I’m writing this on my second last journey of the Deacon Blue tour. It’s been a long haul and I’ve met some amazing people and had the joy of singing songs in some amazing spaces. 

At my age touring is a physical stretch as well as being mentally exhausting. It’s also enormously rewarding, as I’m sure you can imagine. Being face to face with people who have connected with the songs you have created is a gift and a blessing. As my road buddy Ross Wilson (aka Blue Rose Code) will always preface and hashtag , I am grateful.

I usually get to sleep some time between one and two and one night after a day of noise and movement I found the best therapy was a long bath and a country playlist. My day unwound to the songs of other people and it truly felt like a healing experience listening to Miranda Lambert, Sam Outlaw and Brandy Clark. It reminded me of the power of songs to connect just when you need them most.

It’s probably the fact we are celebrating 30 years as a band but we get so many requests for special hook-ups for people who are experiencing adverse health issues. Immediately I think back to a young mother of two who came to her 30th show two days before she was to go in for major surgery. It was humbling to realise that music was still so important, maybe even vital for someone who was facing life-threatening issues. We get mails, tweets and Facebook messages from people who have been unable to make the gig because a family member is unwell or circumstances have changed and they’ve had to pass tickets on to a friend. What amazes me most is how important people feel the experience of sitting or standing in a room listening to music is to them. Missing out is something that needs to be explained and requires appropriate consolation.

I am amazed and humbled by all of this but understand it only in how much songs mean to me over the course of my life. I hope that over the course of the last twelve months we’ve played you some songs and artists you’ll find you need in your life. Looking back over that time it’s been a classic year. We’ve had wonderful music from old friends, Kacey Musgraves, First Aid Kit, Lori Mckenna and John Hiatt. We’ve also had some beautiful surprises from new artists including Cordovas, Ruston Kelly, Rayland Baxter and Mattiel. For me, some of the songs of this year will be life-time favourites.

This Tuesday and on Christmas Day we will celebrate 2018 in style by playing you some of the songs of the year mixed in with some Christmas Country Modern Classics.

Thanks for listening over the course of the year. We’ve had so much enjoyment bringing you Another Country in 2018. On behalf of Richard Murdoch, Roslyn McCuish and all the great team who help make the show I wish you all a very Joyful Christmas and continued happy listening in 2019.

It’s an interesting experience meeting up with artists. Very often we record an interview a few weeks before we get a chance to broadcast it. The old AC vault even now has interviews in the can we’ve not yet put out on the airwaves. So it was with interest I listened back recently to two (fairly long) conversations I had with Jason Isbell from last year and 2014.

Perhaps it’s what happened in between the two interviews that interests us the most. In that short time Jason went from a much admired Americana artist to someone who could credibly be perceived as the ‘keeper of the flame.’ If, like me, you are a little uncomfortable with the catch-all terminology of Americana as a sub category of modern rock, allow me to unpack it here a little. In Jason’s case it’s wholly applicable for a number of reasons. For one thing he’s distilled the roots/alt country music of his own Alabama background into something which identifies wholly with the ordinary working person; songs about real life which, it seems, no longer interest the mainstream country singers emerging from Music Row. In contrast to their self-adulatory obsessions, Jason ‘s eye is caught by a different landscape. He wants to tell you stories about ‘the lights down in the lobby’ that ‘don’t shine and just flicker while the elevator whines.’ (Flagship) In his song Elephant it’s the final lines that pack the punch: ‘There’s one thing that’s real clear to me: No one dies with dignity.  We just try to ignore the elephant somehow, somehow.‘

You can hear both these songs on Jason’s current record, ‘Live From the Ryman’ where in this hallowed space you can hear the reverence and clear respect the Nashville audience have for this man and his excellent band. Seeing his progress to the point where he now lives his life at his own pace, as a husband and a young father and knowing what he has had to leave behind only increases my admiration for what Jason Isbell has achieved. But for one second let me return to that Americana riff. A few years ago when BB King died I remember seeing a tweet by Jason about how much they had learned from the man and how much of his music they had taken in and recycled in their own music. That, my radio friends, explains this clumsy Americana tag better than anything else. An artist whose ears and eyes are open to the roots of the music and is willing to absorb and pass on in new and fresh ways leaving room for his own influences to shine through…Americana..Jason style.

He’s won Grammys and Americana Awards and he’s had No 1 albums and a record run of shows at The Ryman. That’s not why we’re spending two hours in his company this week, however. We will celebrate Jason Isbell because he’s at the peak of his powers and he’s telling simple, but heart breaking stories of human struggle, disappointment, love and joy. Join us this Tuesday evening (and a repeat on Friday) for a very special celebration.

For my own part, I’m out on tour for a few weeks with my old road pals, Deacon Blue, so this will be the last blog until Christmas time. I’m leaving you with some very special Nashville conversations which you can enjoy for the next few weeks.

Sometimes it’s hard to work out why things have come to be. In music there are partnerships which seems to work because they both seem to come alive in a way that never quite happens when they are on their own. Think The Everleys, The Louvins and maybe even (controversially) Gram and Emmylou. We could add a few modern versions too with First Aid Kit and Gillian Welch and David Rawlings feeling like acts which rely on their respective partners to make the best of what they do individually.

I was thinking about this in the context of this week’s special guest Dawn Landes. There’s really no way you would have figured Dawn for a country singer in the traditional sense. Like so many artists we feature on the show her music has been influenced by and often nods to the roots of American music…and therefore becomes country in our book..but it would be a stretch to rack any of her albums in the country section of your favourite record shop. There’s been a misleading cover a couple of records ago when she looked ready to lassoo something or other on ‘Sweet Heart Rodeo,‘ but the music didn’t really follow what the sleeve suggested. All of the above is true…until now.

Last year Dawn took time out from a tour in New Zealand to make along distance call to the city where she now lives, Nashville, to speak to Fred Foster. For reasons she’ll explain on this week’s show, she wanted to see if he would be interested in coming out of semi retirement to produce her next record. I’m delighted to say he agreed and you can of course hear the glorious results on her new album, ‘Meet Me At The River’ which we’ve been enjoying these last few months.

The partnership between Dawn and Fred seems more unlikely the more you explore it. he was the man who ran and produced records for Monument in the 60’s…he  even wrote some of them. He’s credited with developing the careers of Roy Orbison and Dolly Parton and has produced albums by Willie Nelson, Billy Joe Shaver and Kris Kristofferson. On Dawn’s record he introduced her to Charlie McCoy and Bobby Bare.….oh yes, there are stories. As well as a great acoustic session from Dawn (where she covers John Prine) we’ll celebrate the music of Fred Foster in the second hour of the show.

Elsewhere…more from that Pistol Annies album, new discoveries Nora Collins and Desiree Canon and the new direction from Ferris and Sylvester. It’s all in a packed show which starts on BBC Radio Scotland from five past nine. Join me if you can.

One of the reasons (of too many to mention) I love the radio is the sheer surprises it brings. Not only does it spring songs on you when you are least expecting it but often it manages to do that at just the right moment. I’ve told Roddy Hart this before but there are nights when I’ve taken a little detour round our little local park on a Tuesday night just to hear the end of something he’s been playing as I wind my way home. I now have to thank him for how I discovered Gabriel Kahane.

The late Mr Wogan was the king of the poignant audio drop. On the way back from a school run he could turn your life round with a choice spin just at the point when you needed it most. I still remember the times when he’d ease in Frank Sinatra singing Rod McKuen:

There was a girl in Portland
Before the winter chill
We used to go a-courtin’
Along October hill
And she could laugh away the dark clouds
Cry away the snow
It seems like only yesterday
As down the road I go

Love’s Been Good To Me has all the vital elements of a Wogan moment. A sense of nostalgia, lost love, regret but a reminder that there’s more in this world for which we can be more grateful than resentful. I had an old musician friend who couldn’t hear a great song played on his car radio without parking up the vehicle and listening until it was over, such was his deep love of any given track. I’m not sure I haven’t done the same thing.

It’s the moment, the time, the place and then the music…film and TV editors know all about it. From Harry Nillson in Midnight Cowboy to The Chi-Lites, in one of the most devastating scenes from The Sopranos, the song starting and ending in the right place locks the visuals for ever.

On this week’s AC we’ll celebrate the talent of a young woman who, for me, knows everything about timing and the joy of delivering a song when it’s most needed. At The Hydro earlier in the year Kacey Musgraves brought herself up to the mini stage at the back of the hall in a celebratory song for people of all sexual orientations, Rainbow…a truly perfect moment from Golden Hour. Six months on we’ll revisit that time we spent with Kacey before Golden Hour came out and before we saw that particular show. You can listen again to the conversation with Kacey who perhaps knew better than anyone just how perfectly her new album was about to be received. This late in the year  I’m delighted to tell you the only album that rivals it for my affections is the one released a few months ago by her husband, Ruston Kelly. You can hear Kacey talk about him too!

Earlier on we’ll catch up with our Nashville correspondent and find out why his day job – being a great songwriter – is meaning there will be more of Bill DeMain than usual on this week’s show. In case you wondered, Bill is firstly a musician and songwriter with Swan Dive as well as being respected author of many books on rock and pop and a regular contributor to Mojo, Entertainment Weekly and Performing Songwriter. For us, of course, he is the best man to lead us and any of our AC friends on the greatest tour of Music City, ‘Walkin’ Nashville.’ Bill joins me in the first hour of the programme with lots of local news where he’ll also pay tribute to Tony Joe White who died quite suddenly over the weekend.

Listen out too for music from Larkin Poe, Neilson Hubbard, Austin Lucas and Mary Bragg singing a new song she wrote with the correspondent himself!

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

I

How the romantics loved the Autumn. More than anything else it has a melancholy brought about by the inevitable sense of an ending. Wallowing in all of that poses little difficulty to those us who retreat to songs as a natural expression, but I became aware in my more recent years of how difficult a time it could be for people whose fragile hold on the world meant they could never take life for granted. My own father used to express a deep joy at the advent of spring which I have only understood now as I pass well above the age I thought of him as ‘old.’

However, I hold an enduring love of this time of year and Scotland has been beautiful over the last week or so, made better by the absence of winds allowing those slow turning leaves time to linger a little longer.

For me Autumn too is associated with Another Country and paying music on the radio. Instead of going out, we stay in and invite folk to come join us in the studio. Around this point in the year we start to wonder how we’re going to pay enough respect to the records we’ve encountered since the start of the year.

So many good albums have come out and are still popping up almost every day. This week we’ll get round to playing as many tracks as we can as well as introducing you to the joy of Edinburgh duo The Jellyman’s Daughter. We’ve played their music over the last few years but this year TJD took a huge step forward by bringing out a bold, ambitious new album which we’ve featured on previous shows.

Dead Reckoning keeps the folk/bluegrass sensibility of the band but, in adding evocative string arrangements, the album has deeper resonance than we’ve come to expect from Emily Kelly and Graham Coe. On this week’s AC they will be with us in Pacific Quay’s Studio One to play tracks live from that album and answer your host’s questions.

Elsewhere, to celebrate their arrival on theses shores, we’re going to remind you of some great session moments from earlier in the year when First Aid Kit came in to our studio before their opening concerts of this year’s (first) UK tour. It’s been another record breaking year for the Soderberg sisters as their tour goes from US to Europe and back again. They play Australia early next year before some home-coming Scandinavian shows in February. If you have a ticket to see them in Scotland this coming week, count yourself very lucky.

We will also remind you of the news we broke earlier about the line up for next year’s Country To Country at Glasgow’s Hydro. We’re going to try to do all of this in two hours starting at five past nine this Tuesday on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

‘See the bloke behind the bar,’ he intoned conspiratorially, ‘the biggest feet in Britain. Had to have his shoes specially made and sent to him.’

Looking at the barman the over the assorted pints and shorts nothing of this was glaringly obvious. Did I detect a quiet smugness and was he sending out a message? ‘This may not be the best pub gig in the world, I’ll admit the hours are long and I’ve seen better gantries but you know what…and nothing will take this away from me…I have the biggest feet in the kingdom and you’d better know that I know.‘

The pub in question was a working club in south Wales and this week’s visit by Ashley McBryde had me thinking on some interesting ‘Dive Bars.’ You may remember it was Ashley’s ‘Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega,‘ which started us listening to her music. That ‘dive bar’ title doesn’t necessary mean abject in Ashley’s opinion..in fact quite the opposite. I kinda know where’s she’s coming from.

There have been a few bars over the years where, for one reason or another I’ve found myself looking round thinking, ‘against fairly considerable odds, this night has turned out pretty well.’ I’m thinking of a secret watering-hole in Beijing on a cold December night which had no name or sign but opened into one of the more congenial taverns I’ve ever encountered. There was that little pub with the roaring fire in downtown Sheffield where my big pal Steph was finding it hard to work out how we could keep buying rounds and still keep getting change from a tenner! Memorably too a little street bar in the south of France where we waited as the owners strung up a wire across the main street above the traffic so we could all watch their national team progress to the next stage of the World Cup. None was what you’d call a dive bar…but there was always plenty of character.

On this week’s Another Country you can hear about the time Ashley returned to her own dive-bar in Dahlonega, The Crimson Moon which is situated 50 miles or so outside Atlanta, Georgia where one of those magical nights ensued. You’ll also hear her sing the song in question in an exclusive session and conversation which includes her talk of her father’s love for Townes Van Zandt and Don Williams and her own further adventures since we first met. Since our encounter in March in Nashville there’s been a lot of things happening to Ashley and you’ll love her stories of Eric Church, Jimmy Fallon and a very special night in Colorado with Little Big Town.

As well as all of this we’ll have music from Ruston Kelly, Mountain Man, Nicki Bluhm, Pistol Annies and classics from Glen Campbell, Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Presley. We will also play you something brand new from the forthcoming album by Rosanne Cash.

Our very own dive bar starts serving at five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland this Tuesday evening and we’re repeated on Friday evening too. Come on in and sit yourselves down.

I did a bit of rifling in a record shop the other day. It’s an old habit that dies hard.

For me as a young school boy it was so much part of teenage life. We went to school in the city centre and lunch times and meandering journeys home were often spent in record departments. From memory there were three or four shops in easy reach of our school playground and over time the number grew. When I moved through to work in Glasgow I worked in Maryhill and I often found myself ending my working day wandering in to the city just to nosey around in record shops. There was so much we only half knew. The fact was that some of what we thought we knew was gleaned by staring long and hard at the covers and only imagining what lay inside.

For years some of the contents of these records remained a mystery. I knew the cover art inside out and even surmised what the music might sound like on the basis of the photographs, graphics and song titles. A friend invented the great game of asking the square assistants in D.M. Brown’s (never top of the hip parade) if they could order albums of invented artists and names: Do you have Rick Wakeman’s ‘Wooden Horse of Troy’ or is it not out yet?

However the really deep joy of any album sleeve was looking, reading, supposing and listening in the glorious solitude of my own bedroom. It struck me that so many sleeves reflected people being free to make music at all times of day and night. I’d heard recording studios worked round the clock and I tried to imagine what it would be like to be in studios where these recordings were put together. An early purchase brought all of these things together: Elton John’s Honky Chateau…still a favourite …sent my head spinning. I liked the rough and ready, troubadour Elton much more than I ever embraced glam Elton. The stubble and the semmet suited the music better for me. There was also another magical element to all of this.

I loved the photograph of the raw unploughed fields of France on the inside gatefold. Unglamorous, wintry and forbidding they spoke to me of freedom….these people had gone off to France (in winter!) to make music when we were all captive in classrooms. How decadent was that?

In all the sleeves the message was the same: Freedom. Led Zeppelin IV, Stephen Stills 2, Ram, Tapestry…I imagined into all of them people who were no longer bound by the deadly duties of the daily drudge but free to be roving troubadours going wherever and whenever with the muse. It was a lovely dream and I have no reason to be disabused of it now.

The album was and, hopefully, still is a beautiful thing. However it’s probably closer to its demise than its ever been. Don’t be fooled by the resurgence of vinyl..these figures only show an increase in what is a dying market. People got out of the habit of buying records and it’s going to be a long way back to convince nearly two generations of people that they need to pay serious money for stuff that’s been almost free for years.

This Tuesday we will celebrate the album. We’ll bring you some country albums we think worthy of owning in their entirety and we’ll play as many as we can from the original 12″ pressings. I’ve put some visual clues here for you. It’s going to be full of great country music..our way.

We’re on air from five past nine on BBC Scotland FM and repeated this Friday too! Join me if you can.

I’m not sure how it happened, but it happened somewhere on a humdrum  street towards the end of last week. I crumbled. I didn’t crumble slowly…it took an introduction, a verse and a chorus of a song that only lasts just over 3 minutes. By about a minute in my heart was broken again.

Is that what it takes? I suspect it is. I can remember it happening before on so many occasions. As ever when I crumbled this time it came just when I wasn’t expecting it (isn’t that the best way) and it came via the new record by John Hiatt. The think about getting your heart broken is you are never ready for it. If, like me, it usually happens in a musical moment, you’ll know that timing is everything. It’s that playout on the end of The Sopranos or suddenly in Jackie Brown…it just comes along and kills you. I remember being re-floored by the power of Who Knows Where The Time Goes as I sat alone in the theatre watching Mark Rylance put the needle down on the vinyl in Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem. Now there’s a moment.

John Hiatt’s about to release a significant new record. Stronger than anything I’ve heard from him a while and emptier and rawer too. You’re there early on on this album but when the acoustic guitar riff starts on the third track in and he sings the opening lines to Aces Up Your Sleeve, you know it’s a song you just can’t ignore. And maybe, just maybe, that’s what happens when songs sneak in there. Try as you might, you just can’t ignore them.

Processed with VSCO with u3 preset

On this week’s Another Country we will try to bring you some of those and there will be plenty to choose from. However we’re going to clear some space for a special session and conversation with someone who knows what heartbreak feels like. Ruby Boots asks for her heart not to be broken once but twice on her new, excellent album, Don’t Talk About It.

Ruby Boots is the headline name for all the music made by Bex Chilcot and she came in to see us a few weeks ago when she was in Scotland on tour. Talking to her that afternoon  I got to hear about her long journey to Nashville which came via  a spell in Scotland and started in her home town of Perth, Western Australia. She recorded songs from the new album and told us about the music she loved and is still loving as well as her good friendship with her fellow music city alt-country queen, Nikki Lane. We think you’ll love spending some quality time with Ruby too.

Elsewhere we’ll hear from The Pistol Annies, Eli Paper Boy Reed, Anthony D’Amato, Dawn Landes and Shakey Graves. There will be more music from that Jason Isbell Live release too and we’ll have some cool things on vinyl as ever. We can’t promise you won’t get your heart broken; after all this is country music.. our way.

Join me from five past nine this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland.

It’s a calm autumnal morning, I’m sitting at my kitchen table and I’m listening to The Nashville Sound. To many that’s the recent (and very good LP) from Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit but it’s also the title to the records produced in the 50’s and early 60’s by Chet Atkins. So there can be no confusion I’m listening to Jason.

I found myself thinking a lot about Chet Atkins over the last while. I was watching some of my friends play a gig recently and my guitarist buddy was sporting a very fine Chet Atkins model Gretch semi-acoustic. Heck it looked so good you’d be broken-hearted if it didn’t sound brilliant. It did though.

On this week’s Another Country we’ll welcome back our regular Nashville correspondent, Bill DeMain who is a songwriter, fabulous musician, journalist and host of the, increasingly popular, best thing to do in Music City, ‘Walkin’ Nashville’ tour. Bill’s been telling us that there is a growing number of folk joining the tour who’ve heard about it from Bill’s appearances on the old AC. We’re proud to be part of the success story. It really is a great experience.

For those of you not lucky enough to have had Bill’s Grand Tour (why did he never call it that I wonder?) let me tell you a little about it. You need to meet Bill on a particular corner of 5th Avenue and Union St in downtown Nashville. That’s the site, outside The Bank of America, where, in 2003, the bank unveiled a life-size statue of the man himself perched on a stool picking his legendary Gretch. Beside the statue is another stool where you can have yourself framed picking alongside the great man himself.

Bill will tell you all of this much better than I ever can of course. He’ll then lead you on a walk of wonders around the lower downtown and Broadway through Printers Alley, tell you about a Grammy Award album recorded right on the street and escort you into Skulls Rainbow Room before winding you through the back streets to the Mother Church of Country Music, The Ryman. Your mind will be exploding with brilliant country stories before you come out of Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge blinking into the sun on Broadway. It’s two of the best hours you’ll ever spend in the city and from there you’ll want to follow up all the stories by buying the records, visiting the museums and catching as much live, music as time will allow.

I thought a lot about the thread of Bill’s walk over the last while as we put together this week’s show. Starting at that statue and going through some of these landmark places is, in one sense, also the narrative thread of country music. These landmarks we pass on Bill’s odyssey signify the bumps and notches that old Gretch picked up bringing the music we get today. It’s changed but it’s still country music.

It’s hugely significant that The Americana Festival which Bill will tell us about this week uses the Ryman Theatre as its centre too. That old church still resonates with Hank Williams, Dottie West, Tammy Wynette, Charley Pride and so many others. Increasingly too it’s the home of the alternative country stars and the those who consider Americana their natural section in any record store.

Significantly, Jason Isbell and his Nashville Sound walked away with all the honours last week. Its no surprise that phrase still resonates all these years after Chet.

On this week’s Another Country you can enjoy music from the Americana Festival from Gillian Welch, Wood and Wire, Roseanne Cash and Brandi Carlile. New things from First Aid Kit and John Hiatt too. All that and Bill too. It’s only live on BBC Radio Scotland FM from five past nine. Join me if you can.

I’ve never seen a promo video for any Gretchen Peters song and I’m very glad I’ve been spared. It’s really because, over the last 15 years or so, her songs have inveigled their way into my life without any added stimulus; so often I’ve seen them play out in my head and imagined where they might take place.

It started a few years back when the late great broadcaster Terry Wogan (a radio genius in case anyone thinks of him as TV light entertainer) would seamlessly drop Gretchen’s ‘When You Are Old‘ on a mid-week morning…oh for some of those radio days to come back.

It was probably ten years ago when the real force of Gretchen’s story telling really impacted. The Bluebird Cafe, a homesick Scotsman and ‘On A Bus To St Cloud’ is a pretty potent brew.

I was thinking of these songs again this week as I listened in the car to Dancing With The Beast, Gretchen’s current record. I love the element of mystery she always keeps in her stories. Who did she think she saw on that bus? What did that bumper sticker say in Lowlands? How did this woman end up terrified but still dancing with the beast? We, of course, understand the thread and the suggestion but we never fully know; and that’s what keeps us interested.

When the age of video first dawned there was a famous interview with Springsteen where he likened the art-form to painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa. Thirty odd years later I think he, as is often the case, was spot on. Gretchen may have made a video or two (I really have no idea) but I doubt any of them will ever be required.

On this week’s Another Country you’ll understand a little more about the art of Gretchen Peters. A couple of months ago at Perth’s Southern Fried Festival I caught up with her to talk songs, #MeToo, Trump and all the elements going into her music. It was, as ever, a fascinating and revealing conversation which we’ll broadcast in full on this week’s show.

Elsewhere listen out for Dawn Landes featuring Bobby Bare and Bobby himself on glorious vinyl. We’ll have more from Mountain Man, a new track from Beer Jacket and an exciting new harmony group from Oklahoma called Annie Oakley. We’ll feature a lost song from Gene Clark and more from that Big Red Machine record we’ve been raving about.

Country Music? Yes…… our way. We’re live from five past nine this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can