Ricky's Radio Blog

general musings

Putting It All Together

October 1, 2019 by ricky 2 Comments

A good friend was telling me how much he was enjoying the newly remastered Abbey Road. It seems even some of the best things can get even better. One of the deep joys of that record is it’s running order. On two very distinct sides it makes perfect sense and even has the obligatory ‘lost throwaway’ track at the conclusion just to prick the pomposity of the grand finale. (I always liked Paul’s ability to deliver the throwaway in style).

I love Abbey Road and I love the stories of how and why it got made. In Mark Lewisohn’s book, ‘The Beatles Recording Sessions,’ there’s a day by day account of each session, and how and when it got recorded and put together. I love the fact that in those days albums were started and finished in a set time. Even with The Beatles there was no open ended recording budget…although they were granted much more leeway than many contemporaries….and they themselves had an idea of how a project might start and finish. But with Sgt Peppers and Abbey Road there was a strong sense that in a matter of weeks the recordings were mixed, mastered with and test copies pressed to play back…and there was no time or inclination to meddle with the work they had made. Oh that it were always that simple.

I thought of this as I listened to the new offering by Sturgill Simpson. It is a classic example of a man who might have taken three albums to get to the Sound and Fury but has decided to get there in one giant leap. One of the most interesting aspects of the album is the sense in which it has been made as a complete concept. Individual tracks can and will be played but part of the thrill of the ride is to hear it as a piece….and it will exhaust you even if it comes in at a good length of 41 mins. The songs don’t so much segue as crash into each other and one can only assume Sturgill wants you to hear this in its entirety. I say all this in the context of someone who is trying to get an album down to a reasonable length with some difficulty.

The sequencing of any record is always a chore that takes up much conversation and endless drafts. I usually start thinking of it even as the songs are being written and old diaries of mine are full of alternative running orders for albums past. Bob Clearmountain once told me he’d been told by David Bowie to ‘put the album together.’ I was young and enthusiastic when I heard this and could find no reason why compiling his own album could not be the most important thing David had to do that or any other day…but hey, shopping calls.

I feel the same way about radio though I leave all manner of running order priorities to my radio other-half, Richard Murdoch. He has a masters in openers and closers and a PhD in how to come out of the news….so I wouldn’t even venture to suggest how to assemble a show…but I know it matters. On this week’s Another Country you will enjoy where we start and also where we finish. There are many delights from the recent Americana Awards and to guide us through them we will have our very own Nashville correspondent directly from Music Row to reveal the gossip from the celebration. Listen out for Bonnie Raitt singing John Prine, Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi as well as something gorgeous and previously lost by Lee Hazelwood.

As ever we do all this in two hours and we kick off at five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland this coming Tuesday evening. This coming Sunday Soundtrack features Emma Pollock (former Delgado and now solo singer, label boss and all round good egg), Bob Servant creator and author of new TV Drama Guilt, Neil Forsyth as well as a session and long conversation with singer songwriter Martyn Joseph. All of that starts just after the ten o’clock news next Sunday morning.

Reading time: 3 min

general musings

In The Wilderness of Words…We Need Music.

September 24, 2019 by ricky No Comments

One of the problems of playing records on the radio now is the realisation that we are no longer in the business of offering exclusives. There is now, almost, no such thing. I find a notification of a record coming through and I check the usual places…and yep..it’s out there. There is nothing we have access to that the listener can’t hear independently. TV too has gone in the same direction, as you are, no doubt, well aware. A show no longer drip feeds the series on a Sunday at 9…it’s all there from day one. We don’t ask each other, ‘Did you see it last night?’ so much as we enquire, ‘Which episode are you on?’

A good family friend caught the spirit of this on holiday when borrowing the Obama autobiography from my wife. Shouting after her she declared, ‘Now remember…please don’t tell me how it ends….’

So I realise that making radio programmes (with music) is less about what you play than how you play it. Putting one song in the place it works best is probably as good a job as we can do. We, like my father before me, are at best wholesalers….we don’t make the stuff but we help you find where to look for it. So why is it we still love …and reader, I do…. the radio? I think it’s because at its best it shines a warm light onto a piece of music that may have lingered long on the shelf or been crowded out by less worthy album selections. There on the wireless in a wilderness of words, weather and the woe of public voices…a song can stand alone and just be everything that you might well be needing at that point in your day.

I can remember radio moments even now…when Tony Blackburn first played Ain’t No Mountain High Enough on the breakfast show, when Johnnie Walker (second mention in as many weeks JW) came out of NewsBeat with Stevie Wonder’s ‘Misstra No It All,’ the DJ who played The Temptations ‘I Wish It Would Rain” as I drove a car into Sunset Sound studios in Hollywood in 1988 and the time Mr Murdoch and I were driving to Dale Bryant’s house in the sticks in Tennessee one Friday night and hearing Mark Chestnutt on WSM on the Eddie Stubbs show. I guess we could have discovered some of these things ourselves, but would they ever have seemed so good? Somehow the song, the radio moment and the place all combine in memory…and I never want to or can forget it.

And so we hope that each Tuesday night we surprise you with a little of what you know in interesting places and occasionally something you feel you really need to know better. This Tuesday night we’ll bring you plenty of that in the context of one of our very special gatherings live from Studio One at BBC Scotland where we’ll welcome King Of Birds in session. We’ve been playing KOB, featuring the voices and songwriting of Charlie and Stirling Gorman, for a good while and we’re excited to see their debut album ‘Eve of Destruction’ finally coming out. Catch them live in session this Tuesday evening.

On Sunday I’ll have more music on the Sunday Soundtrack as well as Jamie Lawson in session and conversation, poets Hannah Lavery and Lemm Sissay and the man who has brought a poem a day to Twitter, Kevin Williamson all on the programme. Sunday morning from 10 am. Both shows can be found on BBC Radio Scotland.

Reading time: 3 min

general musings

I Remember Hearing Bruce For The First Time

September 17, 2019 by ricky 6 Comments

It was in 1975 and I was sitting in my dad’s car returning to my summer job working in his warehouse. Born To Run came on the Johnnie Walker’s lunch time Radio One show. I was a little deflated to hear him describe it sounding as if ‘his mouth had been stuffed full of old socks’ at the time. I’ve had this out with Johnnie since then and he has no memory of it but as a 17 year old it left a mark. So too did the song. It was the first time I’d actually heard the music having read so much about this mythical New Jersey, new Dylan.

Within a few weeks I found myself lingering in Bruce’s Records in Reform Street in Dundee as they played the whole Born to Run album back to back. I was transfixed. As soon as I had the money together I asked a friend who was going into town to bring a copy back to me. I still remember the smell of the original gatefold sleeve…and what a sleeve. One Saturday I invited a pal over to listen and we got to the climax of Jungleland as the sax solo hit peak volume when my dad stormed in and told me to turn it down. It was peak humiliation, but nothing distracted from the album. A friend played football and was thrilled to discover that one of the lines from Meeting Across The River had appeared in the team sheet of their visitors; Eddie Mann played at left back.

By the Christmas of 75 I’d caught up on the back catalogue and convinced myself The Wild, The Innocent was the apogee of recorded and lyric history so the Springsteen albums were now good friends. However it would be three more years until the next album and at that age six months is an eternity. Punk, post punk and new wave all happened and it was hard to see how Bruce fitted into that world as Darkness on the Edge of Town arrived. It took my pal Doug’s party over the summer and Racing in The Streets when Gary W Tallent hits the first bass note to realise I need to own that album. In the couple of years that followed I started to hear the bootlegs of those endless tours between 75 and 78 which cemented all the myths. I heard the ‘Brooooces’ and thought it was booing, I heard the cover versions and I heard what Bruce did with ‘Because The Night’ even though…I know…he couldn’t find room for that song on an album.

By the time The River arrived Bruce Springsteen was on British radio and he had a hit record and as the eighties passed the same pattern would continue. I’d tell myself I was over Bruce Springsteen then something wonderful would happen and I’d fall back in love as surely as a smitten school boy. I’d hear Hungry Heart and life would be possible again then I’d meet my future wife who’d sing Used Cars and I’d realise that Nebraska was really all that could ever be important in music. Where I came a little unstuck was Born In The USA…hey, but I got over it and rejoiced into the live 75 – 85 album even though my true believer pals hated it for being so edited…they had all the bootlegs.

The arrival of Tunnel of Love however was love at first sight and our wedding band played ‘All That Heaven Will Allow’ as our first dance and I gleefully shuffled around the floor.

In the nineties I’d been a bit disappointed by the twin releases of the 92 albums but found so much to enjoy in ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’ and the subsequent release of the revitalised East Street Band’s Live album from NYC in ’99. Bruce was on fire.

I’d seen Springsteen a good few times by then, but one beautiful summer night at Old Trafford Cricket Ground in the early 2000s was perhaps the best show I’d seen up to that point. Springsteen – with a new producer in tow – was on a creative roll. Following on from The Rising he made album after album and even went touring and recording with his folk/big band too.

I’ve rejoiced as he finally came to Glasgow and the last time he visited was the perfect evening. Like any artist there are moments I’ve loved more than others and there’s albums I’ve never quite bonded with…but I’ve loved his music for nearly 45 years (a good rock n roll number) and I’m not going to stop now.

On this week’s Another Country we’re going to celebrate Bruce’s 70th birthday by having ‘a rock ‘n’ roll baptism, a rock ‘n’ roll exorcism and a rock ‘n’ roll Barmitzvah. We’re going to do it all.’

Join this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland.

Reading time: 4 min

general musings

Felony Blues

September 10, 2019 by ricky No Comments

When I first arrived in Glasgow to inflict the little that I knew on the unfortunate children of a Maryhill school I was befriended by some good folk who knew how to turn a good night into a great one. At the end of any evening there was always singing. At a certain point….and only when he was ready, my pal Eddie would perform a perfect version of Jimmie Rodgers’ ‘He’s In The Jailhouse Now.’
I always loved the inflection that the main subject of the ballad had a Scottish connection….
I had a friend named Campbell
He used to rob, steal and gamble
He tried everything that was low-down
He was out tom-cattin’ one night
When he started a big fight
Then a big policeman came and knocked him down
He’s in the jailhouse now
He’s in the jailhouse now
I told him over again
To quit drinking whiskey
Lay off of that gin
He’s in the jailhouse now
Little did I know then that I was listening to a song by the man they called ‘the father of country music.’ However, on reflection, the song has stayed with me all these years because it brings back memories of good times and it also reminds me now that country music was a celebration of the lives of poor rural folk whose story was not told elsewhere. If that narrative has been lost somewhere along the way we can still recognise the reason country music resonates with so many is perhaps because it celebrates their stories in a way other music and culture doesn’t fully recognise.
One of the recurring stories of country is what happens to people when their lives take a wrong turning. It’s no surprise that on most people’s lists of classic country records Johnny Cash‘s Live at San Quentin figures highly. The potent mix of a hard living, truth telling singer locked in with those who related most to his songs brings the concept of the live album into an explosive piece of musical theatre.
Consider too, country’s outlaws whose lives have often been a deft dance with the law. Hank Williams, Merle Haggard and Steve Earle cover a period of around fifty years where the story continues. Into this interesting mix of characters comes this week’s guest, Jaime Wyatt. A Californian country singer who was destined for great things until she ended up in a state penitentiary for trying to rob her drug dealer. However it’s at this point we come into the story.
Coming out of jail Jaime picked up the music career she’d lost and made one of the finest albums we’ve enjoyed over the last few years. Felony Blues (which came out in 2017) is still the current record for Jaime and on her way through Glasgow last week to perform at Broadcast we caught up with her for this week’s Another Country. She talks about what she learned from that experience, the women she met inside and why that period has proved to be such a rich inspiration for her song writing.
In an interesting follow up to this I’m talking crime and punishment on the next Sunday Soundtrack too. I’ll be joined by Fergus McNeil who has encouraged and enabled songwriting in prisons as well as ex cop and crime writer, Karen Campbell.
Another Country will be live this Tuesday when, as well as that Jaime Wyatt interview, we’ll have music from Joan Shelley, Tilder Childers, Elaina Kay (again), The Maes and Michaela Anne. It all starts at five past nine this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland. Sunday Soundtrack is on the same wavelength at 10 next Sunday morning.

Reading time: 3 min

general musings

Bring The Family

September 3, 2019 by ricky No Comments

I can talk about him as he’s on his holidays this week, but my better radio half, Richard Murdoch is the reason Another Country does not descend into weekly chaos. Patiently he takes my mad ramblings and assembles a script which, hopefully, comes across as thoughtful and still exciting each Tuesday evening.

When he goes quiet I know there’s something interesting him and he’s off down one of his audio rabbit holes. Last week I got an excited missive from him telling me he’d found a little journey we could take on the show. It was inspired by a new discovery for us, Elaina Kay, whose debut album, Issues, contains the song, Daddy Issues. This song of daughter-to-father conversation has inspired us to play some sister songs along the same lines. So you’ll hear daughters and sons on dads and moms featuring Elaina, Taylor Swift, Gretchen Peters and Sean McConnell. You’ll also hear that great daughter/father ballad from Ashley McBryde with which you’ll be very familiar by now I’m sure…but as the special bonus you’ll also be delighted to hear the brand new track from Ashley.

As you read this and I write it I can almost hear you submitting further suggestions of family themed ballads along similar lines. So, if we have provoked some suggestions do join in and we might get one or two more songs in on the weeks to come.

As well as these family conversations we will be bringing you some new music from new names. Listen out for CAAMP, The Commonheart then hear too some old friends as we celebrate new releases from Midland, Joan Shelley, Trisha Yearwood and Chip Taylor.

We’ll also be listening in to where Miranda Lambert went next. I’m intrigued by Miranda’s career. Firstly she made her breakthrough via a now defunct TV talent show which she didn’t win. That was in the early 2000’s and since then she’s gone on to carve out a successful career as a great interpreter of classic country (The House That Built Me, Look At Miss Ohio) as well as radically confounding music-row expectations (Vice) to releasing pitch perfect modern country self-penned songs (Automatic, Get Away Driver). Recently she’s championed the wonderful Pistol Annies which has brought Angeleena Presley into the spotlight. For that alone, we’re grateful. On the new album she’s working with the Love Junkies and producer Jay Joyce and on her brand new single, Natalie Hemby. It’s a winning formula and I for one would love to see Miranda back at the top of the country tree.

I hope you got a chance to hear the new Sunday Soundtrack. I’m enjoying being back on the radio on Sundays and getting a chance to play new things on air. This Sunday I’m looking forward to welcoming Playwright and Director, Zinnie Harris as her production of The Duchess opens at the Citz. We’ll talk about our appetite for horror with Zinnie and Sergio Casci whose own thriller, ‘The Lodge’ arrives on cinema screens very soon. We’ll have Dani Garavelli and Sara Sheridan as our house guests and an album’s worth of hand-picked songs to make your Sunday morning complete.

The AC starts at five past nine this Tuesday evening and you can hear Sunday Soundtrack at five past ten this coming Sunday. You’ll catch both shows on BBC Radio Scotland or later on BBC Sounds.

Reading time: 2 min

general musings

Unexpected Places

August 27, 2019 by ricky No Comments

For years the British Media took no notice that ‘the bank holiday’ only applied to people south of the Scottish/English border and was largely irrelevant to Scots and Irish. I note (listening to the good Lauren Laverne yesterday morning) that is no longer the case. She’s magnanimous enough to note that it only applies to ‘some of us.’ Lauren’s a Geordie so she clearly gets this a little better than some. I, however, like to celebrate the August bank holiday. For years it seems everyone seems to assume you are elsewhere and on this week’s glorious Monday no one was ever likely to bother me. It’s the perfect working day.
I eased into it by catching up on some album listening and am really enjoying spending time imagining all the wild places involved in the new Orphan Brigade album. It starts off on the coast road outside of Glenarm in Antrim and moves via a midnight forest to the caves of Cushendun and even out on the water in a boat on the bay off County Antrim. That’s just the writing spots…for the recording the trio moved into St Patrick’s Church of Ireland in Glenarm. You can imagine this is an album not short on atmosphere. You’ll hear a very special track from the forthcoming record featuring the great John Prine on this Tuesday’s show.

I’m interested in magical spaces as I stumbled across some amazing footage of the Nevis Ensemble visiting the abandoned Isle of St Kilda and playing outside among the ruins of the old village. On Saturday I got notice that 400 women (it turned out there were a few chaps as well) were to assemble in Parliament Square and sing one of my songs. I’m grateful for the tweet and to the remarkable Sing In The City Choir for making such a great version of Dignity. There is something magical about taking music to unexpected places so that people experience it where it’s least expected and, somehow, it catches them unawares.

If you embrace the unexpected and enjoy a communal sing-song you might want to hear the new offering by Sturgill Simpson which is simply called, Sing Along. As ever, it’s probably not what you might have been waiting for but has Sturgill ever stood still?

Elsewhere we will bring in to the cool air-conditioned opulence of our Music Row Studio our very own Nashville correspondent, Bill DeMain fresh from pounding the streets of Twang Town where he tells his own tales of the city. Bill’s got all the latest news and some new music he’d enjoy sharing with us…this usually becomes unmissable new acts, so stay tuned.

Elsewhere we have music from another scion of The (Hank) Williams Family, more new music from Hiss Golden Messenger, The Dixie Chicks first recording in more than 12 years or so and much more. Join me live this Tuesday from five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland.

Finally, and talking of wild spaces, I’m going to encounter the amazing natural wildlife filmmaker, Gordon Buchananan this weekend. On Sunday I will be bringing a brand new programme to BBC Radio Scotland too. From 10 – 12 you can hear Sunday Soundtrack which will be a mixture of words and music. I’ll be welcoming some great guests and attempting to curate the perfect Sunday morning soundtrack to set up your Sundays. Join me if you can.

Reading time: 2 min

general musings

Work Your Own Way To The White Stripes

August 20, 2019 by ricky No Comments

There are many funny aspects about performance which make it a particularly individual art form. On the brilliant, Miles Of Aisles, Joni Mitchell answers a song request with an instant appraisal of the nature of the song. ‘That’s the thing about the difference between the performance arts and being a painter; no one ever said to Van Gogh, ‘Paint a Starry Night again, man.’

I’ve thought about that a lot since I first heard Joni saying it about 45 years ago and it’s only today I’ve realised that she’s probably wrong. I’ll bet loads of people said that very thing to Vincent.

I pondered on this when I got a Facebook message to inform me about a song we didn’t play on the weekend. It always strikes me as a very weird thing to make your only point of contact a gripe about what you didn’t enjoy. But hey…they pay the money and all of that. I also thought about it when I went to see Patty Griffin then Nick Lowe a couple of months back. I knew for a fact that the set lists I’d love to hear from Patty and Nick differed enormously from the ones these artists chose to play on the night. However, and this is really the important bit, hearing the show Patty Griffin (particularly) put together that evening was a joy and a brilliant insight into the core of what is important in her own music. It was great to hear how much she invested in each song and why they were all essential parts of a quite gorgeous ninety minutes. Before you ask; Nick’s show was wonderful too.

Patty’s night involved her talking about ‘disappearing down a YouTube rabbit hole one night’ chasing (I think) Lightnin’ Hopkins. There’s no doubt that blues forms a big influence on the new Patty record and hanging out with Robert Plant with The Band of Joy (he was in the audience in June too!) must have helped the blues seep in.

On this Tuesday’s show we’re going to explore these roots a little and try, once more, to show how genres of music really all stem from a common source. Jimmie Rogers, Howling Wolf, Bessie Smith, Hank Williams, Big Mama Thornton, Elvis Presley, The Louvin Brothers…work your own way to The White Stripes and keep going.

As well as that trip we’ll catch up with Justin Townes Earle a man who has carried on his own particular family/musical tradition. Justin has been a guest on Another Country a few times over the last eleven years or so. How well has the life of a troubadour agreed with him? To what extent is he keeping back the demons that haunted his earlier life? Having spent a bit of time in his company, I’m not really sure. You can make up your own mind when you hear the conversation we recorded and listen to the tracks from his current album, ‘The Saint Of Lost Causes.’

Elsewhere in a packed two hours you’ll hear more from The Highwomen, Hiss Golden Messenger, more Mattiel and a mini celebration of The Stanley Brothers. Finally, on the subject of set lists: a song The National didn’t play under a beautiful moon at Kelvingrove a couple of weeks ago.

We’re on BBC Radio Scotland FM from five past nine this Tuesday evening.

Reading time: 2 min

general musings

So Many Summers

August 13, 2019 by ricky No Comments

There are so many times over the course of a long Scottish winter I have said to myself, ‘I’ll do that in the summer.’ I imagine sitting on my back deck looking proudly over the small piece of garden newly tidied, a wee goldie nestling in my palm as the sun sinks slowly over the south side of Glasgow. Somehow the reality never really kicks in.
I often think of these summers that pass without their winter dreams evolving and go back to one of my favourite Norman MacCaig poems written from his Highland eyrie in Sutherland as he reflects on the regular walk to his favourite fishing spot. Year after year he passes the skeleton of a hind and the remains of an old boat:
Time adds one malice to another one–
Now you’d look very close before you knew
If it’s the boat that ran, the hind went sailing

I did manage my brief moment on the back deck a couple of Fridays ago. One of the summer events had just been brought to fruition (a long awaited recording session) and I allowed myself a quiet celebration with no one else around to witness it. The weather went along with my happy mood and suddenly my winter dream was realised.
In Scotland it almost feels as if the summer ends around this time in August when the schools return. The early dawns and late sunsets are not quite as stretched as the first days of midsummer and the optimism of early spring has been tempered by the reality of weeks of muggy cloud cover. ‘So many summers,’ as MacCaig ruminated, ‘and I have lived them too.’
This summer, for me has been framed by some big events. Concerts in different parts of Europe at either end and a trip to California with all my family together to witness the marriage of my eldest daughter in the gloriously beautiful Napa Valley. At all times and usually when I least expected there have been short bursts of great music. Around the fire pits at a songwriting retreat in Somerset, in a kitchen with family harmonies in a holiday cabin and at one sensational evening in Glasgow in the presence of KD Lang.
Perhaps the best experiences of music are when it catches unawares. Sneaking up on a soundtrack, overhearing a song bleeding out of someone else’s music system or (as so often seems to happen to me these days) playing accidentally via one of the many sources of music on my smart phone (this one comes from the eternally apt rule of unintended consequences). In fact, I’m hugely indebted to my brilliant deputy, Tia Sillers for playing some gorgeous music I’d not heard or not remembered. There’s still plenty of time to catch Tia’s shows on BBC Sounds.
From all these sources and time spent with many wonderfully surprising gems sent to us over the last couple of months we have curated two hours of country music our way for this Tuesday’s Another Country. You’ll be delighted in some new names: The Highwomen, Daughter of Swords and Leslie Steven will bring smiles to your faces. Then you’ll be delighted by the return of some AC favourites: The Orphan Brigade, Miranda Lambert and Sam Outlaw should work wonders for any summertime blues you may be enduring.
Elsewhere we celebrate all that is great in country…..hey if you think you don’t like country music, you haven’t heard enough of it. We’re on air at nine on BBC Radio Scotland FM.

Reading time: 3 min

general musings

On Joy

June 25, 2019 by ricky 1 Comment

I remember reading CS Lewis’s autobiography over 40 years ago across a cold Easter holiday when my parents were away and I crouched against the radiator and for the first time, read a book continuously from cover to cover. Much of it was an introduction to the delights he’d found in his own youth, the ‘northernness’ he discovered in the Norse sagas, Robert Browning and well…I don’t think I remember much else in truth.

His own story, as I’m sure you know, was titled after a line from William Wordsworth: ‘Surprised by Joy; impatient as the wind.’ Much of that surprise came from his own conversion to Christianity which was the hook that pulled me in when I still sought the satisfaction of fundamental certainty later life seems to deem superfluous.

If certainty is too much to hope for it seems to me that the deep search for ‘joy’ is a life long quest which brings new twists and turns at every point in the journey. Sometimes it’s a literal path too. It was only recently we found ourselves on a week’s holiday walking a little cliff route I’d forgotten about and it was, for my wife, all new. On a sunlit early June afternoon it was joy unconstrained. I remember too the sheer exhilaration two years ago as we made our way along the north coast of Scotland and realised what beauty we’d been missing for fifty odd years. As the impressionists might have said, and Robert Louis Stevenson wrote: ‘The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.’

So it comes to the half-way point of another year and I look back and discover that again I’ve been bowled away by so many fine things I could easily throw away the past and rejoice in the new which this year has brought. Nothing is still quite as thrilling as finding a piece of music you want to play again and again. How much your heart leaps when you hear something and think…well that’s made my day. As I write I’m listening to Mattiel’s second album on vinyl and it’s so full of life I really don’t want to take the needle off…ever. It’s one of many records to have come out which, shortly on the AC, we’ll be celebrating as the cream of 2019’s crop of new releases.

On this week’s AC you’ll hear something wondrous from that Mattiel album as well as new tracks from Marren Morris, Hiss Golden Messenger and Midland in a two hour blitz of great new records you need to know over the summer. You’ll hear old favourites from Ry Cooder, Rosanne Cash and…Wings! You’ll also catch up on the latest news from our man on Music City’s streets, our Nashville Correspondent, Bill DeMain who has reports of the recent southern storms in the city as well as a night at The Ryman which all of us would love to have witnessed.

We do all of this in two hours and you can hear the programme on BBC Radio Scotland from five past nine this Tuesday evening. Join me if you can.

Reading time: 2 min

general musings

The Nick Lowe Special

June 18, 2019 by ricky No Comments

The other week, while on holiday in Fife we wandered past the students union at St Andrews University and I found myself remembering the first time I met Nick Lowe. He was part of Rockpile and they were playing the Union on one of those nights when you were glad to be alive and thanked the Gods that things like this still happened. More than that I can’t remember, but I was grateful for seeing such a great rock n roll band in such an intimate setting.

A few years later I found myself for the first and last time at The Reading Festival. I’d never quite understood why we were unlucky enough to be booked but, needless to say, the words of our production manager at the time did not augur well. ‘Listen chaps,’ they’re a little boisterous out there and when the acts kick off they tend to throw a few beer cans towards the stage…nothing personal…they’re a great crowd.’ I’m old fashioned and frankly I didn’t need Reading or their cans of piss and I led our group off stage after a number and a half. That we never got back mattered very little to them or us. One lovely thing did happen however. On the sister stage, set up adjacent to ours was John Hiatt. I’d fallen for his music a year or so before after Tom Morton turned me on to his album, ‘Bring The Family.’ I decided to make myself known and knocked on his door to find, to my delight, an earlier visitor, Nick Lowe, was still there. In truth I was probably even more thrilled to meet Nick than I was to encounter John, but I was more than delighted to meet them both.

A couple of years later and I found myself in L’Escargot in Soho in the unlikely role of judging on an awards panel. It was a few hours of life I will never get back but there was to be a lovely consolation prize…Nick was also on the panel. By this time we recognised each other and he made a point of telling me I should have his phone number…I’d not asked..but he assured me I should call whenever. I, of course, never did but carried the number around in my old diary as a souvenir of the day we met.

From that day on Nick disappeared a little from view. I knew a little of his output but in all honesty lost track until nearly twenty years went by and he brought out a run of solo albums which re ignited all my earlier fandom. In the meantime Nick himself had been married and divorced to Carlene Carter, been welcomed in to the Carter Cash family, had his songs cut by Johnny and become an overnight millionaire when one of his songs was included on the Bodyguard film soundtrack.

Picking up on the late output I fell in love all over again with his songs on The Convincer, At My Age and The Old Magic. They make a beautiful trilogy and I really can’t recommend them highly enough. In 2011 all of this came together in the perfect way.

Booked to play at Glastonbury around this time of year I discovered to my delight that the act on before us was the man himself. We spoke, I watched his set and then we went on to enjoy one of the best nights we have ever had on stage in our long time of good nights.

In the intervening years Nick has been a guest on the show but this week, in the middle of his first major tour in the UK for 20 years he has brought in the excellent Los Straitjackets (all the way from Nashville) and cut four live session tracks for us. That’s not all! In the second hour of the show I sit down with Nick and talk songs, stories and county connections…..and there are so many.

If you think you don’t like Nick Lowe you might just need to listen closer, if you think you don’t like country music you might need to hear about it through the songs and stories of a man who loves it.

It’s The Another Country Nick Lowe special and it’s on BBC Radio Scotland this Tuesday evening from five past nine.

Reading time: 3 min

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Putting It All Together

In The Wilderness of Words…We Need Music.

I Remember Hearing Bruce For The First Time

Felony Blues

Bring The Family

Unexpected Places

Work Your Own Way To The White Stripes

So Many Summers

On Joy

The Nick Lowe Special

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