the loveliest piece of music I’ve heard over the last few days. As ever we have to fit all this into two hours of radio. You can find the show on BBC Radio Scotland or on BBC Sounds and it will be great to have you along for the ride.

On Sunday night I was in the audience for Bonnie Raitt’s show at the Glasgow Concert Hall. It was, as you may expect, a flawless masterclass in singing, songwriting and exceptional playing. There was economy in every lick, riff, solo, intro and in the huge repertoire of Bonnie’s very own end-cues. There’s the guitar-neck-drop, the arm pull, the nod, and most entertaining of all, the hip swivel to bring any particular song to a fine conclusion.

Before the show I bumped into a good musician pal who told me of a recent gig to which he took his son. Setting up the night he told his lad that this (it was Hothouse Flowers) was a real band who play together and if he watched and listened there was probably a lot to learn about the art of performance. He was kind enough to mention my own band in the same context and made the interesting point that so many acts these days involve a singer with a group of session players behind them. This, he astutely observed, meant that there was rarely that chance to grow together and develop the magic that comes with shared live experience. He has a point.

One of the odd aspects of C2C is the fact that nearly all the acts play with ‘track.’ For people who don’t know the term, this means that bands are playing along to pre-recorded additional parts sent to the sound desk to be mixed in with the live sound. There’s nothing wrong with this of course, however it does mean that live versions of songs don’t essentially vary much from the recorded ones. It’s always a false temptation (in my experience) to get overburdened by trying to reproduce the recorded experience over faithfully. In times past it led my own band down some difficult terrain and almost always resorted in us agreeing just to play the dam thing. Which brings me back to Bonnie. How wonderful it was to see a band being faithful to the original arrangement, but being astute enough to re create it every night on the road. It doesn’t get much better.

Bonnie also spoke movingly about her great friend, John Prine. She can, of course, lay claim to recording one of the best JP covers of all time. You will probably know what that is, but check this week’s AC where you can hear it in full. Also on the show this week is a live band playing in Studio One without the aid of any additional tracks. Caitlin Rose, who has had a ten year break from our show is back with her touring group for an AC session. Recorded some weeks back when Caitlin was on tour it celebrates her new album, Cazimi, (you can tune in to find out more on that word) plus a very cool cover. There is also a conversation with Caitlin I recorded on the day.

If that’s not enough, expect new things from Allison Russell, Lukas Nelson & Lainey Wilson and an introduction to a fabulous new single from Corey Kent. This all happens in two hours of radio on BBC Radio Scotland from five past eight this Tuesday evening or on BBC Sounds in whichever country or timezone you should choose to listen. Do join me if you can.

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I hope you enjoyed last week’s AC with our special guest, Michaela Anne. It’s still all there on BBC Sounds if you need to catch up. I feel slightly guilty about missing my normal live broadcast but we knew you’d understand that Bruce Springsteen was in town and we really felt it rude not to pay our respects.

I had asked for a couple of tickets for his show from one of my old friends who has dispensation on these matters and she did not disappoint. It took only a minute to question why I’d even thought twice about making my way over to Edinburgh last Tuesday. I suppose I’d thought that a night on E Street could not get any better than nights at Madison Square Garden or Sheffield or Manchester or London or Glasgow…where joy has been overflowing on some rare summer nights. Can one man and his band lift our weary spirits higher than expected for one more night? Yes, he can. 

There was also something else about this night in Edinburgh that had not been there on earlier visits too. There was sense that we were all growing old together. Where once there was only the future, now, as Bruce himself said, ‘At 15, it’s all tomorrows. At 73, it’s a lot of goodbyes.’ Perhaps knowing that two of E Street’s finest have gone before allows us to put a little perspective on things too. Missed but not forgotten, Dan Federici and Clarence Clemons were celebrated in their absence. Maybe too because some of us  know the pain and effort involved in trying to do the simple things we once completed with ease thirty odd years ago there is a celebration in every stage swivel, step or audience high-five. This is a seventy three year old man making us believe in ourselves again and again and again. 

There were so many beautiful moments and  exciting passages (we could all pick favourites I’m sure) but in the gathering dark there was a sense and an acceptance that all of this can’t last; this life does not last forever, and as much as we celebrate it while we’re here, it’s only fitting to recognise that all this too will pass. On this week’s AC I’ll play one of the standout songs of that great night at Murrayfield.

Oh ,there’s so much to play you this week including a fun section I have borrowed from the fab Bluegrass Situation website who have highlighted eighteen tracks for Boygenius fans. We liked the idea so much we thought you’d like to hear a sample or two from the list. Talking of lists we will have a great rendition of another song from Roseann Cash’s List performed by Natalie Merchant. There are also some fabulous new artists to explore as we bring you cuts from Summer Dean and Jordan Shellhart. It’s a packed two hours of country music LIVE from Glasgow’s Pacific Quay and it starts at five past eight this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland and BBC Sounds.

I’m also sitting in for Mark Radcliffe on BBC Radio Two’s Folk Show this Wednesday evening from nine with special guest GNOSS live in the studio. 

Do join me if you can.

How has it taken me 20 years to get round to watching In Brugge? We watched it last weekend on a Saturday evening and enjoyed everything about it. If, like me, you’ve missed out, indulge yourself. It really is a great movie.

It was watching Colin Farrell in that film that reminded me of his rather more supportive role in Crazy Heart, one of many great films about country music which may have been the springboard to our long lost country movie club we used to have via the AC. In the film, Jeff Bridges plays a travelling singer songwriter who has clearly made a mark with his songs but whose life is slowly unravelling until it reaches a crisis point which impacts on the people he loves best.

There is something about the loneliness of the journeys, the motels and the gigs which rings true and also carries with it the romance of the road. Dismal and unforgiving as some of the scenes are, there is something alluring about the life of the troubadour which still whispers to you to come away and join the circus.

This all crossed my mind as I thought about this week’s AC special guest Michaela Anne. I first met her a few years back when she accompanied Sam Outlaw on tour and, as well as open for him, performed great harmony and second guitar on his own sets. Over lunch in Finnieston that time Michaela gave me an early CD or two and since that time we’ve followed her career with interest. Michaela epitomises the troubadour perfectly. Out on her own, thousands of miles from home, she is armed with a guitar and a repertoire of songs which will hook you in and probably make your life roll on a little better than before the show started. I admire solo artists so much because it is that vulnrability which makes their art so potent and so vital. On Wednesday this week she’ll bring these songs to the Hug and Pint in Glasgow, and there’s probably somewhere not far from your you can catch her too. Failing that you need to tune to this week’s Another Country where you will hear her play songs from her excellent current album, ‘Oh To Be That Free,’ as well as pick some fave country tracks of other artists. As ever it will be a special night with a very special  guest.

Oh…but that’s not all. We have new records from Bella White, Roseanne Reid and Margo Cilker as well as some magic moments from Mavis Staples and Emmylou Harris. As ever it’s an 8 p.m. kick off on Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland. You’ll find us there at that time and after on BBC Sounds too. Join me if you can.