It’s mid term here in Glasgow. We’ve all been up to my favourite East -Coast haunt, St Andrews. It’s glorious there in winter.The sky is as clear as can be with the only interruption to the view the small dots of fighter planes taking off and landing in Leuchars. I felt glad to be alive.

I tell you all of this as the title alludes to the Seamus Heaney poem  of the same where he is brought home from school to discover the sudden death of a younger brother killed in a traffic accident. I thought of this poem last night when I re read the episode in Johnny Cash’s autobiography where his father picks him up unexpectedly to tell him the news of his brother’s accident. In Cash’s case it was an older brother, but the memory and the sentiment is as powerful. Why do I tell you this? Because next week would have been Johnny Cash’s 78th birthday and we will be celebrating that as we welcome the new release of American VI – Aint No Grave.

Perhaps you’d like to suggest some Cash songs you wouldn’t normally hear for our JC special on Friday 26th? We’d love to hear from you about your choices.

Last week I said, on air, that there was no such thing as a great double album. I wasn’t deluged with corrections but I did get one from Vanessa saying…3 words – “Blonde on Blonde.” Good point, but at 14 songs and running shorter than a lot of single albums it’s hard not to conclude it’s not really a doubler. I stand firm. But hey, it was recorded in Nashville so let’s celebrate it anyway.

Also on the show will be that session and interview with Sara Watkins where she talks about her new life outside Nickel Creek and the making of her new album under the watchful eye of John Paul Jones. All the usual stuff too with new songs from Local Natives, Darden Smith and The Acorn plus one or two old ones too.

What’s you favourite story?

Most of the ones I really care about I love to hear again. Maybe it’s getting older and becoming more like my father but I do enjoy it when some of my best friends (and I include my wife here) tell me a story again. Often they forget and I act as if I’ve never heard it before because, in actual fact, it’s often more enjoyable the 3rd or 4th time.

It happens to me all the time too. I look at my producer Richard Murdoch and say – “Have I told you or the listener this one before?” He’s usually kind enough to say,  “No.” I say all this because I started the week and am ending it in the company of some of the best story tellers I know. On Sunday we (Richard and me) went through to Edinburgh to see Nanci Griffith and it was a real pleasure to spend time in the presence of  a great song writer and singer who always knows how to get you hooked on the end of a great yarn. We’ll broadcast my chat with Nanci over the next few weeks. Tomorrow night in Glasgow Willy Vlautin comes to town. He’s playing at the Captain’s Rest on his own and, I imagine, reading from his new novel Lean On Pete. Willy came to see us before with his band Richmond Fontaine and we enjoyed it so much we invited him back again. He’s popping over to BBC Scotland before the show to talk about some of his favourite songs and, hopefully, tell us a few more tales. Willy is the master of this and I have spent a few days now listening to Richmond Fontaine and reading his latest novel in preparation for tomorrow night – which I still hope to attend after we come off air.

We’ll also be broadcasting that chat with Willy soon and look out for the Richmond Fontaine tour which comes to Scotland soon. Tomorrow night we pause to enjoy conversation and a session from Diana Jones. Diana tells her own story brilliantly and her own experience of adoption and rediscovery is well worth hearing and is beautifully illustrated in her last two albums. Elsewhere we re visit Langhorne Slim, Audra Mae and Tift Merrit and will give spins to Israel Nash Gripka and The Middle East – all very new. We’ll not forget the anniversaries or our occasional Beginners Guide to Americana. Tomorrow night we suggest that Stephen Stills‘ 1972 Manassas album might be another record well worth owning. All from 8 – 10 on BBC Radio Scotland.

Richmond Fontaine…despite meeting a creepy guy in seer sucker, Willy’s coming back!

There was a nice tribute in The Guardian today to Nancy Banks Smith who has completed 40 years as a TV reviewer. It made me think about what I’ve watched over the last week.

I watch as much or as little TV as the next person but I’m really not given to watching much music. I don’t find it it too compelling to

have to know what people look like; sometimes it can even put you off. I did see two bits of music TV this week. Firstly I saw as much as I could take of the Grammys. Here was a case of the medium becoming the message. Each live performance blended in to another as everyone decided the only thing missing from any given song was the kitchen sink. Truly awful. (I hasten to add too that the winners bore little or no resemblance to good records that have come out over the last year – but that’s for another day.) It was all that is bad in the music business and Lord knows I’ve been in it long enough to recognise its bad days.

I decided instead to watch something which I recorded weeks ago and hadn’t yet seen: a BBC4 documentary of Fleetwood Mac. Many would say that my dismissal of the Grammys would be equally apposite for the Mac…but not me. Here was a great documentary which had the cumulative effect of doing the very thing any good music show ought to do: make you go out and listen to more of their music. On that criterion the programme was a resounding success. Sara, Dreams, Landslide…all songs that I had to hear again. Three great song writers in one band all giving their own story of being in one of the most successful acts of all time – then divorcing each other – well, that’s a story that’s got to be worth hearing. Conclusion…. keep getting back to the music. Ignore all the hoo-ha of Brits, Grammys and any other televised awards and celebrate what you hear and like. As E M Foster so beautifully put it, “Avoid all occasions which require new clothes.”

You can listen on Friday in your semet. A great double act of Charlie Dore and Beth Neilson Chapman, new music from Ben Glover, Midlake, John Hiatt and a special mention to Caitlin Rose (one to watch). We’ll finally get round to playing The Avett Brothers – which I’ve been dying to do since the start of the year. If that doesn’t convince you try this: the first track from, what must be the final record from Johnny Cash, American VI. All from 8 on Friday night on Another Country, BBC Radio Scotland.

Over the years people have stuck tapes, CDs and a few other things in my hands. I’ve even had the odd thing posted to me. Believe me when I say that I listen to them all and never assume that because I don’t get them they are not worthwhile. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve chatted with a couple of up and coming song writers and it is always exciting to meet the force and confidence of youth.

I say this because (although it seems long ago now) I was once such a song writer. I was also from the sticks. People used to say about getting started in music; talk to someone in the business. I knew no one. It was Dundee and the late seventies and early eighties and it really felt a million miles from wherever the music business was meant to be. If I’m honest I really think we thought (or I did) that it really wasn’t for the likes of us. Punk did change a good deal of that but even now I do sometimes wonder whether that attitude stops real talent pushing their way forward.

So Celtic Connections is good because it really ignores these traditional routes to success. Many of the artists playing there have great careers but have never been played on mainstream radio or ever have ever had to endure making a promo video. They have simply followed their heart and made the music they have been listening to, adapting and changing. One of the nice things I have learned about music from working on the radio is we really do take each record as we find it. We love finding new things and sharing them with you and we hugely enjoy it when an established artist comes back with something we can’t ignore. So this week we have brand new music from Sweden – First Aid Kit, Beach House, Dawn Landes and Laura Veirs from USA as well as Ray Price and Dolly Parton. We also have country royalty as we play the session and interview from Holly Williams she cut with us last week and some tracks from the Low Anthem’s live appearance at The FruitMarket Cletic Connections show. All great stuff.

Going back to the sticks however. I’m aware that we broadcast from Glasgow and are lucky enough to get these great acts coming through town. Where I grew up there were very few American acts coming to play and I am aware that many people may feel that in their part of the world they feel cut off. I relate to this hugely and please feel free to criticise us if we sound too Glasgowcentric. We’d love to hear and be involved in events all over Scotland and flag them up for people’s attention. Coming from the sticks is something that made me feel an outsider for years. It’s being an outsider that makes me think the way I do and rejoice when I find that spirit in the music I’m playing. Long live the sticks.

I’ve been at Celtic Connections over the last week or so. There’s a lot going on and I’ve managed to (almost) balance taking part with seeing some things and meeting some good friends. For Another Country we get some of the best interviews and guest sessions thanks to the huge turnover of Americana artists visiting Glasgow.

The first fruits of this will be heard on Friday when we chat to Teddy Thompson. We’re big fans of Teddy’s music on the show and Teddy’s album, Upfront and Lowdown was his answer to people who don’t quite get country. We’ll be playing something from that on Friday as well as an exclusive recording from the Way To Blue/Nick Drake show on Wednesday night. Nick Drake’s music was perhaps the most unAmerican of any artist I can think of but his influence was huge and Teddy will talk about this on Friday night. Stay tuned to for what my daughters always refer to as a “randomer” during the interview. It’s no ordinary “randomer” though. Rather one of the doyens of British Folk music and it’s a great moment. Pictures later!

There’s lots of new music for the new year. I got an advance copy of something I’ve been waiting for for ages; the new Patty Griffin album. Called “Downtown Church,”  the record’s produced by Buddy Miller and recorded in the Downtown Presbyterian church in Nashville…..you’re going to love it. In no particular order here’s some other things I hope to draw your attention to over the next few weeks: new albums from The Eels,Brendan Benson, Israel Nash Gripka, Danny and The Champions of The World and a great tribute album to The Mississippi Sheiks.

Finally thank you to those of you who have come up to me recently and told me how much you are enjoying the show. That means so much to me and it really is great when I meet you out enjoying music. Keep in touch. Right now I’m going to have another coffee and listen to the rest of the Dolly Parton album that’s been playing in the background while I wrote this blog. A track from that next week too, I hope. I’ll catch you on Friday at 8.

What’s your favourite Coen Bothers movie? I must have seen Fargo 4 times and I have a need to see The Big Lebowski at least once a year. Over Christmas my wife and I really enjoyed No Country For Old men on the DVD. I have a strong memory of “O Brother Where Art Thou” as I was recording an album at the time and Davie Scott, my good pal, had just been to see it and recommended it to us. We went to the cinema and I’ll never forget the moment when I saw and, more importantly, heard the baptism scene for the first time. It was for that reason that we, like millions of others, went out and bought the soundtrack the next day.

It’s ten years since the movie came out and we think it’s an appropriate soundtrack to start our occasional series, “The Beginners Guide to Americana.” The soundtrack, for many people, was either a re affirmation of all they suspected about country or the first creak of a door being opened to a Narnia-like new world. The artists on the “O Brother” soundtrack read like a who’s who of Americana – Dan Tyminski, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch and of course Alison Krauss. So on Friday we celebrate 10 years of that album and commence an occasional  series that we hope might provoke a few suggestions of your own. So here’s what we’re looking for: What are the albums that, for you, defined Americana or Alt Country? Why did they make such an impact on you and where did they lead?

The “O Brother’ soundtrack led to a mini industry after the film. The artists from the soundtrack went out on tour across North America and that in turn led to a live album called “Down From The Mountain.”

Apart from that?

We have new music from Gillian Welch’s main collaborator Dave Rawlings, Laura Veirs and a new song from American Music Club’s Mark Eitzel. We’re also playing a new song from the new Vampire Weekend long-player. It’s nothing like country but we kind of like them on the show! All on at 8 – 10  Friday.

When I finally got to Memphis in 2007 (I think) I decided to avoid Gracelands. However much as I tried to stay away it kept pulling me in.

I’d almost managed to escape its clutches until the Sunday morning when I travelled west along Elvis Presley Boulevard towards the church where the Rev. Al Green is the pastor. I’d made no real plan (not finding out when the Rev’s service was to start didn’t help) and, inevitably I was disappointed to have missed church with Al.

It was then that I thought I could ‘nip in’ to Gracelands. After all, I reasoned, it’s near and it looks quite small. How long could it take? It is here I can hear you snorting and can feel the heads being shaken at the naivety of your on-line blogging friend. In short, nothing quite prepared me for the experience. It was only when I’d bought a ticket (fairly easily) and been told that I was in queue 15 or something ghastly that I realised I was now in some anti-room to hell which was destined to last all day. 6 hours later I staggered out having had to kill time queueing for the house with visits to Elvis’s auto collection, some dreadful souvenir shops and only managed to escape the guided airplane treck.

The house was what I’d half expected…a modest nouveau-riche 50s new-build designed like a Mike Leigh set. I got out fairly quickly after I’d paid my respects in the garden of remembrance. So what good could this dull day in Memphis ever bring? Over the tannoy all day had been a great mash up of Elvis material which, if anything, focussed more closely on the obscure and the good. It was there again that I realised no one could easily right off the impact of Elvis and his impact on rock’n’roll. Unlike The Boss (who famously tried to break-in) I found myself wanting to break out of Gracelands but with a new resolve to re discover and celebrate the music.

On Friday we’ll do just that. We’ll also have some great new stuff to play you from Jesca Hoop, Sara Watkins, Vetiver and brand new music from Grizzly bear and Bon Iver.

Another Country, BBC Radio Scotland, 8 – 10 p.m. Friday 8th January.

1. The Great Lakes

2. Bluebell Wood

3. Your Straight Man

4. Winter Is Coming

5. Silver and Gold

6. Summer

7. Hickory Wind

8. Pale Rider

9. Walls

10. Got A Little Joy

11. Mount Juliet

12. Harvest Comes Around

13. A Passing Place

14. All My Trust I Place In You

15.This World Is Not My Home

16. Jesus Nailed My Sins Upon The Tree

17. The Kids are Alright

18.  The Kid/Gloria

+ Cover From The Sky

1. The Great Lakes

2. Bluebell Wood

3. Your Straight Man

4. Winter Is Coming

5. Silver and Gold

6. Summer

7. Cover From The Sky

8. Pale Rider

9. Walls

10. Got A Little Joy

11. Mount Juliet

12. Harvest Comes Around

13. A Passing Place

14. All My Trust I Place In You

15.This World Is Not My Home

16. Jesus Nailed My Sins Upon The Tree

17. The Kids are Alright

18. Precious Memories/Gloria

+ Oh, The Dark

1. The Great Lakes

2. Bluebell Wood

3. Your Straight Man

4. Winter Is Coming

5. Silver and Gold

6. Summer

7. Hickory Wind

8. Pale Rider

9. Walls

10. Got A Little Joy

11. Mount Juliet

12. Harvest Comes Around

13. A Passing Place

14. All My Trust I Place In You

15.This World Is Not My Home

16. Jesus Nailed My Sins Upon The Tree

17. Oh, The Dark

18.      Precious Memories/Gloria

Also……Cover From The Sky