Is it me, or have the skies cleared a bit over the last couple of days? I have to tell you that in our house there was a hooping and a hollering at the news of a new American President and a believable vaccine all in a couple of days. I’m not naive, I know there will be a million things people will expect them both to do, that there will a million different voices telling me how little change there is going to be and how really people’s lives will not improve. I know all this and I take it on board.

In respect of the US, what delights me, and it really does delight me reader, is that something decent has happened in a country which I love very much. People have voted – fairly. The world has recognised this and a new President is coming who at least seems compassionate, considerate and given to talking about the problems of his people not boasting about himself. He has, and employs to good effect, a sense of humour, a history of public service and damn it he plays Springsteen as his walk-on music…and not Born in The USA either! He doesn’t hold a Bible above his head as a token of power but has a simple deep faith which he brings to his politics and his engagement with the public.

What, you may well ask, has this got to do with country music? Our show, Another Country, is a celebration of Americana and country music. We recognise that so much of what we love about the music comes from the country where it was born and dreamed up in the first place. Can we separate those artists and repertoire from their time and culture? I doubt it. Hearing roots music is to understand why people gathered to play and sing in the first place. A couple of weeks ago we spent two glorious hours celebrating the contribution of African American artists to country music and we recognised within that story the huge struggle there was for so many of these voices just to be heard.

When the leader of a country makes it clear he isn’t listening to those voices, when he twists facts to suit his own ends and then behaves like a spoiled child as democracy takes its inevitable course it’s impossible not to feel a little spark of joy. Welcome back America; we missed you when you were gone. As one of our favourite artists, Jason Isbell put it, ‘America just got dropped off at rehab.’ It’s the perfect image: lots of hard questions, soul searching and eventually a life long commitment to follow a better path. I commend them for starting the journey. It’s one we might well consider joining ourselves.

This Tuesday we too will have a little spring in our step as we take the temperature in Nashville with our Music City correspondent, Bill DeMain. We’ll reflect on the times, a little more on the recent losses in the country community and Bill will point us in the direction of some new names. It’s 2020, it’s been a tough year, but it really is about to get a whole lot better.

Join us this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland from eight as we play you some great music to match the mood.

Daydreaming as a young person I often wondered what my favourite rock stars did when they weren’t making records or touring. How did they spend an average day? I used to spend hours thinking about Neil Young in particular. On a spring morning what took up his thoughts, where did he spend time and why was it taking so long to hear the new album?

Having spent the best part of a lifetime in the business of making music I can tell you with some certainty that there are any number of ways to put off writing or recording a song. One of the joys of presenting Another Country is hearing the many different ways the creative muse works with my songwriting guests. I find my mind thinking back to Nick Lowe’s image of the radio playing through the wall from the flat next door to describe the song beginning to emerge in your consciousness. What’s perfect about the allusion is the knowledge that, at any time, the songwriter can simply move away, stop listening or ask the neighbour to turn the radio off. Dealing with the song is often the decision we never make.

©Jay Blakesberg

So it was with some interest that Gillian Welch and David Rawlings revealed to their audience the songs which they dreamed up in between records but which they chose to ignore for their early albums of this century. In fact it’s intriguing to think that so many songs were written even though there was an eight year gap between Soul Journey and Harrow and The Harvest. More will be revealed about that particular gap when Vol 3 of this Boots No 2 series comes out later this month. Meanwhile we have two volumes of lost songs to get to know. This coming Tuesday on Another Country you can hear a conversation I recorded with Gillian and David from their house in Nashville. You’ll hear why it was so important to bring these records out sooner than might have been expected, why they nearly lost all the tapes in the Nashville Tornado and why some of these great cuts have never surfaced until now. It’s a fascinating conversation and we’ll give over the second hour of this week’s show to the songs and stories of Boots No 2.

In the first hour of the show we’ll recognise that Tuesday is going to be a momentous day in America’s story courtesy of a wonderful new release from Anais Mitchell and Mick Flannery. We’ll pay tribute to the lives and work of Jerry Jeff Walker and Billy Joe Shaver who have both died in the last couple of weeks. We’ll catch up with some new names; step forward India Ramey and Bonnie Whitmore and we’ll renew an old friendship with the great Roseanne Cash. Oh and don’t miss Maddie and Tae too.

As ever we’ll be on BBC Radio Scotland on Tuesday evening at five past eight and you can catch us anywhere else in the world courtesy of BBC Sounds on the night or from thirty days after. Join me if you can.

I’m out of my comfort zone, so bear with me. On BBC Radio Scotland we’re celebrating Black History Month and we’ll probably be the one Music show who could have a problem with this. There’s no doubt country music and even the wider genre of Americana is (in the main) made by white people from the southern states. In fact it could be argued that country music is the pop music of the south except, as we know, its appeal is much, much broader.

Similarly it would be myopic to imagine white country musicians have no crossover with African-American artists. To say music draws from a common well is really the greatest understatement. So, on this week’s Another Country we will bring you a very special show which celebrates the common source of the roots music we all enjoy. We’ll reach back to string bands, jug bands, the blues, gospel, rhythm and blues and hillbilly music to bring you two hours of reasons why we should all be grateful to what black music has brought us.

One of the strange things about any of these themed shows or special months is the notion that we have to dedicate some time to show something that should be part of the fabric of cultural life. For me and people like me we can all nod in broad agreement that Black Lives Matter or that Black History Month is a ‘good thing.’ However as I watched the Trial of The Chicago Seven on Saturday night (I recommend it) it occurred to me once more how often in my lifetime black people have been marginalised, abused or exploited.

For me it’s an occasional journey. These are not concerns that fill my everyday life. My life is concerned with doing my own work, cooking, shopping and the usual stuff that fills an old Scottish bloke’s world. However for George Floyd, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Philando Castile and Breonna Taylor and their families, this isn’t a month or even a year. It’s every day, every hour of every day and it goes without saying that their lives matter. It’s a tale taken up by Tre´Burt whose song about George Floyd’s murder is retold in a remarkable and moving ballad just released and which is one of the most vital songs you’ll hear on this week’s show.

It’s one of twenty plus tracks we will play along with short excerpts from conversations we’ve recorded over the years with African-American artists. Listen to the stories in the songs of Linda Martell, Rhiannon Giddens, Darius Rucker, Yola, Adia Victoria and Charley Pride and, if you tune in you’ll be reminded again why we owe so much to Black music and why country music sounds as good as it does. We’ll also be reminded to think for a while about the African experience and why everyday life is still such a dangerous struggle for so many.

We’re on BBC Radio Scotland this Tuesday evening from five past eight. Join me if you can.

You’re either a radio person or you’re not. Inherited from my late father, I am a radio person. Even now I could tell you his own radio highlights; what he tuned into and when he tuned out. I could tell when he’d turn up the volume and I knew when he’d turn it down, change stations or worse still…though rare…turn the dam thing off.

The radio must have been there without us even knowing it was on. As kids we didn’t have a record player in the house until I was half way through primary school, so how else did I know all the songs I did? The radio was on in the car, in the kitchen and eventually it would be stolen upstairs to be played in my room.

When I went to secondary school we would often get a lift in my father’s car. The trick was to leave it on Radio One for as long as it didn’t annoy him knowing that, at any minute, his hand could flick the dial and spin us back into Radio 2 land or worse….the news. Privately I approved of Radio 2 because of the greatness that was Terry Wogan. I didn’t even think I liked him but realised I just didn’t want to turn him off. In those days (early 70s) there was little or no pop music we could really love on 2 but there were classics, big band, jazz tunes, standards and country hits to keep us thinking. If we managed a journey on Radio 1 of course that would also offer a box of delights. A breakfast show could include Elton John, Queen, Billy Connelly and Kenny Rogers or Stevie Wonder. Tell that to our colonial cousins across the pond and they writhe around in a jealous rage having had to choose the format of radio they liked before they even turned on the tranny.

I also got to thinking how dismal my own kids secondary school radio had been. Almost all their potential breakfast show listening had been dominated by Chris Moyles on Radio One, who famously, never played music until he was forced to. He was a skilled broadcaster…maybe even the best at what he did/does but I fear a generation lost out on the joy of the divergent playlists we were offered as teenagers.

Surprise is the secret weapon of radio. There is always joy in an unexpected old favourite at the time of day you weren’t expecting it. (Thank you Ken Bruce for Steely Dan this morning) But there is also something life affirming about a record that is so startlingly new it makes you want to turn the car around. For all the wonder of streaming algorithms nothing ever pops up from my phone as wonderfully as it does on the radio.

It’s a mantra my producer, Richard Murdoch, and I have tried to live by. Keep playing songs that will delight and surprise. I love it when we can get from Lefty Frizzell to Leon Bridges and end up with Laura Marling or Maren Morris ..and believe me we do.

We will have as catholic a playlist as ever this Tuesday evening.

If we haven’t already played you almost all of Tenille Townes album, then I can’t think why. Finally we are catching up with Tenille on this week’s show. I chatted to her from my studio in Glasgow to her own space in Nashville a couple of weeks ago. You can hear all about her story of teenage success through to her real country breakthrough in this, the most unlikely of years. Tenille is a talented singer songwriter who, I’m certain will be a huge star in the next few years. Listen in to a fascinating conversation on this week’s AC.

Please note that BBC Scotland  have withdrawn all their individual Facebook Pages for music shows. So I will be posting the blog and adding your comments and thoughts on my own FB Musicians page…(which is a bit quiet anyway just now) https://www.facebook.com/rickyrossofficial

As ever we’re on air from five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland this Tuesday evening or any time you choose on BBC Sounds for the next 30 days. Join me if you can.

I’ve been out early these last couple of weeks. My early runs with the dog take me through the glorious paths of Pollok Park in Glasgow’s south side. For a while there it seemed the summer would stretch on forever, bathing us in sunshine to compensate for all 2020 had thrown at us. However, it was not to be. Autumn arrived as soon as October started and in that short time the leaves have turned and fallen.

It’s no surprise this was the Romantic Poets favourite time of year. Tramping over the golds and red of a wild wood would melt even the most hardened of hearts. If the colours of the season didn’t nudge at your soul I suspect there is still something in the inevitability of nature giving in to the bitter realities of the coming winter which will give you cause for reflection. I’m just back from a long, slower wander which feels more in keeping with the time of year. At one point we stopped and turned round to stop ourselves getting lost, but in reality all of us could have kept on walking for miles. Perhaps the fact we can’t meet indoors is making ramblers of us all?

All of this came together the other morning for me. Driving back from the park I happened upon a new song by Kevin Morby,the Kansas song-smith, which included a burning camp fire right in the centre of the track. It was a beautiful, fall-full moment which delighted me with its sonic crackle as much as it pleasantly surprised. Like the sea there is something important and unique about the sound of flames tearing through wood and leaves on an open fire. In this instance there was also something pretty essential about it being in the song. Listen out for the moment on this week’s Another Country.

As ever we’re juggling many choices to bring you the best of what we have been listening to over the last seven days or so. We’re going to remind you again about the Ferris and Sylvester session still available on BBC and play you a little of the music they recommended to us on their session a couple of weeks back. We’ll mourn the passing of legendary Nashville artist and seminal writer, Mac Davis whose back catalogue included one of the greatest Elvis Presley songs of all time. In the same vein we’ll bring you another track from the Elvis album of his 5 day/night Nashville session of 50 years ago. It’s another magical moment and you can catch up with the whole thing next month when the 4CD box set arrives just in time for your Santa lists.

There’s so much more too, but you’ll need to join us this Tuesday evening from five past eight for the full experience. We’re on BBC Radio Scotland FM and thereafter on BBC Sounds. Join me if you can.

There’s only one name you might not know in this week’s Another Country. You’ll be familiar with the artists we are playing… Faith Hill, Little Big Town, Tim McGraw, Brandy Clark, Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert and…Lady Gaga! You’ll recognise the songs too. From Tim’s Humble and Kind, a country #1 from 2016 to last year’s anthem to faith in community, The Highwomen‘s ‘Crowded Table’ you’ll know so many songs on this week’s show from the opening bars.

The only name with which you may be less familiar is the writer of every song you will hear: Lori McKenna. Over the course of the last dozen or so years we’ve played the songs Lori has written for other artists. In recent years too, we’ve played the songs she has written for her own career. Interestingly it’s her own life as a solo artist which kicked off her songwriting career. Hailing from the same part of the world, Mary Gauthier who was based in Boston in the early part of her career told the Nashville people about Lori McKenna and encouraged her to come down to Music City to consider something which she admits she then found a difficult concept: co-writing. To say she warmed to this is a vast understatement. Since she first made the trip her co-writing credits are on songs cut by the list of artists I mentioned at the top of the blog as well as so many more. Her regular gig is the three-way session writes she conducts with her Love Junky friends, Liz Rose and Hillary Lindsey. Though she now collaborates with a wide range of other Nashville writers, she is however almost unique as a successful country songwriter who has never lived in the city.

LORI MCKENNA
http://www.sacksco.com/pr/lori_mckenna.html
Credit: Becky Fluke

Lori is a native of Stoughton, Massachusetts and it was there she spoke with me from her home studio a couple of weeks ago. We talked about her family who still live nearby and the recurring theme in her own work: the loss of her mother at the age of her seven. It’s a theme which comes up again in a beautiful song on her new album, The Balladeer, dedicated to her elder sister, Marie. Her own family come up again and again in her own work and as someone who wrote songs for her young children it’s a practice she’s continued even as they have grown and flown the nest. No parent couldn’t be moved by ‘When You’re My Age,‘ and no one who has experienced their own parent’s ageing process couldn’t be unaffected by ‘People Get Old’ from 2018’s The Tree.

On this Tuesday’s AC we’ll celebrate the songs Lori McKenna has written for other people and her own eleven album solo career which is completed by 2020’s The Balladeer. It’s going to be a glorious two hour celebration of song which starts this Tuesday evening at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

Peeling an orange this morning I remembered how I’d been taught by my mother who, in turn, had learned how to do it from her father. My grandfather (among many jobs) sold fruit and vegetables between the wars. Nuggets of advice filtered through to us about skinning oranges and packing bananas last…I am still careful when bagging my shopping at the checkout. I guess there are certain things you can’t unlearn. There’s a family saying I’ve even managed to pass on which involved a young schoolboy’s visit to a distant cousin of my mother’s. It all happened so many generations ago it’s impossible to clarify the true origin of the tale. I’m sure the main players in the story would be surprised at how a simple comment at the tea table has become immortalised into family folklore.

Some of this came back when I happened upon an advertisement on twitter for Peugeot cars. Latching on to our innate love of nostalgia they printed an image of a 60’s estate car and asked people to share their Peugeot memories. As I looked at the picture I remembered the visit of my father’s cousin and her family home from the Belgian Congo in their own vehicle which (apart from the colour) looked exactly like the one in the photograph. There was something very exciting about a car which had made it all the way back from Africa and contained so many people. In the haze of memory they looked not unlike the family in the advert.

Memories are incredibly important to us. Our photo feed on our computer wants to remind us and our social media does the same. ‘Look what you were doing this time last year. Do you remember this special day? It’s a birthday.’ In truth I gave up on Facebook for fear I couldn’t keep up with the anniversaries. I like to pick and choose my moments of nostalgia; but memories sneak up from behind. Songs in films and TV shows are great at putting the emotional energy into a scene that can often just be a face or a still shot. Match it to the music and suddenly we’re back where we first heard it first. One of the best ever was Tiny Dancer‘s moment in the sun in the tour bus during ‘Almost Famous.’

How will your photo albums remind you of 2020?  Mine will have an absence of friends, foreign travel and a surplus of sunny Scotland shots and garden improvements…it could be worse. For those of us who like to spend a few nights of any month at a gig we’ll perhaps notice the blank spaces in our diaries and the lack of live shots from our nights out. It really has been very quiet. Until now.

This week on BBC Radio Scotland we’re inviting in some special friends to make a bit of a racket again. You may have already heard some snippets on some of your favourite shows. There’s been jazz, classical and rock so far and on this Tuesday’s Another Country we will welcome Ferris and Sylvester into the BBC to entertain you with a live set recorded earlier in the afternoon at the Quay. We’re excited to welcome the band in as we’ve been playing their music for the last year or so and we can’t wait to hear the session, a great choice of cover version and spend a bit of time chatting over their own story. As well as that we’ll have some fab music from Brad Paisley, Luke Combs, Darlingside, Emily Barker and The Long Ryders.

It all starts at five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

It was a quiet Sunday evening and I was doing that thing I often do at that time of week; going through the large CD pile of recent arrivals. There are good weeks and bad weeks and, if I’m honest, this wasn’t a bumper crop. An email popped in from my sister. An old school friend had spotted our old family home coming on to the property market. It was impossible not to look at the photographs and to try to reconcile memory to new reality. I think I managed to identify the rooms and occasionally the geography of a cupboard or wardrobe and even the space where a first song was written. Little else made sense…my sister admitted she recognised nothing. How dare they throw out a bathroom fitted in 1963?

I once got to visit the house myself. Twenty years on from when we left it I was asked to make a TV documentary about returning to my hometown and the producer managed to get me access to see round it. In a strange coincidence the chap who then owned it had also taken a job I once had in the city…..all too much happenstance for comfort. When I went home I got so excited I eagerly invited my mother and sister to join me for a visit. Wisely, they shook their heads, ‘We don’t really want to spoil the memory.’ I wished I’d never gone and had never mentioned it.

At my age there are many homecomings over the ages. The first true one I experienced was a show we did in Dundee in 1988 where our old, dear friend Johan Mrvos (then our US A&R guy) accompanied us on the dates through Scotland. After a home town show in Dundee we took him the long way via the East Neuk to the last night of the tour in Edinburgh stopping in Anstruther (I think) before being very late for our sound check in Auld Reekie. So keen was I to show Jovan my home patch, I’d almost forgotten we had a show to do that night. As it turned out we were driving into Edinburgh listening to the chart countdown as it became clear that we were about to have our first ever proper hit song. That day was remembered recently as my wife and I wandered along the East Fife coastal path. I remembered too Jovan’s comforting words…’You can’t go home again,’ as he pointed me to Thomas Wolfe.

It’s a theme that comes up a lot in country music. The return of the native to make sense of where they came from and how they got where they did. In Nashville almost everyone comes from somewhere else and in a life of song they either try to eulogise the place they came from, make sense of why they left or pay tribute to the values home gave them. There are so many great examples to choose from but a particular favourite is Miranda Lambert’s, ‘The House That Built Me.’ I loved the retelling of the writing session we got when Allen Shamblin joined our songwriters ’round’ in Nashville a couple of years back. He remembered his co-writer Tom Douglas talking about the small town he grew up in and how, during that writing session he walked himself around his childhood home. The song, of course, starts with the sage advice, ‘I know they say you can’t go home again,’ but adds the beautiful rejoinder, ‘If I could just come in I swear I’ll leave, I won’t take nothing but a memory from the house that built me.’ A perfect couplet but a difficult act to pull off.

On this week’s AC we will play out another bit of song writing self reflection as we celebrate the place where so much magic has happened over the years – Music Row. For many song writers it’s a place where there is as much disappointment as triumph but recently the very talented songwriter, Luke Laird has brought out his own album of the same name. In the title song he tells the story of how a family holiday brought him to Music City where he found out what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. How he’s succeeded too! We thought it was a rabbit hole worthy of further exploration so with the help of Dolly Parton, Bruce Springsteen, George Strait and Margo Price we’ll take you to 16th Avenue South, better known as Music Row. After that we’ll also bring you a celebration of Luke Laird’s own successful cuts. Listen out for gems from Tenille Townes, Brandy Clark, Kacey Musgraves and Tim McGraw.

With the special news briefing this Tuesday evening we plan to be on air a little later at 8:30 on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

One of the things I’ve always loved about country music is the fact that the lyric is as important…sometimes more important..than the music. In truth, when people talk about country music classics I find they are very often referring to the narrative of the lyric over against the structure and hook of the melody and chords. We probably all agree that we need both, but I remember being in a writing session in Brixton one day when the subject of country music came up. I was working with a writer called Fingaz…. a great Ugandan keyboard player/programmer who had produced for BigBrovaz (don’t even ask). At one point Fingaz declared his love of country music. I was intrigued.

‘What is it you like?’ I asked

Without even missing a beat, ‘It’s the stories.’

I thought back to that conversation when a listener messaged me via twitter to ask if I’d come across the recent Daniel Tashian/Burt Bacharach collaboration. Having had my attention drawn I have been playing tracks around the house and car for the last couple of weeks. There’s much to love, but as my correspondent said when requesting we play something, ‘Is it country?’ It’s probably not, but both Burt and Daniel have great country credentials, as you would expect. Daniel’s back story is as singer and songwriter for The Silver Seas – Nashville based band who, though never massively successful drew the attention of those who knew. One of those was Kacey Musgraves who engaged him to cowrite and produce her Golden Hour album. That led to a Grammy Award and he’s even more in demand as a writer for Tenille Townes, Little Big Town and more.

Daniel’s collaboration with Burt Bacharach is a beautiful thing; in truth it brings out the best in each of them. It got us thinking about Bacharach and David’s own country connections and we think you’ll be delighted to be reminded of how far their songs have travelled west.

It’s often irritated me how people lazily refer to Bacharach songs when they really mean Bacharach and David. It’s not that either of them didn’t write before or after they met but simply that when people make the error they really are seldom referencing songs where Hal wasn’t present. The great catalogue – and it is truly great – is a testament to the combination of two unique talents. Great records can happen despite the lack of originality in the music or the lyric. But a great song  without a great lyric? I’ve yet to hear it.

We’ll also remind you of the talent of Hillary Lindsey. One of the songwriters mentioned in last week’s Chuck Prophet special, you’d be amazed that, despite her name perhaps being unfamiliar, a great number of songs penned by her would be recognisable to any regular listener to the AC. If you are one of our regular listeners I feel confident enough to predict that this week’s show will bring joy, a few surprises and a necessary dose of familiarity to keep you company this Tuesday evening.

As ever we’re on BBC Radio Scotland and we’ll be on air just after eight. Join me if you can.