This week on The AC you’re going to hear to acts in polar positions on their life journeys. Firstly we’ll welcome The Secret Sisters.

The sisters are from Muscle Shoals, Alabama and their career has got off to a flying start due , in part, to some healthy associations. Jack White digs them and T Bone Burnett has exec produced their debut record. Interestingly too that their album is not all new songs but picks a path through the last 60 years of country music. There are nods to Hank Williams, George Jones and Nancy Sinatra. What is fresh and new is their voices and locked-in sibling harmonies. You can have a sneak preview here too.

At the other end of the scale we have reached Time Out Of Mind on our long re wind through Bob Dylan’s studio albums.

Impossible to say how important this record was but, for me, it was the album which set up this long great run he’s been on. The confidence in his own sound, the heart breaking love songs and the reconnection with great roots music are all present here. (Next week we’ll see where that reconnection began to take shape) To celebrate the album we’ll chat to Mark Howard who, as (producer) Daniel Lanois’ engineer, recorded the whole record. There are some great stories on this one – so make yourselves comfortable.

That’s Mark in the foreground with Dan Lanois behind and someone called “Shakey!”

There’s so much more…. We will look again at the soundtrack to Robert Altman’s Nashville, we will hear some great new things from R.E.M., Alison Krauss and Union Station and another new song from Hayes Carll.(He of KMAG YOYO fame!) I also discoverd a new band this week and want to play a track from their new album. Essentially a solo artist called Julie Ann Beas, she goes under the moniker, Sea of Bees…and it is really great. Se’s coming this way soon too.

It’s all from 5 past 8 on Friday night and 10 on Sunday. BBC Radio Scotland.