There’s a great story about Hayes Carll which emerged in an interview from last year. He told his Mom he wanted to be a folk singer.

‘You can’t do that,’  she said. ‘When Hayes asked why she explained: ‘Two reasons. First, you grew up in the Woodlands. What are you going to write about? There aren’t enough towels at the country club?’ Hayes countered, ‘OK, that’s a valid point. What’s the other reason?’ ‘You don’t have a butt. To be a country singer, you have to have a butt. You need to sit down and be a folk singer.’ And yet, as Hayes himself gladly pointed out, ‘Against the odds and here I am with a Grammy nomination for Best Country Song of the Year.’That Grammy nod was for his beautiful song, Chances Are performed by Lee Ann Womack. We’ll get a chance to hear that on the show this week.

He wasn’t sitting down a few months ago at the CCA where he played with his travelling musicians and delighted the Glasgow audience by bringing his new significant other – one Alison Moorer – onstage for 3 songs. Bumping into Kevin Morris from The Fallen Angels Club who promoted the Hayes show the other day he smiled when I reminded him off the gig in question. ‘I think that’s the best night we’ve had in a while, ‘ he told me. He isn’t wrong. There’s  a deep truth in Hayes Carll’s new work and all of that was evident on that magical evening back in April.

The next morning in our AC studios I picked up from where the gig left off and got to ask him all the questions which hung in the air after such a warm, intimate show. Songs about Lovers and Leavers, Friends, Driving and one very special story about his son The Magic Kid.

It’s a song written for his son but all of it might well apply to himself.
And I may get it wrong or get it right
But either way I’m standing in the light
Where nothing is hid
I’m the magic kid

Everything is there and all is revealed in Hayes Carll’s songs

But in case you’re worrying; a night in listening to Hayes on the radio will never be dull. This, after all, is the man who gave us the great ‘She Left Me For Jesus.’ ‘The problem with irony,’ as Hayes so eloquently put it that night, ‘Is not everyone gets it.’ However we have confidence you will really enjoy the songs and the conversation of Hayes Carll in session on a very special Another Country.

Listen out too for some new music for Look Park, Jesse Malin, Joana Serrat, Morgan Delt and our own tribute to the late Scotty Moore.

We’ll have another Merle Moment as we work our way through all the Hag‘s No 1 songs. We’ll anticipate the return of Sturgill Simpson and remind you that Lucinda Williams is in town this week. It all starts at five past nine this Tuesday on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

There’s a story I came across which explains why I love Jerry Reed and why I love country music. It seems invariably that any great story of country and the south will also, at some point, merge into a story about fishing…so this one is no different.

In September 1967 Jerry Reed went fishing one day when he was tracked down by Mary Lynch, Chet Atkins assistant. Mary had been sent by Felton Jarvis to find him as there was a recording session happening at RCA in Nashville to record Jerry’s song Guitar Man. The artist recording the session was Elvis Presley who had been hooked on the song since he’d heard it played on a Los Angeles radio station some time before. The problem at the session was that no one could get their head (or their fingers) round Jerry’s guitar hooks. It just wasn’t sounding right. Enter Jerry:

Felton Jarvis (Elvis’s producer) recalled the moment he walked in, ‘like a sure-enough Alabama wild man. You know, he hadn’t shaved in about a week, and he had them old clogs on – that was just the way he dressed. He come in and Elvis looked at him and said, ‘Lord, have mercy, what is that!’

This Tuesday on the AC you’ll get a chance to hear what ‘that’ really was all about. Jerry Reed, it seems to me, is a name that kept popping up every where we went on our recent Nashville trip and the good Mr M and I thought it might be good to remind ourselves about his music. So this Tuesday you’ll hear Jerry Reed as performed by Jerry himself, Elvis Presley, Porter Wagoner and Johnny Cash.

We’ll also pay tribute to this man……

During Ralph Stanley‘s life country music has gone from hillbilly to bluegrass to Americana and all the way back again. It’s fair to say however that Ralph Stanley never went out of fashion. With his brother Carter he helped harvest the mountain music they grew up on (hymns, folks songs and ballads) and weave into it their own unique sound resulting in the most simple but beautiful roots music you might ever hope to hear. Last week, when Ralph died aged 89 there were tributes from across the world of popular music. I saw messages from Ryan Adams, Ricky Skaggs and Van Dyke Parks. Dr Stanley leaves behind an incredible legacy and we’ll pay our own tribute with a great Ralph Stanley selection on this week’s show.

As ever we’ll find plenty time for some new records and we’ll be playing something from new folk pioneers Darlingside, some good things from Dierks Bentley, Sara Watkins, a Merle Moment and something great from Brandy Clark. John me if you can from five past nine this Tuesday (repeated on Fridays from 7) on BBC Radio Scotland.

I’m a huge fan of Desert Island Discs. I also think Kirsty Young is a great presenter. She has a wonderful way of allowing people to tell the listener something of themselves without us feeling she has them pinned against the wall. Perhaps the reason for this is that the guests are usually doing something anyone would love; being asked to pick their favourite records.

It’s in that choice that so much is usually revealed. Yes, there was always a stream of megalomaniacs who picked “My Way” but look longer and deeper and over the years doubts, loves, fears and joys have often been better explained and highlighted by the record chosen than the awkward confession.

You’ll remember too that at the end of the programme they ask the killer question, ‘Of all the discs you’ve picked which one would you choose to take if you could only have one?’ I guess it focusses the mind a little. We don’t ask that particular question on this week’s Another Country but we do have some great guests and they all pick a record they truly love.

Once more this week it is The All-Star Country Jukebox. Over the last few years no visitor to our studios has been allowed to clip shut their guitar case or pocket their harmonica without sharing one of their favourite country songs. The beauty of this is I now have records I’ve never heard before running through my head and the plan is, that by eleven o’clock on Tuesday evening, something similar may happen to you.

So listen out for all three Pistol Annies: Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Angeleena Presley as they pick some heartbreakers from Guy Clark, Patsy Cline and Deana Carter. But which songs and who picked which artist? We’ll play music from Glen Campbell (twice in fact), Ray Price, Gillian Welch and The Carter Family. We’ll hear the thoughts of the female half of Little Big Town, Rhiannon Giddens and First Aid Kit as well as a choice by Kacey Musgraves  and something by Kacey too. As ever stay tuned for these moments you were not quite expecting and a sublime introduction to the rules of country music as explained by Chuck Prophet. In amongst this your host picks a few faves too and I can guarantee you’ll be adding to your record collection before the evening is over. It all starts tonight on BBC Radio Scotland from five past nine. Join me if you can.

We’re used to heartbreak around here. It’s what we do. It’s the currency of country music old and new. But this weekend’s horror in Orlando calls for a better response. Inevitably music comes in where other forms of comfort just don’t seem to work.

I would/should have been in George Square yesterday. Standing alongside gay friends and fellow citizens who have fought through and won enormous civil rights battles only to see fear return, whispering on the streets to anyone who’ll listen that, on account of their birth genes, they should be worried for their lives. It would be less than human to be an LGBT person and not be afraid.

I would have been there had someone not decided it was fair game to steal my 88 year old mother’s handbag while she helped them identify something in a supermarket. Sometimes weeping may seem like the only music we’re ever going to hear.

This morning I’m looking and listening as people in Soho in London gathered together and singing Paul Simon’s brilliant hymn of healing, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ because, maybe, it’s the only thing we can do. When Hillsborough tragedy was raw I stood on the stage of The Royal Court in Liverpool as an audience sang ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and 26 years later saw the same families celebrate justice by singing the song once more. When a gunman massacred people in a Charleston Church last year President Obama visited and seemed to help the healing process when he sang ‘Amazing Grace’ to and with a grieving congregation. Sometimes it’s all we’ve got.

But there’s something else here which I want to say because I have time and a blank piece of paper: We must never allow people to be afraid simply for being who they are. LGBT people have seen huge civil rights changes to the way they live because of the injustices and humiliations they had to suffer for thousands of years. Looking back in 50 and 100 years time, my descendants are going to be shocked at how badly gay people were received by those who should have known so much better. As a Christian I feel ashamed at how the Church has been complicit in that story. As much as anyone else we too need to ask for some mercy.

Tonight on Another Country we were planning to play Mary Gauthier‘s great ballad of righteous love which expresses that very sentiment, Mercy Now. We will also be playing the song which started this blog in its rawest purest, broken form.

Later we’ll welcome Anti Records’ very own Andy Shauf in session and conversation and we’ll allow music to work its magic back into our lives. Join me if you can from five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland.

Continue reading

In a lovely review of a live show the late Guy Clark performed in London 12 years ago Adam Sweeting (in The Guardian) concluded, ‘He could have played longer, but you couldn’t have asked for more.’ I’m sure Sweeting would have blanched at the thought that his review would make an appropriate obituary note but it sums up a songwriter who, even up to his last record, managed to write significant songs throughout his long career. In the same review it was also noted that, ‘Clark’s stringent quality control ensures that the newer songs don’t suffer from rubbing shoulders with the old.’ As if to prove it one of our favourite songs of his on the AC was the title track from his last album, ‘My Favourite Picture of You.’ On Bob Harris Country a couple of weeks back Bob played out an old interview with Guy where he talked about the genesis of the song. His co-writer Gordy Sampson had shown him a list of possible titles and Guy had seen that one and known exactly where he wanted to go with the song. The photograph in question was one of his late wife Susanna who had been snapped in a bad mood with her husband who had been behaving badly at the time. Its a poignant and heartfelt picture of a long love affair that shows off that his writing remained as sharp as it ever was. Guy Clark died two weeks ago and this Tuesday on Another Country we’ll pay tribute to him as we play some songs Guy wrote performed by the man himself as well as by some great country stars.

If that’s not enough we’ll have some shiny new records to play you. I’m rather excited about a Julia Jacklin‘s first single from her debut LP.

Julia is new on the show and she comes from the Australia’s Blue Mountains but recorded her album in New Zealand’s Sitting Room studios with Ben Edwards, who also brought us the delightful Nadia Reid album last year. The album is called ‘Don’t Let The Kids Win’ and it comes with a charming opener which we’ll play tomorrow night. Also, also…. we want you to hear the beguiling bluegrass of Anna and Elizabeth, Esme Patterson and another Australian (what’s going on down there?) Ry X.

We’ll have a sublime live moment from Van Morrison in the early 70’s, revisit The Highwaymen and hear a brilliant new single from our old new chum, Anthony D’Amato. All in two hours I hear you cry. Oh yes, but you’ll need to be by your radio by five past nine on Tuesday evening and have that dial tuned to BBC Radio Scotland.

I’m no longer with you on Wednesdays on BBC Radio 2 (though it’s all available on the iplayer) but am back for a good few weeks on Sunday Mornings when I hope to be speaking to the remarkable Sheila Cassidy about her experiences as a doctor working under the Pinochet regime in Chile and about her own faith which she wrote about in ‘Confessions of a Lapsed Catholic.’ BBC Radio Scotland is hosting a series of programmes around the theme of Memories and Conversation – New Approaches to Dementia and we’ll be talking to different presenters of Sunday Morning With about specific programmes they are presenting in this series. As ever, I’ll get your morning moving with some great music. Do join me if you can from five past ten a.m. this Sunday on BBC Radio Scotland.

Many people, and increasingly young people, tell me how much they’d love to visit Nashville. I’m pretty sure a large part of this is because of the recently cancelled TV drama set in the city but there are many who want to see where the music comes from. I understand that. I had the same feelings for about 20 years until I went first in 2007. Since then I’ve visited the city more times than I can readily count but still, until recently, found myself scratching my head a little when people asked me for recommendations on what to do if they ever got there,

So much of the joy of being in Music City, for me, happened behind closed doors in the writing sessions and conversations I’d been able to have with the community of songwriters, artists and publishers who live there. Driving in from the airport there really isn’t that much to see so I’ve never been entirely sure a visitor could experience any of that without, in some way, entering into the rhythm of the town. New York or San Francisco it is not. And yet, Bob Dylan himself called an album Nashville Skyline, I almost feel you muttering. There is no doubt that Nashville gets into your bones in a way other cities have never managed for me. After my first visit I was happy to share with anyone who wanted to listen that I could easily have imagined myself living there; a thought which has seldom crossed my mind in many other cities I have stumbled across in my travels. But, if you’re not going to move there lock, stock and barrel, what should you do with a few days off in Tennessee?

This Tuesday on Another Country I’m going to take you on a mini-tour of some of my personal favourite pastimes in the home of country music. They are all great because they are either very cheap or free and they all take you back to the music and make you want to listen harder. We’ll spend a bit of time in The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum where we will encounter again the man who chose to leave New York and favour Nashville to record. Dylan, Cash and The Nashville Cats exhibition at the HOF has been running for over a year.

It tells the story of how Dylan came to the city and how, in his wake, the other artists followed. The Beatles, Neil Young, The Byrds and many more familiar names are part of this great story. Join us as we wander round taking in the stories and hearing the music that came out of this amazing creative period.

We’ll also take a walk around the city. Bill Demain is an old friend. He’s a journalist and a songwriter but and he combines all of that into telling great stories of the city on his Walking Nashville tour. We take the tour and talk to Bill about some of the great characters who have made Nashville their home and recorded and performed some of their best work within the city limits.

So far, you’ll have spent about £30 but the next part of the story is, not only free, but available online 24 hours a day. WSM (Music City’s The Legend on 650 A.M) is the home of The Grand Ole Opry. WSM has always broadcast The Opry and it continues to be the home of country music of all decades. Every night of the week WSM’s output is hosted by Eddie Stubbs. It feels to me like Eddie has been a friend of mine for many years even though we only just met a couple of months ago. His knowledge of country music is encyclopaedic but his delivery is slow, steady and southern. A bluegrass fiddle player himself Eddie understands the contours of country better than anyone and you’ll get a chance to hear him talk about his favourite subject on Tuesday night when we chat backstage at The Opry.

So there it is folks; your AC Music City Tour.  There will be conversation but, by cracky, there will be so much music too. Listen out for wonderful things from Bob Dylan himself, Johnny Cash, Margo Price, Vince Gill, Johnny Wright and Kitty Wells and something rather special from Cortelia Clark. Join me from five past nine this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland.

A few years ago I was taking part in a gig being filmed for a TV show. After camera rehearsals the director came over to me and said he’d like to show me what the plan was for the night. As he got about three minutes into the chat I stopped him short. ‘ You’re telling me how you’re going to film this aren’t you?’ I asked. As he nodded and returned to his lifting map I realised there was little point in taking it further. ‘The thing is,’ I went on, ‘you are going to tell me how it looks and frankly, I don’t really care much about that because I’m a musician and I really mainly care how it sounds.’ That aspect, he confessed, wasn’t really in his brief (or in reality in his thoughts.) The same is true of so much of music on TV -I suspect perhaps the Eurovision Contest just this weekend might well have fallen in to this category – if it’s a tussle between music and TV, the TV is always going to win.

When Pop Idol and all the other shows started around 15 years ago it was a constant question asked in interviews by anyone I met. What do you think? I always answered the same way: ‘I understand why the kids think it’s important but the TV will always win. What works for TV – sensational heartbreak, embarrassment, redemption on camera – is always going to beat the honest singer with the good song, and it has been thus so far.

Last Friday, apparently out of nowhere, the TV soap, ‘Nashville’ was cut adrift by the ABC network in the US. It was, and this seems true, a great boon to the songwriting community in the city and has added to the intrigue about Music City but that does not a successful show make and the execs eyes are looking elsewhere

A couple of months ago we caught up with Buddy Miller in his home studio in Nashville to talk about his own involvement in the drama and hear what how being the executive music producer of the show has affected his own work and the focus of the city’s songwriting community. Despite what we may think, country music is not immune to market variations and the mixed history of the city’s iconic studios gives you an idea of how fragile the genre is to the winds of change whistling around the city.

Dave Cobb is another brave soul who has taken over the stewardship of one of Nashville’s more famous sound emporiums, RCA Studio A. Bigger than the more famous Studio B it is a sprawling space which was used to record strings and bigger sessions the more compact Studio B could not contain. Dave’s own track record there includes his new compilation Southern Family album with contributions from Miranda Lambert, Anderson East, John Paul White, Jason Isbell, Brandy Clark and many others. On Tuesday you’ll hear us in that hallowed space talking to Dave about that project and his recent success as producer of the moment to Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson.

Finally we’ll broadcast one of the more remarkable conversations I’ve ever had in the city. We gathered three of the senior members of the Bradley family, Patsy, Jerry and Harold, to talk about their own musical life and that of Harold’s elder brother, producer, Owen Bradley. You’ll hear Harold –  the most recorded guitarist of all time and now aged 90 – tell how he and his brother set up the famous Quonset Hut in Music Row so they could make some of the most famous records of all time. Hearing Harold talk about the morning he cut ‘Crazy’ with Patsy Cline was the most fascinating story I have been lucky enough to have heard.

One final thought: When Owen and Harold set up their studio they were really hoping it would become a centre for filming music for television and in the process they discovered they were making some of the most iconic country records in modern history. The records lasted and no one remembers the TV shows now. TV’s for now; music’s for ever.

You can hear all of this on Tuesday’s Another Country on BBC Radio Scotland from five past nine.

On Wednesday on BBC Radio Two I’ll be celebrating the new tradition and we’ll think a little about the anniversary of this record….

Join me from 10 p.m. if you can

In 1967 Nashville songwriter, Bobby Braddock couldn’t sleep one night. He found himself going into his car and driving round the city until he came to a well known beauty spot where he sat behind the wheel listening and absorbing all of the, newly released, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was, he says, a record which changed his life.

These days it’s hard to imagine the impact that one long playing album could make but safe to say a little of that excitement has been recreated by BBC 6 Music when they chose to have a world wide listening party for Radiohead’s new album, “A Moon Shaped Pool.’ I couldn’t make the party on Sunday so I’m listening to the noble Tom Robinson presenting the show now. I love radio events like these as it’s obvious Tom knows only as much about the record as the listener and we’re all experiencing something quite new together for the first time. As I write, I’m also hugely inspired by the record which invites you in in a way that makes you know you want to return and explore the deeper (moon-shaped) pool.

I say all this because I’m amazed at pop music’s ability to continually reinvent itself. As much as anyone must have thought The Beatles had said it all by 1966 the public learned a whole new chapter was opening up. It’s here that Bobby Braddock and his lonely vigil come into focus for me. Around that same time a young Georgia kid was reshaping the music of that other great sixties band, The Byrds by allowing them to drift away from their earlier folk influences to absorbing the country music of their own homeland. Sweetheart of The Rodeo came out in 1968 and within a year or so Gram parsons would leave the Byrds to form his own cosmic country outfit The Flying Burrito Brothers. It’s funny now that there is now a new generation of artists who are rediscovering Gram and The Burritos in the same way that he once opened the rock generation’s ears to Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.

Cale Tyson is part of that new generation of young country artists who want to keep country …well country and are content not to make every song sound like a melody plonked on to a U2 B side from 1987. We me Cale in Nashville back in March when he was just finishing a rehearsal and we headed off for a beer with him to a local watering hole. That bar turned out to be an American Legion hall which was hosting its Tuesday Night Honky Tonk. It was a  fascinating evening: purple hearts on the wall, vets at he bar and in the function suite some pals of Cale’s playing great country covers to a mixed room of hipsters and hillbillies. What’s not to love?

We spent a good part of that evening catching up with Cale as the Honky Tonk progressed and you can hear all of that conversation concerning Cale’s excellent new album, ‘Carless Soul’ on this Tuesday’s Another Country. We’ve got some brilliant other music for you and look out for new records by Martina McBride, Dylan LeBlanc and Daniel Romano as well as a vinyl moment from Marty Robbins that might well be worth staying in for. All this on BBC Radio Scotland from five past nine.

On the New Tradition I’ll be playing you some very varied music this Wednesday on BBC Radio 2. We’ll find a song that suits our mood then we’ll make that our theme for the next hour tracing back the music to its roots. We’re live from 10 so join me if you can.

When we started out we didn’t do many gigs and the one we did commit to were all spaced apart enough to ensure that new songs and new members would be involved on any live occasion. The gigs usually stated after 11 at night and the sound check would be late afternoon (if the bloke with the PA turned up on time.) I would walk into town from my southside flat so I could find something new to wear for the gig out of Flip then spend the rest of the day worrying about the show. On my way in I’d always pass the same pub which advertised the fact that on certain nights you could enjoy a pint to the sounds of ‘Ken Manners, singer of songs.’

I often wonder what became of Ken, though I suspect his songs go on. I often thought then and still reflect now how bad I am at the business of remembering and reciting songs. It takes me all my time to remember my own and I really can’t, for the life of me, ever get it together to learn other people’s even though I admire greatly those who do.

One of the great things of learning other songs is the awakening it gives you to new paths and structures. How did they do that? Why did they say that and not this and how did they manage to break my heart there? Sometimes I find myself looking back at other people’s catalogues and I realise how little there is on which I have declared my undying love. Often we’re talking three songs which have managed to infect me in such a way that they will always travel with me for the rest of my life. However that doesn’t mean I’ll sit down and learn them…Oh no.

Perhaps that’s why my ‘cover versions’ have always involved sitting a pal down and saying ..’Listen to this record’ On Tuesday I’ll do that once again and, for those who’ve not being paying attention, I’ll introduce you to this woman.

Joan Shelley a folk singer whose music has been delicately brushed by the mountain music she heard while growing up in Kentucky. She sings beautiful, vulnerable songs and her current album Over and Even is one of my favourites of the last 12 months. On this Tuesday night’s show we will broadcast the great session she performed for us a few weeks back on her way through Scotland. If you don’t know Joan’s work just check out ‘Stay On My Shore,’ her duet with Will Oldham from that album, ‘Over and Even.’ It will change your life for the better.

On Tuesday night we’ll also feature music by Cale Tyson, Phil Cook, Sarah Jarosz, Laura Cantrell and Randy Travis. Don’t be too surprised if Loretta Lynn and Willie Nelson make an appearance too. Join me live if you can on BBC Radio Scotland from five past nine this Tuesday evening.

On Wednesday I’ll host my first ever show (under my own name) on BBC Radio 2. From 10 p.m. I’ll be bringing you my new tradition. Playing you wonderful new records and searching out some influences that may well have played some part in suggesting how the artist came to sound the way they did. I could tell you more but I’d be spoiling the surprise…. Safe to say I’ll be playing a wide range of great music that I don’t get a chance to play on the AC. For those of you in Ireland, Wales and England it will be great to get a chance to broadcast live. Find me on twitter @rickyaross and let me know what you think about any new songs you hear for the first time. You can tune your dial to BBC Radio 2 from 10 this Wednesday.