It’s been an amazing time in Scotland. This Friday night many of us will have had a long day and a long night. I don’t know about you but for me the thing I’m going to need on Friday evening is the thing I always need, music. There will be many listeners happy and many disappointed so I think we can all unite for a couple of hours around some songs I know you are going to love. As ever on the AC we’ll try to take you on a journey of discovery that coasts past some significant places on the Country map. This week we’re going to spend a fair bit of time thinking about this man.

Chet Atkins is one of these names we all know. When you arrive in Music City you quickly get a sense of how big a character he was. Downtown Nashville has a statue of him and streets  are named after him. He’s hard to miss. A few weeks ago a brilliant compilation of his music came out on what would have been his 90th birthday. Sadly Chet died in 2001 aged 77 but he left behind a huge legacy of his own recordings and amazing guitar playing but also a catalogue of recordings he produced for some of the greatest names in country and popular music. On Friday we’ll take you on our own mini tour of Chet Atkins for beginners….. Once you’ve done it you’ll be listening to your country music all over again.

Jim Reeves, Elvis Presley, The Louvins and The Everleys as well as Kitty Wells all feature in what should be a wonderful hour of music.

Despite everything else that’s going on here the AC found time for a wee night out as we met up with First Aid Kit before going to see their wonderful show at The Old Fruitmarket in Glasgow. We’ll be playing out a First Aid Kit two hour special in December and we think you will rather enjoy all of it. On Friday we’ll bring you a song we recorded at the show too. We discovered that Klara and Joanna really dig Jenny Lewis….so we thought we’d play some more from her and while we’re at it…….

We’ll be playing you new music on Friday from Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn, Lady Antebellum, The Lost Brothers and CW Stoneking as well as having a beautiful vinyl rediscovery to crackle your speakers. If you want to hear it all we start at five past eight, Friday on BBC Radio Scotland.