As each year begins I often find myself wondering what new things will come along which, by the end of that year, we might look back and think, ‘How did we manage to live without that?’ I guess we could apply this to all manner of items, inventions, apps or innovations but I like to think of it in a musical context. On BBC One the other night they were showing the film, ‘Yesterday‘ which (though I still have to watch it) is based on the idea of a world where no one has heard of The Beatles. Such a central part of our culture is almost impossible to imagine being missing from our lives, but as years pass by, I find myself adding songs and artists I would surely have missed had they not made records I go back to again and again.

So it is this year with the first ever solo album by Allison Russell. Perhaps we should have seen it coming. Allison is no overnight success. We have played her records as a member of Birds of Chicago and more recently as part of the folk collaborative, Our Native Daughters  where she shared the billing with Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah and Leyla McCalla. All of that could well lead an astute listener to expect something as life changing and brilliant as Outside Child, but I’m afraid it still took me by surprise. Put simply. Allison’s first ever solo album is a stunning piece of work on many levels. Firstly, musically it’s a great listen. It plays to her strengths which include her distinctive voice and sense of harmony, her collaborative instincts and her desire to tell her own stories. It’s the stories, however, which mark this record out as a unique piece of art which should be viewed as that. It’s the songs that really make this count. Allison isn’t afraid to tell a story which many artists would find almost too painful to revisit. Her songs are about her childhood in Montreal suffering at the hands from a step-father who, not only, abused her sexually but was also a racist whose values and behaviour were formed in the white supremacist community in Indiana where he was born in 1936. In this week’s Another Country you can hear Allison explain what a ‘sundown town’ is and what it meant for her growing up. She also talks about her own sexuality, how looking for refuge from the torment of her family led her to explore that more fully and how all of this impacted on her as an artist and a mother.

Please don’t imagine for a second that this makes the album or the interview too hard a listen. What is remarkable, in all of this, is how much joy there is in Allison’s performance on the record and in what she has to say about her life now. I found it THE MOST moving interview I have ever recorded in the many years I have been on air with the AC and I recommend our second hour to you on this week’s show.

We will also take time to bring you some great new records by Son Volt, Holly Macve, Jackson Browne and a real return to form from Yola. As ever, we’re on BBC Radio Scotland from five past eight and you can catch the show anytime and any place you happen to be on BBC Sounds. Join me if you can.

I wonder what event, dinner, family gathering or expedition we will all look back upon and agree that was the night when we knew this awful time was finally over? I remember in the early days of the pandemic there was a feeling that there would be a VE type announcement and we’d all go to the pub or to a gig, the first chord would be played and we’d be back. I don’t need to tell you that it’s not been that simple and that there is still a little way to go.

On Saturday night, however, we went out for a meal, met a few old friends at the restaurant and enjoyed sitting outside for a drink as music played and for a while, just for an hour or so, it felt like old times. Getting back in the taxi and putting the masks on is a quick way of reminding ourselves that there is still a little while to go, but even as we wander through our cities, towns or villages we’ll see signs of life we’d begun to think, a few months ago, we’d never see again.

One of the things we lost during these last few months is our catch-ups with our Nashville correspondent, Bill DeMain. Bill’s legendary walking tours round Music City’s historic sites had to be stopped during the pandemic and it’s only in the last few weeks he’s reconvened on his beat and welcomed visitors to the city with his stories of Chet Atkins, Cortelia Clark and the Twitty Burger. You may have heard Bill tell us some of these tales when we visited in the city a few years back to record some special shows, but if not, I really hope you get a chance to go in person and walk with Bill, as it’s the best way to fall back in love with country music.

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So, we are delighted that Bill’s tour is back on and with that he’s been gathering up enough news and gossip to join us again this week to share more stories from Twang Town. For our part we will bring you some great new music from former guests, The Lone Bellow, Lauren Jenkins, Hiss Golden Messenger and something hot off the press from Tenille Townes which may well make your week.

I’ve also been finding songs from years gone by which we’ve not heard for ages and will bring you some choice cuts over these next few summer months. We’ll hear some older classics from Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings as well as from the man whose songs they’ve both covered, Kris Kristofferson who has eighty five candles alight on a birthday cake this week.

As ever, we’ll be on BBC Radio Scotland from five past eight and you will be able to find us and listen any time of your choosing on BBC Sounds. If you are free however, I’d love your company from five past eight this Tuesday evening.

I started writing the blog on Monday morning, full of hope and excitement for the Scotland game. Fortunately I’m old and have learned to pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again. As I remind my family and friends too, supporting a team like Dundee United has given me all the grounding I need in learning to live with disappointment.

There are some things we can rely on however, and as ever, country music will provide us all with any consolation we might be requiring. I knew too that we had something rather special in the can for this week’s show. We have long been fans of all three Pistol Annies on the AC. You will remember previous sessions and conversations with Angaleena Presley (Holler Annie) and a week rarely goes by without a song from Miranda Lambert (Lonestar Annie). However, on this week’s show we’ll be hearing from Hippie Annie, the third member of the trio, Ashley Monroe.

‘I don’t want a hint of sadness,’ was the agenda Ashley set out  for making her new album. You can understand why too. Rosegold is the first new record by Ashley since she gave birth to her son, Dalton, three years ago.

On this week’s Another Country we will play out a conversation I recorded with Ashley a few weeks ago just as the album came out. It’s a lovely listen and if it’s any kind of genre it’s a summer record. There’s sunshine pouring in through every space on this album and it works perfectly. Sure, it’s like so many records that come out of Nashville in that it adheres to the rule that artists, who are mainly songwriters first, enjoy collaborating with other writers. But, in this case, Ashley has departed from her normal template and palate of instrumentation to make a very interesting, fresh and often blissed out record. Judge for yourselves on this week’s show, when you can hear Ashley’s album and her take on it.

Elsewhere there’s new music from Teddy Thompson and Jenni Muldaur doing Porter and Dolly, Chris Stapleton being brilliant on the CMT’s, Nashville’s new star, Lily Rose as well as Jack Francis.

I am delighted to say we won’t be on air next Tuesday evening, as correctly, we’ll all be watching the games. I know that many of you will be as keen to watch England as Scotland but you probably know by now who I’ll be supporting. It wouldn’t be fair not to send out a little greeting to any listeners we have from Wales too. Good luck to all of us!

Either way, as the great Michael Marra often reminded us in song, ‘Win lose or draw, you get home to your bed just the same.’ See you on the other side. Meanwhile we will be on BBC Radio Scotland this Tuesday at five past eight or any time of your choosing on BBC Sounds.

It’s moving to see the pictures from Normandy this Sunday. We spent a lot of time catching up on the D Day stories there some years ago on a family holiday. Showing the photographs to her friend our youngest daughter explained, ‘That’s a graveyard. We usually went to one of these every day.’

We were travelling through Normandy in early August. When we remarked on the beautiful skies and moon we were seeing, one of our travelling companions, more attuned to the ways of the countryside, pointed out that we were seeing the residue of the harvest. So fertile is the land around that part of Northern France that there are two harvests and the sky was simply coloured by the dust coming from the wheat and barley fields being gathered in.

I thought of this ‘early harvest’ when we started selecting songs for our half yearly round up. I have always felt there is much to celebrate in new music and 2021 has proved to be no different. Each week we’ve found new artists and been delighted by familiar names returning with new projects. On this week’s Another Country we’ll spend two hours playing songs we’ve broadcast over the last few months and all of them are worthy of repeat plays.

We are delighted to include names we didn’t know last year at this time. Listen out for Hailey Whitters (above), Lainey Wilson and Stephanie Lambring. Listen out too for some fine returns from Israel Nash, Valerie June, Eric Church and Alan Jackson. It’s great to know the artists we have loved so long are still surprising us with fresh new music.

You might also be interested to know there’s now a new strand available on BBC Sounds. Over the last few years I’ve recorded some lengthy conversations with some significant artists. Dolly Parton, Paul McCartney, Joan Armatrading, Jim Kerr and Elvis Costello are just some of the names in the occasional Ricky Ross Meets series on BBC Radio Scotland. We’ve now established a permanent home for all of the programmes in the series and they will eventually all be available all year round as podcasts.

Even as I write I am still planning more of these recordings for future weeks and when they appear on the radio they can now also be listened to beyond the normal 30 day limit of BBC Sounds. So, look for and follow the Ricky Ross Meets link here and you can soon enjoy some great songwriters talking about their musical lives.

Meanwhile tune in this Tuesday for that half year round up which I am certain you will enjoy, even if, quite reasonably, you’ll almost certainly have a few records that you think should have been included. We’re on BBC Radio Scotland from five past eight and BBC Sounds wherever and whenever you fancy.

“I think it started when I joined a jam band.” You just know when someone, whose been making singer-songwriter solo albums for the last twenty five years or so starts with that explainer for his new album, you need to lean in a bit.

The conversation I recorded with Todd Snider a few weeks ago when his new album, ‘First Agnostic Church of Hope and Wonder,’ came out was as enjoyable a chat as I’ve enjoyed all year. Todd is a poet, a prophet and quite possibly the voice we most need to hear coming out of the southern states of the USA right now. I talked to him a day after the one year anniversary of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and I knew there was much of that terrible day which had helped shape his thinking for the record.  On the song, ‘Battle Hymn of The Album,’ he channels the old story of the Civil War and John Brown’s soldiers still marching on into a chant of ‘Get down on the ground.’  America’s legacy of slavery and segregation is front and central in all of this and the irony that Todd (a white southerner) uses African American funk to tell this story is not lost on him. What you will hear from the conversation however, is his deep respect of where that music came from.

On the album Todd takes on the character of a preacher, which in real life he became, to carry out the wedding ceremony of the current King and Queen of Americana, Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires. All of that came out of a deep friendship that grew between the three of them a couple of albums back. It was lovely to hear Todd talk in such glowing terms about the young group of country/Americana artists who’ve given us so much pleasure over the last few years. As well as Jason and Amanda he talks in glowing terms about Margo Price, Kacey Musgraves, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Sierra Ferrell and, of course, Chris Stapleton. There’s also a great tribute to the great Eric Church where Todd compares Nashville today to the halcyon period of the seventies when the mainstream and the alternative were finding common ground in fresh new ways. Amen to all of that.

There’s so much more in the conversation with Todd in the chat you can hear on this week’s AC. Listen out too to his delight at Tom Jones recent cover of a song from his last album, ‘Talking Reality Television Blues.’

There’s more though, so much more on this week’s show. Listen out for new music from Alan Jackson, Hailey Whitters and something else from the excellent new album by Allison Russell. We think you’ll enjoy discovering Lady Nade and will welcome Teddy Thompson and Jenni Muldaur‘s new tribute to Porter and Dolly. 

All of this is available from five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland this Tuesday evening or whenever you like on BBC Sounds. Look out soon too for my Ricky Ross Meets series becoming available any time, anywhere as part of BBC Podcasts. If you want to keep me company, I’m sure you’ll know where to find me.

It’s 2007 and I am driving back to Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve gone from Music City on a bright Saturday morning and managed to have a whirlwind twenty-four hours in Memphis taking in The Lorraine Motel, Gracelands, Beale Street and The Stax Museum.

I’d vowed to myself earlier in the year that I had finished with collecting physical copies of albums and was all geared up to go digital. By the time I’d spent my first week in Nashville that vow had been well and truly broken and on my return from Memphis I was realising I needed to buy and check-in another suitcase for the albums I’d purchased. The Stax Museum had brought another haul which was sitting on the passenger seat as I made my way north and east back to the country capital. A friend had mentioned Buddy Miller’s recent production of Solomon Burke’s Nashville album and I’d found a copy in the gift shop at Stax. It was there, breezing along Interstate 40 and taking in the scenery I first heard Tom T Hall’s ‘That’s How I Got To Memphis.’

Since then, I, and you too if you spend any time listening to country music, will have encountered the songs and the voice of Tom T Hall many times. A year after that drive on I 40 Hall was inducted into the Country Music Hall Of Fame. If this felt a little late in his career he explained it by citing the fact that he wasn’t well loved by the songwriters of Nashville as he didn’t collaborate, but chose to write songs by himself. I’ve got a lot of sympathy for Tom’s opinion here as I’m pretty sure some of these great songs might never have come to be heard had it not been for the individuality of his genius. Solomon Burke got it, Tammy Wynette, George Jones and Gram Parsons too and hopefully, if you’ve not heard his music already, you too will be wishing Tom T Hall a hearty congratulations on his 85 years in this world this Tuesday.

As well as blowing out some candles on Tom’s cake we’ll mark the passing of another great artist who we lost some thirty years ago this week. Gene Clark was an original Byrd whose music is still cherished by the wider music community beyond country, folk and Americana. If all this doesn’t make you tune in you might like a little journey we are making through southern blues courtesy of The Black Keys whose new album, Delta Kream is simply that. Listen out too for new things from Robert Finley, Allison Russell, Todd Snider and Son Volt. If you haven’t heard last week’s Bob Dylan special there is still time and we have Emma Swift to remind you how great his song writing really is.

It’s a packed two hours of new music and some classic country cuts all hand picked to bring you some late May joy. You can find the show this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland from five past eight. Join me if you can.

Not knowing where to start with Bob Dylan is probably the best place to start this week.

Ten years ago, on the AC, we started a year long celebration of Dylan by playing something from every album in reverse order of their release date. By then we were up to Together Through Life and, lest we forget too, Christmas In the Heart. It was fun for me to spend a part of each week over the year 2011/2012 listening back to a Bob album. I knew the eighties were going to be tougher than other decades but I was delighted to find gems along the way in albums I’d never really listened to, and others, to which I had simply, not listened nearly enough. If you have been with our show before and since that time you might well remember the centrepiece of the year being the night we played Blood On The Tracks from beginning to end. We are still proud of that little radio moment.

What we avoided then and what we want to avoid as we approach Bob’s 80th birthday is any sense that we know or value particular periods of Dylans’s back catalogue more than others. Chewing over the merits of one period, album, tour, version, backing band are really for other people at another time. For me and for the AC, Bob Dylan represents much of what we hope to celebrate in roots music. He is a great singer and songwriter who has helped to define, but more significantly, change the popular music of the last one hundred years or so. It may well be that it takes a good bit of this century for people to recognise how significant his impact has really been.

Folk music of the 50s and 60s was the crucible from which the art of Bob Dylan was born. Not content to stay within such a defined compound, he broke out by the simple act of momentum at every turn. Where others were content to revisit, Bob explored new territory. Where contemporaries plateaued Bob kept reaching higher and when we imagined there was nowhere new to ascend he would take extraordinary diversions of faith, style and, in the most unexpected twist of all, a third act coup de theatre, he comes back on stage as the singer and chronicler of the American songbook. He becomes, as he said he would many years before, a Song and Dance Man.

On Another Country we are keen to play music which, not only sounds like the genre, but we also love to celebrate that which could not possibly exist without its spreading back to the folk, hillbilly traditions which inspired it. If there was no Jimmie Rogers there would be no Hank Williams, Kitty Wells, Wanda Jackson or Elvis Presley. Bob knew and valued them all but so much more. We know how much he loves John Lee Hooker, Eric Andersen, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Karen Dalton or The Clancy Brothers. If, like me, you loved the Theme Time Radio Hour you’d know how much Bob still loves music and, annoyingly, was easily the best DJ ever.

So this Tuesday as we prepare to celebrate eighty years of Bob Dylan’s presence here on planet earth on May 24th I will give you two hours of favourite Bob tracks which try to convey a little of that broad sweep of creativity. There will be folk, gospel, country and even some swing. There will be songs of weary cynicism, songs of discovery, joy, longing and love. There will be prophetic warning and late night regret as we work our way through a catalogue of creativity like no other and for which there is no let up in adoration by admirers of all ages in all countries in the world. He is the holder of Grammys, Fellowships, Medals of Congress, Doctorates and The Nobel Prize. In all of that he rarely steps outside Harlan Howard‘s wise maxim of ‘three chords and the truth’ and for all of that we are, truly, grateful.

Join me for a special celebration this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland from five past eight or any time you choose, anywhere in the world, on BBC Sounds.

Last week, the first week any of us were allowed to stay away from home, we took a short holiday. It wasn’t far away, the weather was pretty mixed and we ate fish ‘n’ chips at least twice. It wasn’t the Cote D’Azur or some exotic Caribbean island but I think it may have been one of the most anticipated and best breaks I’ve enjoyed in a long while. I’m sure I’m not the only one to have experienced some of those feelings recently.

One of the best things was to be able to get in the car and take off without the feeling we couldn’t venture any further than our council boundary. On our return some friends asked us to pay them a visit to their newly built holiday hut facing over the Southern Uplands about an hour or so from Glasgow. We enjoyed a warm spring evening outside their little woodland paradise catching up on old stories before driving home through the gloaming down the Clyde valley. The good Jamie McDougall was spinning his Classics Unwrapped and we took in the breathtaking beauty of the sunset to some gorgeous music as we faced north and west again. Having had a holiday then a bonus day out I felt a little like our old AC friend, Tift Merrit, when she sung how much she longed to stay on for a couple of days on her song, ‘Feeling of Beauty.’ Sometimes it feels like time should just stand still.

That’s perhaps where music comes in. Play the song again and suddenly you are there. I have been playing a beautiful string piece I heard on Jamie’s show this morning and imagining that journey as I listen; and I may just need to play it again and again over the next few months. Taking ourselves out of where we have been may be the thing we need most right now. We’ve been stuck in one place for a long time and we all need a little room to roam. If you can’t roam yet, let me recommend the radio to you. Should you still be without the means or time to get away we hope to take you on little journeys of the mind on every show we’re on air. Songs about places we’ve never been, people we haven’t met yet or heartbreak we’ve been spared; they’re all in our regular two hours on any given Tuesday.

You can listen at home, out of doors or just cruising around wherever you happen to be going. This week you’ll hear bluegrass from Sturgill Simpson, new songs from Dean Owens, Ashley Ray, Kalie Shorr and Saint Sister. Listen out too for Ashley Monroe (a future guest) duetting with Trent Dabbs on his new single. It’s a song co written with one of our guests from a couple of years back, Anderson East. There will be something new from Anderson too. It’s a show packed with great songs you’ll want to play wherever you are. Join me from eight on BBC Radio Scotland FM or on BBC Sounds if you can.

I’ve been trying to write a song called, Frozen Yogurt Friday. In all truth? I haven’t, I’m relieved to say. It went round my head a few different times over the last year or so though. It came from a late spring afternoon I once spent on my own in Franklin, Tennessee. It was Friday and I was far from home, so I became a little sentimental.

I drove out to Franklin at the end of my writing week in Nashville and parked the car near the old presbyterian church in the centre of the town which still has landmarks to the battle there during the civil war. On the church itself there’s a plaque commemorating the aftermath when so many soldiers were sent there to be treated in, what was, a makeshift field hospital. The old cannons, flag poles and historic tablets were in stark contrast to the joyous scenes unfolding in front of me on that warm afternoon. People had finished work or school and families were strolling past the shops, looking at the coming attractions at the small cinema and queueing idly at the Frozen Yogurt store where any amount of sugared extras could be added to the dessert of your choice. The sun was still shining and any cars that did pass were moving slow, with the windows or the tops down. I finished my ice cream and browsed round a little antique shop from which I could almost have bought any number of things were it not for the knowledge that my suitcase for home was already over weight with vinyl.

I was the outsider that day and I felt it. This was a scene of suburban happiness, contentment and an ease in which the town seemed to congregate, recognise each other and make small talk as they passed by on the small square of downtown streets. I, on the other hand, was a tourist who felt as if I was imposing on a private celebration.

I’ve thought often on that afternoon during the last year. Over the summer of 2020 I looked longingly at people enjoying outside cafes or even eating or drinking inside bars and restaurants near where I live. The lights would be on over the alfresco tables as I drove past on my way to visit my late mother in the hospital. I’d realised I couldn’t join in for fear I’d be tracked and traced by my phone Covid App which would then forbid me to be with her when she needed me most. It was poignant too driving back through late in the evening when there was still a light buzz of enjoyment in the air and I’d think to myself, ‘it’s just like frozen yogurt Friday that time in Franklin.’

So, on this happy week, when we are at last allowed a little more freedom to meet, eat and even drink a little I want to wish you well. It has been a long time coming and we deserve some enjoyment, however restricted, in our lives.

For my part I am going to enjoy playing you some great music to go with your week before I take my first holiday for a good long while. Listen out especially for new things from Thomas Rhett, Lainey Wilson and our recent guest, Eric Church as we remind you of those ACM Awards last week. Yola’s back and we have some really special tracks from Charlie Worsham, Tom Jones and Todd Snider, who is paying a great tribute to John Prine.

As ever we are on BBC Radio Scotland this Tuesday evening from five past eight and BBC Sounds whenever you fancy. Join me if you can.

Like many aspects of Country Music, I took a while to get it. I’m slow sometimes, so forgive me. Despite hearing Springsteen (Eric Church’s massive Country No 1) back in 2011 I never really connected with it. It really wasn’t until Eric released The Outsiders in 2014 that I really got it.

It was a song about a motor racing event, not something I’d have predicted, but when Taladega came along I knew I’d fallen for Eric Church and everything he’d released started to make sense. I had to brief up a bit to conduct that face to face interview we had at C2C in the Quay back in 2016, but as I worked my way through these back pages I knew I was smitten. Then came the true conversion. If you’re going to get Eric you really need to go to Church. That night at C2C Eric brought the Church to Glasgow and a room full of disparate country lovers became a crowd of true believers.

Since then Eric Church has gone from strength to strength. He’s released a series of compelling albums which have nestled comfortably on Country Radio but still asked the questions and shown the aching vulnerability that are hallmarks of EC’s best work. He’s also become one of the biggest selling recording and live artists working in America. In 2017 he embarked on one of the most ambitious tours ever when he and his regular road band decided to make each night on the tour a unique concert experience for every member of the audience. Any two nights would be different with the exception of a clutch of songs even Eric couldn’t omit. You can hear all of that on the 61 Days of Church albums which are available in all the usual places.

However what interests me about Eric Church’s career is his ability to do what he wants in his own time with the added bonus that it coincides perfectly with what his audience want to hear on their country radio stations. Other artists will tell you that this is what they’ve been doing for years but in Eric’s case it really is true. Since day one too, Eric’s not been afraid to ask questions of the music genre he clearly loves. He’s encouraged and supported other artists (viz Ashley McBryde and Luke Combs) he’s kept his own people with him all the way and he’s done it in style. The next Eric Church tour will take him 18 months to complete.

In a very special two hours we’ll spend an hour reminding you how we got here with a selection of great EC tracks from these first 15 years of his career. In the second hour you’ll hear a conversation I recorded with Eric a couple of weeks back in which he tells how unsatisfied he was with one of his later projects, how this incredible new triple album, Heart and Soul, came about and why the personal tragedies affecting of two of his cowriters made such an impression on these songs. Did I finally get Springsteen? Late to the party, as ever, but I got it and love it.

You will know I am a fan already. If you’re not yet converted let me invite you to Church. It’s this Tuesday evening at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland FM or any time you like on BBC Sounds. Join me if you can.