I’m writing this from my desk at my home studio window. It’s all change here round here. For years we’ve let the trees round our house grow until realising recently that ‘something needs to be done.’ Old Conifers planted well before our arrival here 19 years ago have now come so close to the house and grown so high that my working environment began to feel a little too like a walk in the woods. Nice for occasional atmosphere but my room was freezing even in that July heatwave. So the tree surgeons are in and clearing things out and this morning my view includes parts of Glasgow I didn’t know were there.

As I listened to a little WSM (Nashville’s Legend) online this morning they were talking about a cool wind coming down from the Great Lakes and giving a sense of ‘early fall.’ The trees here have certainly had that. As Scottish children return to school this week at the ‘end of the summer’ then it seems a good time to be coming back to Another Country and this blog. I hope you’ve had a great time enjoying this amazing summer. I’m old enough to realise this is not how things often are so it’s good to celebrate the outdoors as long as we can. I’m hugely indebted to Roddy Hart for keeping things alive on Fridays for a few weeks there and I hear Southern Fried was a real blast (albeit a warm one) for everyone who managed to get there.

Devon Sproule

Like the onward march of the seasons new music keeps coming and I’m delighted to flag up some significant returns of some of our favourite artists. Over the next few weeks we’ll have new albums from Devon Sproule, Jason Isbell, Bob Dylan and Ry Cooder. Glen Campbell may not be performing live but there are new recordings available. You may well have heard the on/off story of The Civil Wars who have retreated (if you’ll pardon the military metaphor) from their previous position and decided that they want to make records after all. Those millions of potential sales seemed to have a calming effect on their combustable personalities. There’s a new single  from our good friends Lord Huron too.

Barr Brothers

We’ll also have some fresh music from artists who are new to us and who we are getting very interested in meeting. Look out for us playing The Barr Brothers, Heartless Bastards, Hem and Cold Satellite. We’ll also hear new and lovely tracks from Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires who are married to each other but have separate musical careers. Oh there’s so much….. and we’ll work our way through that wonderful pile of waxings this Friday at 8 p.m. on BBC Radio Scotland.

I will also be with you on Sunday Mornings during August. This Sunday the first hour of the programme will be given over to a remarkable conversation I had a few weeks ago with this man……..

Albie Sachs’s life had already had its fair share of trouble before a bomb went off under his car in his exile home in Mozambique one day in 1988. He was targeted by the Apartheid Regime in South Africa for his unflinching opposition to their government and his story of recovery is remarkable. Albie shares with Nelson Mandela a great political and legal brain and a strong sense of justice mixed with a compassionate sense of mercy. From that fateful day in 1988 when he lost the use of an eye and an arm he went on to return to South Africa as a free man who helped write the new Constitution.

I’ll also speak with Alexandro Nash about Landfill Harmonic; a documentary film about members of an orchestra in the town of Cateura in Paraguay who play instruments made from the rubbish that surrounds them. Currently still in production, scheduled for release end of 2013.

We’ll spend time with another Folk Saint and we’ll enjoy music from Genesis, Ella Fitzgerald and De La Soul. It’s the only show that can – and we will. Join me if you can. Sunday morning 7 – 9. BBC Radio Scotland.

I went to Fife this week. I went to see one of my oldest friends be inducted as a Church of Scotland minister in the beautiful old church of St Monans. It’s the nearest church to the sea in Scotland – apparently – and as if to emphasise the point it has two miniature vessels suspended above the pews to remind everyone of the link. After that I went further along the coast to visit some of my family holidaying in Crail. It was one of the loveliest evenings I have spent in a long time. I nosed my way along the coast – still half remembering directions from the days I used to deliver things for my dad. My summer job was driving his van and making sure vital supplies were there for the newsagents of Angus, Fife and Perth. The parcels were full of fishing nets, balls and whatever the craze was that year. Hula hoops…frisbees? There were always plenty of buckets and spades as, in that part of Scotland, you can still have lost of fun on a beach on a cold day.

I’ve taken my children along these same places many times too. We often end up in St Andrews or Crail or Elie. The evening is usually not complete without fish and chips in Anstruther. My friend Pete moving there will give me all the excuses I need to go back more often.

Being alone in the car reminded me of the joys of those van drives many years ago. There was an old radio which Bert the main driver had half installed. It was always said he’d never quite got the compressor properly sorted as the thing screeched white noise under every bridge and you could enjoy it only as a man enjoys someone stopping hitting him. I opted for a pile of batteries and a cassette player. C90’s would be prepared and enjoyed, turned over, mangled, unspooled and played till chewed again. None of us from these days couldn’t fix a cassette with a bic pen. Only the toffs had in car stereos and van drivers usually had the sound of their own whistles. It was on these trips the music I now take for granted was all planted in my memory.

On Friday we play one of these songs from those trips. I loved Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and we get a chance to play one of their songs in the context of our session guests Lord Huron. They loved the harmonies and are part of another Californian explosion of creativity not dissimilar to the Laurel Canyon scene of the sixties and seventies. They come from the north and one by one have re located to joing singer and songwriter Ben Schneider from Michigan on the west coast. Their album was one of the top albums nominated by Paste Magazine last year and rightly so. It’s charming and original and has much of the sunshine of their new location in it. They were brilliant in the session and I know it will have those of you who haven’t yet got their album scurrying to find it.

We’ll also have some new things from The Holy Ghosts, Ned Roberts and Drew Holcomb and The Neighbours – all AC debutantes. New things also from The Wynntown Marshalls, The Mavericks and Guy Clark as well as all the usual surprises from the world of the AC.

I’m taking a short break for a month but Roddy Hart is coming to be your guide for a few weeks. As well as being a great singer and song writer, Roddy is a fine broadcaster too so I hope you’ll enjoy some of the new things he’ll be playing. If you are having a holiday do enjoy it and I’ll see some of you out on the festival circuit starting this Saturday at T In The Park. Friday’s Evening’s AC is on at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

Miller and Hartford. Estate agents? The core of the late seventies Scotland side? Keep reading……….

It’s a late train coming home west to Glasgow and I’m thinking about some of the people I’ve encountered over the last few days. Perhaps the most amazing musical moment was standing on the side of the stage at Glastonbury’s Acoustic Tent last Saturday evening with my son, Seamus, Gregor Philp and my manager, Tom O’Rourke. All of us were watching one of my great heroes, Steve Winwood put in a quite extraordinary shift with his band for an hour or so. The remarkable bit was the sheer skill of musicianship on show. Stevie was playing hammond, electric guitar and singing. That voice! Where was the bass coming from? None of us could work it out until Gregor stopped us all in our tracks; Steve was doing all of this and playing the bass parts on the hammond foot pedals. Some guy. I think it’s really important not to forget about where music came from and who brought it to us. Stevie’s one of these men and we’re grateful to them, that’s why I want to talk about other great musicians that we overlook at our peril, but still on Glastonbury:

It was great watching all of that through the eyes of my 12 year old son. He was mesmerised by the drummer and continued to be taken by the whole Glastonbury experience. If you haven’t been I can recommend it. Even I, a long time festival sceptic was quite taken by the whole affair. Hundreds of thousands of people in a small area but rather than getting territorial about space or privacy people seem to go about their weekend with a great deal of grace and community cohesion. Litter is picked up, courtesy is shown and the benefit of the doubt extended where possible. I was impressed.

Good too to see the variety of music on show. I didn’t see that much – I find a gig a day enough – so catching two or three acts is quite a big deal – but what I saw was really good.However I’m always going to feel I’d rather be hearing whatever it is I’m hearing in a hall rather than a field and with 49,000 or so less people in the room.

I’m getting close to my holidays and it’s got me thinking that there’s a couple of outstanding things I wanted to explore with you before the good Roddy comes to keep you company in my absence. Many moons ago I suggested I wanted to delve a little into the music and story of Roger Miller. (top picture)) I also expressed an interest in finding out more about the life and times of John Hartford. (above) Coincidentally a new book about John has just come out and so I thought it would be a good week to play some of his diverse writing and playing.

We’ll also explore Roger Miller’s remarkable career. Remarkable because he broke two commonly held rules of country. He wrote nearly all of his own songs and hits completely on his own and he also became a British household name because of one enormously successful song. There’s no real connection between them, other than they are both truly great. But there’s a wee bit of common ground over this character:

We’ll have lots of new things too including something from the rather lovely new album by Alela Diane, Shovels and Rope, Roddy Woomble and Mavis Staples. It’s going to be good, so join me if you can on Friday evening at 8 on BBC Radio Scotland.

It’s been an interesting week in Glasgow. I’ve bumped into so many people who were at the Springsteen show and all of them (well nearly – Anne Marie – we’re working on you…) had a little spring in their step. That night seems to have drawn a rather lovely smile on the faces of the people of the West of Scotland. I’m so glad.

Gigs sometimes do that. They are technically not the best of what things might be but for some reason they focus the listener and the artist and bring them into a unique contract which forces both to need each other. It’s maybe not what you expected or perhaps what you didn’t expect but there’s a feeling that you were there with 50 or 50,ooo people who were all part of something very special. Many years ago my band played a gig in Hawkins in Dublin at which there was no more than 150 people present. However on my many return visits to that great city I have had so many conversations with people who claimed to be at that gig I’d be a millionaire if I’d had a quid for every person claiming to have been there. The reality is we love to belong, we enjoy seeing the special night becoming more special as memory fades and we feel ourselves members of a rather exclusive club.

I suspect there might be such an exclusive club forming over the night we recorded in May at Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall. There on tour for the first time in nearly 40 years were Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, swapping songs and harmonies as if there had never been such a long break. And what a break! Long enough for us to know how important Emmylou has been in the development of Country Rock through to Americana and for us to recognise the power and depth of Rodney’s songwriting. Marriages, presidents and country legends would rise and fall in these years and yet…..when these two singers hit that stage in Glasgow that night there was a feeling in the room that they had never been away. How lucky I felt that night when I realised what the opening few songs were; I knew for sure then that if they were doing these so early on we were in for something very special indeed.

Sitting out in Killermont Street was the BBC Mobile Studio with the combined talents of Niall Young, Chris McConnachie and Joanna Adams at the desk poised to record the whole thing. They did.

On Friday night we’ll play you highlights from that gig over two hours as well as a conversation I had with Emmylou and Rodney about their new album Old Yellow Moon and their current musical life together. If you’re now wishing you’d been there then all is not lost – you can hear it in the comfort of anywhere you can put a radio. Who knows, it might be in years to come you’ll just tell people anyway….I was there.

Join us if you can on Friday Evening at 8 on BBC Radio Scotland.

For the last few years Loudon Wainwright III has arranged his visits to Scotland without consulting me. Now I’m not a big one for turning up to most gigs – I’m quoted on wanting to see David Bowie (who I like very much) play in my local park if there was something good on the telly. I would, however, make an exception for Loudon as he is very good indeed. The trouble is each time he’s been anywhere near me I’ve been on air or doing a gig myself.

The last time I saw Loudon was 15 or so years ago in Edinburgh and it was a great night. What I love about the Loudon show is that there’s no need to have done any homework before you go. Often – especially with artists of a certain vintage and heritage – you feel a need to skim a couple of albums to remind you why you bought/asked for/bid-a-fortune-for-on-ebay the tickets in the first place. Maybe we should all be breathalised before we submit credit cards. (Towards the end of Neil Young’s show last week I was wondering why I’d made such a heart stopping effort to get there at all when I’d forsaken some excellent home baking at the school parents night…but that’s another story)

On Friday I am going to present a pretty special two hours in the company of Loudon, his daughters Martha Wainwright, Lucy Wainwright-Roche and occasional musical interludes from his son Rufus Wainwright and Martha and Rufus’s late mother Kate McGarrigle. It’s not an overstatement to suggest – as I will on Friday – that, outside the Carter-Cashes, this is the most significant musical family in folk/roots music over the last forty years. At the start of it all and still right in the middle of things too is the formidable Loudon. I first met him when he hosted a TV show years ago called Loudon and Co. Deacon Blue played that show and I asked Loudon about a song he’d performed. He said he’d send me the album and, as good as his word, the album popped through the postbox a few days later. It’s called History and it’s still one of my favourites of his or anyone else’s output.

What makes Loudon such a special artist is his candid story-telling about himself, his friends and – most of all – the other members of his family. Sometimes they respond. We’ll hear two particular responses from Martha and  Rufus. We’ll also hear them sing together – Loudon and Lucy sang a beautiful duet for us – and we’ll hear why music has been the glue that has kept them all together – even when they’re falling apart. As Loudon sort of says, ‘We’re the same as every other family and that’s why people dig the songs.’ I think that’s dead right.

Painfully honest, achingly funny, poignant and at times appropriately sentimental, Loudon, for me, is literally the daddy of them all. A magnificent song writer, beautiful player and singer and an artist who has been true to everything he set out to do.  Join me if you can on Friday for The Wainwright Family Special.

It all starts on Friday evening at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland.

When we last carried an interview with Patty Griffin I had stolen time from her backstage at The Band of Joy gig in Edinburgh, To get things started we’d knocked on her dressing room door. I felt slight trepidation at this point as I’d already encountered Robert Plant and he’d rightly wondered what on earth we were all doing there. My nerves, however, were offset by the intrigue of seeing her put down her guitar to come to the interview up the stair. What was she doing in there? ( to misquote Tom) Was she writing new songs…would there be an album….was anyone else involved?

The answers didn’t come immediately but a few weeks ago I found out everything. Patty Griffin and Robert Plan came in  to Studio 1 at AC central to record a session and Patty talked extensively about that writing process, her collaborators and clear up if she was really writing songs in that dressing room. It was a truly one-off AC experience made slightly, and I choose this word carefully, surreal by the great presence of Robert. He was such fun; chatted to everyone about music, Scotland, being famous…everything really. It was also clear that he loved being involved and bringing a little more attention to what Patty Griffin was doing. As you well know – and I’ll reiterate it here again – I think Patty is my favourite singer. She could sing anything and proved how versatile she was on Downtown Church a couple of years back, but on this new record she’s on sparkling form writing, playing and singing her own songs. It’s a very moving story of loss too as she will explain when she tells us the story of her late father who didn’t say very much (he had been a trappist monk at one point) but did say the words, ‘Don’t Let Me Die In Florida.’ It’s a great session with some brilliant insights from Patty so don’t miss it.

We’ll play new things from Houndmouth, Mindy Smith, Dawn McCarthy and Bonnie Prince Billie and the very moving title track to the new Guy Clark album. Expect some great old music from Trisha Yearwood and another new voice from Scotland.

We start at the usual time of five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland.

I remember the time well. It was 1975 and I was just finished 5th year at school. I was obsessed by music and through a friend my current obsession focussed around the characters of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. In an attempt to stay ahead of that year’s game I bought the new Neil Young album. I’d heard Harvest and bits of the others but I wanted to know what was going on now. I bought ‘Tonight’s The Night.’ To thousands of fans this was the antithesis of everything they wanted to hear in a Neil Young album. They’d been waiting for Harvest 2…and frankly, this was not what was wanted. Stoned, slurred, slow, country...yes (but not that kind) it stretched the fans. My pal Pete had given up on the last but one – Time Fades Away and had certainly not wasted any spare change on On The Beach. He gave me Time Fades Away and I’m grateful to this day as it’s still not available on digital or CD.

So, because I came in where I did, and wanted to love it all – I now count those mid seventies ‘difficult’ albums as some of my favourites. It tool me till many years later to do the same with the eighties ones – but hey everyone has got to find their own way through the Neil humps. What’s certain is that when you do you’ll get a wee reward at the end. He’s coming to Glasgow next week. It’s a disaster for me. Having said NO to a couple of things so I could be there my son’s school – philistines all of them – have called a parents night. I am determined that the business will conclude in time for me to catch the final hour or so.

It will be great to see him again. I’m not a big one for seeing people live millions of times. I’d rather see a variety of artists. I’ve seen Neil twice – once with Crazy Horse at The old Apollo and once with Booker T and the MGs at the SECC. They were both sublime experiences – the first in 1976 changed my life – but that’s another story. I carried this picture on a notebook or two and in my head for years after….

I thought of Neil a lot when I first heard Three Blind Wolves. It’s the warm crunch of the guitars, idiosyncratic phrasing and relaxed view of rock – some songs take a while to get there – that binds them. All of these things are highly commendable in my opinion and I thought we’d celebrate both Neil and Three Blind Wolves this Friday. The latter band will be in Studio One for the last of our live celebrations of Scottish artists. What a month this has been. I get to be in the room and you get to hear some of the best bands around recorded by the cream of the fab BBC Engineers at BBC Scotland. In my opinion these have been some of the most exciting sessions ever.

We’re not going to be shy about introducing some new artists either this week. Get ready for new things from Ralfe Band, Valerie June,  Slaid  Cleeves and Daniel Meade. Be prepared too to re enjoy Suzy Boguss a lovely new offering from Tom Russell (old friends of the show) and all the usual delights. It all kicks off at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland.

Last year at this time I was in Music City. It was late May and it was strangely cold. I remember having to go and buy a pullover or two as I hadn’t brought the right clothes.

‘Why all this?’, I hear you say….. It was a flyer a friend sent for CMA week and a certain late night jam at The Ryman when I thought, ‘shucks, I’m not going to be there for Marty’s Late Night Jam.’

I suppose it’s something about these magical music places….16th and 17th Streets , the RCA Studios, The Warners Building where I first experienced these writing sessions with complete strangers (sometimes stetsonned) and the lazy drives home in the late spring sunshine. ‘4 songs away,’ was how my publisher – the fabulously named Dale Bobo – answered when I asked how far his house was. It’s all mixed up in memory now – Noshville – for breakfast – The Loveless Cafe – The Bluebird. My daughter who loves ‘Nashville,’ the series and she wants to know –

What’s it like in there?

You want to know, I ask.

Suddenly, the enchanted place I thought was mine and mine alone has been televised and everyone wants cut in on the deal.It’s as if Pooh Corner had opened itself as a theme park.

I suppose the most fantastical bit is the combination of the places and the songs. Hearing songs on the radio about the place you’re driving round is always a thrill. Most cities in the US are not immune but it usually comes into sharp focus in New York, L.A. and especially Nashville. There’s a lovely movie running in my head of a song writer driving back to the east side, guitar in the boot turning on the radio and suddenly – her song is playing. It’s that dream that brings the singers, pickers and writers in the thousands. And, if you can make it there…well you know the rest.

I’m not there this year, partly because my wife is on the road herself in a new theatre show and because, instead of music row, I’m right in the heart of The Gorbals – Glasgow’s own magical music quarter – where I’m working on a future theatrical event. And…I’m having just as much fun.

However I thought of Nashville this week again as it’s a place I often imagine young Roddy Hart making a strong impression. Roddy is a man who knows why you have Waylon and Willie in your record collection along with Cee Lo, Pharrell, Bowie and Bolan. He’s been an AC visitor before along with the Lonesome Fire but things are changing there too. A few months ago he let me have a sneaky listen to the new project where the “Fire” step out of the shadows and lo and behold a new and exciting band emerges. So it will be that big, bright ensemble who become our third Scottish Band in this month of Studio One sessions. They will be playing songs from that new record plus talking about the sessions with producer Danton Supple as well as telling us how they got Kris Kristofferson into their video.

We will celebrate some new music from Diana Jones, Blue Rose Code, The National and KT Tunstall. We’ll hear My Darling Clementine singing about George Jones and the above mentioned Mr Kristofferson singing about Hank. Look out too for some fine moments from Stonewall Jackson and Buddy Miller. It all starts at five past eight on Friday evening on BBC Radio Scotland.

I once had an email exchange of views with someone who said he wasn’t going to buy my music because he said I supported terrorists. In actual fact he was referring to the fact that I was doing a benefit gig for Medical Aid to Palestine. (I know…but sometimes the public out there can be pretty ill informed.) It came up again recently when I was upbraided online for doing a free gig at a prison. How they thought the prisoners should pay for it was beyond me…

I like to know what I think, I like to think I half know what might be in the news and like everyone else I’m constantly surprised that I still get shocked by things in the news. I guess we’re all reeling from these terrible images from Woolwich and , having just returned from the supermarket and seen the spread of newspapers, I’m perhaps wishing I knew less. The trouble is we often can’t look away, and for some people there was no choice.

Sitting listening to the news over breakfast, I did what I often do in these situations; I turned down the news and put on Bruce. In particular it was Wreck On The Highway – but it could have been so many songs. It’s a gut response with me. I put on music to write this and suddenly the world seemed to make more sense. The songs were these….I Thought I Was A Child – Jackson Browne, Movin On – Sweet Honey In The Rock and Tomorrow Is A Long Time (by Bob) and sung by Nickel Creek. It helped. When I reached Alan Jackson’s Blessed Assurance I knew I was ready to step outside again. I’m sorry if that’s facile – but that’s what music does. Other times it energises you; today it consoled. What do you reach for?

On Friday we gather round a radio on the back of a news bulletin that might bring us more bad news…who will know? Inevitable we need to get on with our lives. Someone posted a lovely share about doing the ironing on Friday nights while listening…I liked that. If we can come into your life and make sesnse of one or two things by surprising you with great music then Mr Murdoch and I and the good Kirsten will believe we have achieved all we set out to do.

This Friday we’re delighted to welcome Eugene Twist and the band to  Studio One. It’s a first visit by Eugene since his album came out last year and he’s promising us new songs too. We’ll find out all about him, his recordings and the kind of country he digs himself in the second half of the show.

Before that…. The Dixie Chicks, Son Volt, Jimmie Rodgers and finally Aoife O’Donovan’s album pokes its head out of the box. We’ll play Lord Huron and tell you how you can hear more from them in the weeks to come and we’ll play you a Tom T Hall song that could easily be described as one of the greatest Country Songs of All Time. We do all this in two hours you know. It all starts at five past eight on Friday Evening. BBC Radio Scotland.

Live From Studio One…..A Month of Great, Scottish Musicians and Bands who we revere and consider as great friends of Another Country.

It’s going to be big, noisy and very exciting and it all starts this Friday with Woodenbox.  Many of you will remember their session from a couple of years back and since then they’ve managed to lose a ‘fistful of fivers’ and keep things simple with a one word moikor. They’ve also given birth to a fab new album, tracks from which they will play this Friday as well as an interesting cover version which they’ve rustled up for us. Woodenbox embrace a great country tradition of putting horns on their records. There have been some old and new records with a similar vibe, Johnny Cash, The Mavericks and recently Phosphorescent and Iron and Wine. It’s a tradition we like very much and anyone who has ever seen The Last Waltz knows that sometimes you just need to create a big roots stew….we’ll broadcast this particular casserole in the second half of Friday’s show.

As ever though we’ll make sure you hear the best of the new things out there. I’m pleased to say we’ll continue to enjoy the new offering from Patty Griffin, we’ll reflect on a wonderful Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell concert in midweek and we’ll make some introductions too. Has anyone out there heard Valerie June yet? Believe me you will very soon. New things too from Houndmouth, Blue Rose Code and Kacey Musgraves. We’ll celebrate some wonderful country from Marty Robbins and Lee Ann Womack and heck I’d imagine we’ll surprise you with the odd thing or two too. It all kicks off at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland.