On Friday night we welcome back two friends of the show: Brenley and Lisa from Madison Violet. We first met them a couple of years ago when we discovered their album No fool For Trying. Then they were two Canadian women touring in the UK to a fairly new audience. Since then they’ve received some great reactions to their music and have toured extensively at home, in the USA, Australia and in Europe. Lots has happened and they’ve even found time to make that much-expected follow on album.
On Friday you can hear how all of that has effected them personally and how they separate the professional from the social as they sing songs of broken hearts and old loves night after night. It’s a fascinating insight into life as a touring musician and should be a good listen for anyone who thinks they are cut out for a life on the road. As always they brought in their selection of banjos, mandolins, fiddle and guitars and performed a brilliant session for us. They are in a select group of artists who have visited us three times or more on Another Country and I think you will realise that makes them very special indeed.
Brenley and Lisa.. Old faves returning...
As ever there’s much new stuff to play you. Look out for songs from Chuck Prophet, Vince Gill and Ray Wylie Hubbard as well as more from The Deep Dark Woods and Alabama Shakes albums.
New faves..The Deep Dark Woods
We haven’t forgotten that Merle Haggard turned seventy five last week and as ever Richard Murdoch has found you some old gems and a song from Woody Guthrie in this centenary year. I’m excited just writing this stuff…wait to we start blasting the speakers! It all starts at five past eight on Friday evening. BBC Radio Scotland.
On Sunday..
Jackie Malton
I’ll spend the first hour of the show in the company of the woman Lynda LaPlante based her great character DCI Jane Tennyson on. Jackie Malton is a former Chief Inspector in the Met and she’ll talk with me about being a highly promoted female cop, share her stories and some of her favourite music. I’ll find out why a woman as busy and popular as Esther Rantzen is feeling lonely and what she plans to do about it. Gillean MacLean, a minister on the Island of Arran, and I will dissect “The Godless Boys,”
a debut novel by Naomi Wood set on an island that sounds very like Gillean’s Island.(please excuse that pun) As ever, lots of great music you’d never hear (Prince, Wilson Pickett, India Arie) unless you’re up to join me. It’s all from seven on Sunday morning on BBC Radio Scotland.
Wonderful that Madison Violet are returning for a third time and joining that select group. They are amongst my favourite finds of all thanks to Another Country, and if Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “Come On Come On” was the soundtrack to my first trip to the USA (as per my lengthy, rambling response to last week’s post and show) then “No Fool for Trying” was the same for my last-but-one family visit and was probably my favourite album that year. “The Good in Goodbye” is more of the same and I’ve been really enjoying that also. Your preview of the interview in tonight’s show only tantalises me further – I’m sure it will be a great listen.