What is it about songs? Why is it they can have such a deep impact on your emotional wellbeing? Sometimes it’s like falling in love; there’s no rhyme or reason, it’s simply that you’ve heard a song and you really just need to hear it again.

That’s why, I suppose I enjoy playing music on the radio and when push comes to shove I’d always call myself a songwriter over any of the other job titles I might claim. Songwriters are good people to be around. Oddly enough I really hadn’t hung out with that many until midway into my career I signed a publishing deal that involved me doing a lot more co writing. The first time I was put together with another writer my publisher suggested I go up to Highgate in North London and spend a bit of time with Charlie Dore. 

I can still remember the first of many visits to Charlie’s place in the early 2000’s as she led me by the hand through the weird world of the cowrite. She taught me what to expect, what to ignore and how to listen to what was happening in the room. I learned to re draft, to spend a bit of time on the song and I learned to expand my own expectations of what a song can and cannot do. It only made me fall in love more with song.

Over these last twenty years or so Charlie and I have remained good friends and it has been a joy to play her music on the wireless in that time. A few years after we met she returned to making her own music as a solo artist, which is how she’d started a good few years before. Charlie was known for her big radio song, ‘Pilot of The Airwaves’ which had been successful in the US and the UK. This had ultimately led to her career as a songwriter penning hits for Tina Turner, Celine Dion and George Harrison. Stepping into her studio to see these gold discs adorning the walls was a moment I won’t forget.

Over the last ten years or so, Charlie has made a series of beautiful records which aren’t quite folk or pop but happily could easily be described and embraced by the ever helpful Americana genre. Indeed, Charlie will tell you that her earlier career was closer to country music until the label who’d signed her on that very basis decided it had all got a little too country!

On this week’s AC we are welcoming Charlie to the studio to play songs from her most recent album, Like Animals, and pick some country/Americana faves for the show. She’ll be performing alongside her own regular writing and recording collaborator Julian Littman and bringing their music shop assortment of instruments with them. It will be a magical two hours where you can hear Charlie live and hear some great picks including tracks from Willie Nelson, Shawn Colvin and The Carter Family.

It all starts at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland or whenever you fancy listening in on BBC Sounds. Either way do join me if you can.

On this Tuesday’s AC we will play out a long conversation I recorded a few weeks ago with Margo Price. We were speaking between my studio and her back porch in Tennessee where she now lives. It’s geographically distanced from East Nashville and emotionally it represents a slight musical unhooking from the roots she explored on her first few albums.

Margo Price’s music has always been changing. The desire for new directions is perhaps the most consistent factor in her musical style. On her new record, Strays, the even articulates that search in a song called ‘Change of Heart.’ Despite it being less ‘country’ than her earlier releases, there’s still no doubt about what rocks Margo’s boat. Her own story is pure country and she would acknowledge that she wouldn’t be where she is today without absorbing the classic country music of the 50s and 60s as part of her constant search to find new inspiration. What I hadn’t known until I read her biography over Christmas was how long and deep a struggle it was to get her career to where her audience first encountered it.

If you can recall it was Midwest Farmer’s Daughter which introduced the world to Margo’s music. Before that, our Nashville correspondent, Bill DeMain had told us about this East Nashville act called Margo Price and The Pricetags who were causing a stir over the river. The song and video for Hurtin’ On The Bottle was the first song we played and it was that song which drew Jack White’s attention to Margo’s music leading to her signing to his Third Man Records label.

You can read all about that in Margo’s memoir, Maybe We’ll Make It, which talks about the struggle she and her musical soul-mate and husband Jeremy Ivey had to get their songs heard. It also tells the heartbreaking story of the birth and death of one of Margo and Jeremy’s twin sons, Ezra. As you can well imagine, that loss is a pain she carries with her every day. She has come a long way since that dark time thirteen years ago and the uncertainty in that book title best explains Margo’s openness to the future. She’d be the first to explain that she has no certainty that she has made it or ever will and that’s what makes her story and her music so compelling.

We talked all of that and especially about the great collection of songs she has cut on Strays. Listen out too for Margo explaining to your old fogey presenter how inspired she gets by her experiments with psychotic drugs. It will be the fourth time Margo’s been with us in the last ten years or so and as ever, it was a real pleasure to spend time in her company.

If that’s not enough we have new bluegrass, country-folk and some great down home country classics in a packed two hour show. It’s all live from five past eight this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland or whenever you fancy on BBC Sounds.

I was on holiday and far from home when the news broke last week about the passing of Burt Bacharach. Often, when people of a certain vintage die, there can be a bit of communal head scratching as to how sure most of us were that they were still alive. Indeed my old radio friend, Simon Mayo formed a jocular quiz around the subject of whether certain celebrities still walked this earth are had passed on to the life hereafter.

In Burt’s case, however, there was none of that. His legacy was certainly assured, but so too was his presence on the world stage. Burt Bacharach had been playing shows, writing and producing music and releasing records until very recently. Not only that, but (if it really needs said) he was doing all of this up to and beyond his own very high standards. A quite remarkable feat. In case you wonder why any of this has anything to do with country music then I’d love to point you to his recent collaboration with Nashville’s very own Daniel Tashian. It’s an EP which we have enjoyed hugely on the AC called, Blue Umbrella, and it really is a beautiful piece of work highlighting both artists as great song writers.

I may have laboured this point before, but in case there is any doubt, I think one of the reasons that people love Bacharach songs is because the ones they always quote are written by Burt and Hal David. In the interviews I’ve seen with Burt over the last few days I’ve noticed he is always keen to give due credit to his late, great collaborator. These beautiful melodies would be soulless without the addition of the lyrics of Hal. A House is Not a Home, I Say a Little Prayer, Walk On By and I’ll Never Fall In Love Again are love songs of a higher order because of that brilliant combination of a lyric and a melody. What is also true, and song writers can never really over-learn this, is everything Burt did was led by the melody. And that, more than anything else, is what turned Brill Building craft into pop music gold.

Hal and Burt never veered very far from the love song as a format for their 2 – 3 minute masterpieces. I’m guessing, if you had asked them, they’d have told you that the well never runs dry on that particular subject. That is why, on this week’s AC, we too are going to celebrate the love song. In our case, it will be the country love song but…and this is a very important but, our two hours

We will have songs of young love, parental disapproval, the first tingle of romance, commitment, disappointment and songs that celebrate love from all sexual orientations. There will be complications, mismatches, break ups and divorce. There will however be time to console you with love that lasts and is truly celebrated on St Valentine’s Day. It will be two hours of country love songs curated by ourselves and going out to lovers of all kinds and all places this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland at five past eight. Join me live if you can on the airwaves or at any time you can make it on BBC Sounds. It will be great to have your company.

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.