I remember conducting an interview in the early months of my recording career. It was with a foreign TV crew (maybe Japan) and our own record company were fussing around and overseeing the whole procedure. At one point the interviewer asked about our ambitions. I suggested that we’d probably make about three albums then split up. The sound of coffee being spluttered out from collective mouths of the surrounding suits had to be erased in the edit. However my ambition was no different from most musical artists, who really don’t have long term plans.

So it’s been interesting for me to reflect a little on the 70 (seventy!) album career of Willie Nelson who, if anything, has speeded up his rate of creativity since he turned 80. I read Willie’s own autobiography recently which, if no ‘Chronicles’, is a useful guide to how Willie himself sees his own career. Inevitably and gladly, for me, there is more space given to the early lean years than the Grammy laden ones. What I enjoyed most about filling in the gaps in Willie’s career was how much he loved being a radio DJ in the early days. From location to location starting in Texas and moving north and south again Willie made a living on the radio. It confirmed something I’ve always half-known: singer-songwriters enjoy sharing songs we love by others as much as we enjoy playing our own music.

On this week’s Another Country we will celebrate some of the highlights from those seventy albums which have brought so much pleasure. You may have a favourite Willie Nelson album of your own. I have so many, but I still love the album that coincided with his freedom from the constraints of Music Row – The Troublemaker. You can let me know which albums still work for you, but it would be remiss of me not to point out that, like Bob Dylan, Willie’s late life catalogue brings particular joy. Country Music,  Heroes and Django and Jimmie have all brought pleasure. The new album, there’s always a new Willie album, is spinning and bringing joy as I write. I don’t expect to see Willie play live again, but I’m grateful for the nights when I saw and heard him.

We will spend a little time on the water in the second hour of the show. Most of us are doing our holidays nearer home this year so we thought it might be good to let our imaginations do it a bit of sailing so we can dream a little. It all started a couple of weeks back when we were reflecting on Lyle Lovett’s, ‘If I Had A Boat’ and I promised a little voyage one of these nights. Well, this week’s the week. So get ready to embark. The boat sets sail at five past eight this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland and we need all the passengers on board on time. Join us if you can.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that it’s far better to ask the question than assume you have the answer. Actually that was completely made up. There is no such axiom, but how I wish that kind of thinking was the international gold standard.

We live in the age of outrage and supposition. The two have never been closer and their propagation is widely and wildly encouraged by so many of the leaders we seem to have had visited upon us. There is hope though, folks. Unlike their male counterparts it seems women are better at asking, thinking and listening than we blokes. I’m only glad that half of the world seems to be on the right track.

It’s perhaps why I’ve taken more interest in the voices of female country and Americana artists over the last few years when so many of their male counterparts still seem happy to have their emotional arc contained within the world of a truck, a beer and the only bits of the Bible that confirm their narrow world view. Over the last few years, when asked which country artists I’d recommend my answer usually contains the words Brandy and Clark.

On Brandy’s 2020 release she asks that all important question: If your life is a record what track would I be? Helpfully she also comes up with a good answer and on this week’s AC you can hear a conversation I managed to record with Brandy while we were both locked down a few weeks ago. It’s been a frustrating time to be an artist this year but Brandy is one of the few artists who managed to cross the Atlantic and play her new songs to a UK audience before the gigs all stopped. She’s on great form on this new album and in the conversation we talk about her new producer Jay Joyce, that great duet with Randy Newman on the album and why, even though she’s at the top of her own game she still loves collaboration when it comes to songwriting.

We’ve been away from the coal face of new releases for the last couple of weeks and I’m still on Twitter holidays, so I’m enjoying more self isolation than ever, but I still have access to a fabulous pile of new releases. I can’t promise them all in the one week but I hope you might hear something from Ruston Kelly, The Avett Brothers, Laura Veirs, Tenille Towns, Randy Travis and Willie Nelson.

Finally…what have you been reading this summer? I’ve been hugely enjoying Barney Hoskyns’ Band biography, ‘Across The Great Divide.’ Listening as I read I’ve reaffirmed my opinion that The Band were the best band ever. If anyone defined Americana it’s these Canadians! So, I’ll play you a little favourite if we have time.

We’re live on BBC Radio Scotland  from eight o’clock this Tuesday evening. Join me if you can.

‘It was pretty ballsy and was definitely a change in direction.’

Margo Price and her take on the opening single, ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ from her new album, ‘That’s How Rumors Get Started,‘ is an honest reflection on the track which probably raised a few eyebrows when it first dropped. The story behind it and Marty Stuart‘s question about life on the road, ‘Does the band hate each other yet?,’ is a great insight into how songs get written and why they matter.

On the AC we’ve loved Margo from the get-go. Initially flagged up to us by our great friend Bill Demain, we played Margo Price and The Pricetags a good few years ago and have followed her career with interest. She’s always been great value as an interviewee and held us all spellbound at C2C two years ago with stories of her duet with Willie Nelson as well as her strong articulation of women’s rights in the light of MeToo. Her performance at the festival itself was a triumph and it’s been great to see her following grow and her own music expand and develop.

What’s been interesting about Margo is (like Sturgill Simpson her producer on this album) she’s ‘cool’ because she has stayed true to her roots. Fashion and trends are fickle friends and I have learned to be distrustful of how they ebb and flow. In Margo’s case however she is oblivious to all of that and has essentially followed her own path. In much the same way (musically) as Amy Winehouse expressed only interest in music from pre 1960, so Margo too has championed the ideals of the country music she adored growing up. Within that however she has also revealed what might have happened next had we allowed those careers to grow and develop. The new album is a great listen; a rounded collection of songs which ask all the right questions and leave the impression that with Margo, you always get closer to the truth. Fame has brought with it some interesting fellow travellers and the record leaves you in no doubt of the conflicting emotions running through her own writing and ambitions.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I caught up with Margo in lockdown and we talked about her new daughter Ramona, that fame thing, her conversation with Marty Stuart and where America is now, in the light of BLM. It’s a conversation you can hear on this week’s AC and it’s one you won’t want to miss.

We’ve also been taken with Jonathan Wilson‘s new record where, as well as returning to his more country side, he’s covered a great Four Tops song. Inspired by this we thought we’d take you on a little country road trip where country goes soul and soul goes country. It’s a well trodden path, but really it’s one that goes back to the roots of country, rock ‘n’ roll and R ‘n’ B music. We think you’ll enjoy the ride.

All this as well as the usual clutch of great new releases in two hours of country music, our way, on BBC Radio Scotland this Tuesday from 8 p.m.

The Blog is taking annual leave from this week. It will return fresh with new thoughts and radio stories in August at some point.

 

 

It’s that time of year when pictures come up on my timeline reminding me what I was doing 12 months ago or two or ten years ago. As often as not it’s a gig and a summer gig at that. In last week’s blog (still available if you want to check it out) I gave you my conversion story. I told the tale of a poor unworthy festival loather turned into a festival believer. It’s an emotional story of love and redemption.

This week on BBC Radio Scotland we’re celebrating Festival Week. In the absence of Edinburgh and its associated celebrations, TRNSMT, Belladrum and all the other shindigs we’re having a celebration on the airwaves.

For me the real moment of missing the live experience came a few weeks ago when, by chance, I picked up a Ry Cooder live album off my shelf to play in the car. At the sound of the guitars being plugged in and the recognition of the musicians walking on to the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco something in me broke a little. It was a sound I knew. A feeling with which I was more than familiar; standing in the wings as the house lights come down and the noise comes up. No one who has experienced live shows and the terror and exhilaration of putting on a show can ever not know that noise. It’s wonderful, exciting and daunting all in one breath.

So…this week on Another Country I want to give you the gig we’d put on if we only could. It’s C2C, it’s Celtic Connections, it’s T In The Park and it’s a night at The Fallen Angels Club all in one. It’s a country baptism, exorcism and a bar mitzvah…we’re gonna do it all on this week’s show. You’ll hear artists playing in Madison Square Garden then we’ll cut to the quietest listening room in the world, The Bluebird. You’ll hear artists at the top of their popularity at the mother church of Country Music, The Ryman Auditorium and others performing some of the songs we loved best on TV. You’ll hear artists on tour, at one-off festivals and we’ll even drop into a beautiful live moment from a writing room when the song has just been delivered – fresh out of the oven!

It’s two hours of the artists we love playing some of their greatest songs to their own audiences across the world. You’ll hear Tim McGraw, Beth Nielson Chapman, Tom Waits, Carrie Underwood, Shania Twain and that moment when Ry hits the stage in California. It won’t make up for missing all your favourite events this summer but it will be two hours when you can forget about what you’re missing elsewhere this summer. It’s The Perfect Festival, the best gig you’ve never been to and it’s all live on BBC Radio Scotland this Tuesday evening from five past eight. Join me if you can.

Like lots of folks I should have been at Glastonbury this last weekend. I hope this might be a trip I’ll be making next year though I should stress I’m not missing summer festivals as much as a few folk in music seem to be. It goes back a long way for me. In the seventies and early eighties live outdoor events were pretty sketchy and fans were often poorly treated and performers not much better.

By the time I got round to being involved in serious alfresco gigs towards the end of the eighties I fear my vote had been cast against the ‘festival’ as a great day out. I do realise (like on many other subjects) I’m in a significant minority here. People will wax lyrical about the great shows they’ve seen and artists too have been known to eulogise on the subject.(although I think they sometimes fib a little) The die was cast early having to watch the band I loved (Little Feat) make their joyous sound over the top of drunken, pugnacious locals who were only interested in seeing the Sensational Alex Harvey Band perform on a sunny afternoon at Parkhead. We were all of one voice by the time The Who headlined but a lingering loathing of having to suffer someone else’s audience really gave me a bad start with the whole escapade.

On reading Chris Difford’s autobiography recently I was startled to read that we had played at a festival with Squeeze in the late eighties too. It was only then I realised that this was the day when we’d decided that enduring a hail of piss-filled lager bottles did not a living make and decided the Reading Festival could go on merrily without input from us. It was one of the better decisions I ever made to say ‘thanks and goodnight’ fairly early.

LILLY HIATT

However there was one lovely moment before all of that happened. A man who come a long way decided to put up with the wave of assaults and played on regardless. It was John Hiatt and I still have a warm memory of him singing Have a Little Faith In Me to the percussive effect of stage-bound missiles. I said hello to him afterwards and that, from memory, was the only time we met. I have enjoyed his music hugely over the years and his songs have popped up in lots of great places. So I was delighted when we were introduced to his daughter’s music a couple of years back by our good friend, Bill DeMain.

Lilly Hiatt is now on to her fourth elpee and it’s really sounding great. Like so many artists in this strange year she’s locked down instead of being out on the road promoting the record. I had a great chat with her last week and asked her all about life in East Nashville, her new album and how her Dad, John came to make an appearance on it. You can hear that conversation on Another Country this Tuesday evening. We’ll also play you some great new records by The Chicks (the Dixie has gone), Eric Church, Mo Pitney and Leif Vollebekk.

Finally…and I hope you festival goers got far enough to read this part….I had a Damascus Road experience with festivals. It happened in 2011 at ..Glastonbury…we played…I loved it and I’ve been back since, even taking my young lad camping the last time I was there. I’ve played outdoor shows in Dubai, Ireland, Spain, Jersey,  England and Scotland and heck…I think I’m beginning to dig this festival thing at my ripe old age. Get this pandemic over and let’s do this all again soon. In the meantime join me on the wireless this Tuesday evening from 8 on BBC Radio Scotland.

There’s no getting past this; this is a time we’ll probably not get back again. As we watched the English football recommence this week we wondered how often these photographs of players with BLM logos replacing their names in front of empty grandstands would appear on future pub quizzes asking for explanation. Who knows, perhaps in a few years this will seem to be the norm, but we hope not.

So it is with a new Bob Dylan album. Much of my adult life has been peppered with the anticipation and reaction to such an event, but in reality, we have no right to expect many more Fridays like June 19th. ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways‘ came in at the time we needed it most. That it’s been greeted with such joy by critics and admirers alike really comes as no surprise. I listened to it all on Friday first thing and it really is Bob at his best.

CULVER CITY, CA – JUNE 11: Musician Bob Dylan Performs onstage during the 37th AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Michael Douglas at Sony Pictures on June 11, 2009 in Culver City, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for AFI)

What I love most about this record is Dylan’s connectedness to the world. There’s still that sense we got on Time Out Of Mind that this is someone more than aware of his own mortality yet, in Yeats words, casts ‘a cold eye on life and death.’ This time we’re twenty three years down that road and the artist is in his eightieth year with no intention of pretending otherwise. These were lines that poked out on that first listen through:

‘I sleep with life and death in the same bed,’

‘the city of God is there on the hill’

‘Mother Muses wherever you are, I’ve outlived my life by far.’

Then there are the references. The Rolling Stones, Indiana Jones, the back catalogue of songs and artists mentioned on Murder Most Foul, writers, poets, blues men, saints and …. well….Liberace. Julius Caesar creeps in more than once….

What are these dark days I see?
In this world so badly bent
I cannot redeem the time 
The time so idly spent
How much longer can it last?
How long can it go on?
I embrace my love, put down my hair
And I crossed the Rubicon

Why is any of this important to me, to us? Firstly this is the very heart of what Americana must be. A writer who is steeped in the traditions of American song. The ghosts of all the souls we once loved are scattered in and around this record. It’s a compendium of traditions, styles and echoes of all that we have known and come to accept as the foundations of roots music. But secondly, and maybe importantly, it’s Bob Dylan at 79. I think I’m not being entirely doom-laden here when I say that there won’t be many days when the world stops for a few hours and over different time zones we, as one, consume a new Bob Dylan record.  So we need to celebrate that he has made one of the records of his life, plotted every curve, produced and directed the entire enterprise…and lest we should forget, sung it all with panache, wit and style. He’s made us laugh, shocked us a little and again broken our hearts in all the right ways.

Hours have not passed without me tapping into this record over the weekend. I intend not to break that pattern on Tuesday evening this week. There will be more too. Expect records from Phoebe Bridgers, Nadia Reid, Jeb Loy Nichols and something wonderful from Bill Kirchen, Paul Carrack and Nick Lowe as they take on Merle Haggard. It will be two full hours starting at five past eight this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

I knew very little about songwriting with or for other artists. The truth is perhaps even more blunt; I knew very little about songwriting. Writing for oneself there are no rules, and perhaps that’s something songwriters shouldn’t try to change. Ignorance is bliss. I’m guessing that many of the songs we adore were written by people unaware of any structural rules of stylings set by others. The charm of songs on debut albums is often the lack of adherence to form. The shock of the new is what draws us in.

It occurred to my publishers however that some collaboration would be helpful and before long I was invited down to co write with an established song writer. That first trip resulted in a life long friendship and with one of the UK’s best. Charlie Dore is that and more. An accomplished and successful artist, prolific catalogue writer, actor and impro artist…there’s probably a few things I’ve forgotten.

She impressed me early on by being funny and being able to deal with all my fears and concerns about the business of allowing artists to trample all over our ideas when we are bringing in our best shot. She simply smiled gracefully, and with the tact of a royal retainer would offer … ‘yes….but we could also say this’ so deftly the artist in question barely noticed. I, on the other hand, would woefully wail post-session that this surely was not how songs should be written. However I had a lesson coming. We also had a writing session which involved the two of us working on a song. Inspired by our day I went back to my hotel that night and wrote out a complete lyric. ‘That’s good,’ Charlie said next morning over coffee at her kitchen table, ‘But let me photocopy it and we can both go over it a little.’ Half an hour later, whatever song I thought it was had been corrected, edited and vastly improved by Charlie. There was, I realised, much to learn.

Since those days I’ve watched Charlie return to her artist roots as well as continue to write for others. Over the last few years she’s made a series of beautiful folk/altcountry/americana records which showcase her unique ability to tell stories that will gently break your heart. On her new album, Like Animals, Charlie again takes you on journeys of human frailty and joyous inquisition.

This Tuesday night you can hear a conversation I recorded with her last week where we talk animals, humans, anxiety and memories of a songwriting life going back to the late seventies. It was a conversation I really didn’t want to conclude. Fortunately for you we’ve edited some of that and included some beautiful cuts from the new album.

Elsewhere we’ll hear from Lori McKenna, Brian Fallon and Teddy Thompson. We’ll introduce you to The Son(s) and remind you of some of the music made by Boudleaux and Felice Bryant. It is their songs I’ll be exploring this Wednesday in the last ‘Ricky Meets’ of this series. It’s a very special hour in the company of their son Del Bryant from his house outside Nashville which we visited a couple of years ago to gather the stories of one of the greatest pop/country songwriting teams of all time.

Join me this Tuesday when you can get a taste of all of that, a chat with Charlie Dore and enjoy two hours of country music…our way from 8 p.m. on BBC Radio Scotland.

One of the saddest and most telling images of the last week was the current US President holding the Bible aloft outside an Episcopal Church in Washington. For the millions who saw it, the picture held so many conflicting statements. For him it was his message to his supporters that there had, once more, been a reset. Everything was, once more, as it was. The POTUS was in charge and his people  – Bible loving people – were going to demonstrate their power over the mob outside the gates. For those outside the gates who had been violently removed so the photo-op could take place the message was also clear. What they saw was not a Bible, but a white symbol of authority once more proclaiming that his world-view was somehow endorsed by a higher power. God and America; it’s a strange old dance.

As I looked through the newspapers I thought of the good Christian folk I met recently in Rwanda and The DRC who must have been confused by the shot when they saw it pop up on their TV or news feeds. For them it must have felt as if the book they’d been reading all their life had been stolen and many of the important pages ripped out. For many Americans too there would be a sense of shame that the book they hold so dear was being used in such triumphalist fashion….though, heaven knows, that has been a common theme with the good book over the centuries.

Bible mythology and folklore is written into the DNA of so many Americans. That it transcends the racial divide is both consoling and confusing. A visitor to this planet might well be surprised that Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton find their inspiration and instruction coming from the same source. For those of you of no faith and deep love of music I apologise for the religious pre roll…I’m coming to my point.

Popular music and country music are steeped in Bible imagery. The Bible itself has been wedged into country songs appropriately and inappropriately by Keith Urban (even quoting a specific verse… John 3:16), Brooks and Dunn, George Jones and of course Ashley McBryde....you can add your own names here. My lasting impression of Nashville after my first visit there thirteen years ago was of a city with a surplus of ostentatious steeples. The Churches stood on every corner taking up the best real-estate and imposing an image more steeped in privilege than compassion. There was little doubt in my mind that Tennessee was still the buckle on the Bible Belt.

It’s true too that the country audience know the references when they hear them. So when Sarah Jarosz starts her new album, ‘World On The Ground.’ with a reference to a woman called Eve, we understand where the story has come from. Sarah’s new album is centred around the idea of home and a return, in at least her imagination, to a town in Texas where she grew up. The beautiful tale in ‘Maggie’ of driving across the desert in a Ford Escape is not necessarily about any one person but, as you’ll hear in this week’s special conversation, the car has a special place in Sarah’s affections.

I spoke to Sarah last week about the new album while she was locked down in Nashville. It’s a beautiful piece of work all produced by John Leventhal and it’s a great progression from where we last found her. We spoke about John, her side project ‘I’m With Her’ and her hopes for the future in these troubled times.

At the time I spoke to Sarah the news of George Floyd was just breaking over in Minnesota so there was no time to get a reaction from her that day. It’s interesting however to hear so many country artists and commentators being so vocal about how America needs to address its record on race relations. It’s also very telling that what has happened there has caused such an outpouring of anger and self reflection in this country. Our conversation on the US is often filled with a certain degree of schadenfreude. On this occasion we are more inclined to protest but also understand that there, but for the Grace of God, go we.

To that end you need to hear a song my old Chicago radical pal, Johan Mrvos recommended to me this week. Jovan said in his email of Dion and Paul Simon singing ‘Song For Sam Cooke,’  that it….absolutely destroyed me…one of my true boyhood heroes singing about another man who changed my life…I’m still crying and sobbing…this country must change or it will die..The song is also called Here in America and you’ll find out why it’s the song you need to hear right now on this week’s show.

So do listen in to this week’s Another Country for that interview with Sarah, a celebration of significant birthdays for some great artists and new songs to get you through these troubled times. It all starts at 8 p.m. on BBC Radio Scotland this Tuesday evening. Listen in live and/or on BBC Sounds if you can.