Ricky's Radio Blog

general musings

Melody, Harmony and Rhythm

February 4, 2020 by ricky No Comments

I will be telling a little more about this story in the months to come, but if excuses are needed, I missed out on some of the delights of the final week of Celtic Connections as I was in Africa. There is much to tell about my trip, but in the context of this Blog there was a moment when something critical and vital about music occurred to me.

We were visiting a small village a little while away from the city of Chyangugu in South East Rwanda and bidding farewell to the residents when a wonderful thing happened. Gathering around us the members of the small settlement burst into song. It involved a call and response from one woman with the rest of the locals accompanying her only with handclaps and the occasional ululation. Soon the dancing started and the elders made their way to the front and danced us up the road. In a week of extremes, where we heard stories illustrating the worst of human behaviour it was great to be reminded about the wonderful explosion of warmth when groups of people coalesce around music. Standing in the middle of the village surrounded by melody, harmony and rhythm I was given a timely reminder that music, at its best, is brilliantly, beautifully simple.

Perhaps that’s why, over the last few weeks so many people passing through Glasgow have found much to enjoy in World, Folk, Country, Bluegrass and all the other roots music on offer at Celtic Connections. All of us love being reminded of the simple elements of voices and instruments coming together in their rawest form.

A couple of weeks ago we celebrated the scope of our own genre – Country – in a three way round at Cottier’s theatre. On this week’s show we’ll bring you a reminder of the new recordings by the three artists involved as well as taking you on a little journey around some of the themes of their songs on that particular evening.

In the second hour we’ll welcome Lauren Jenkins live in session fresh from her support slot with Brett Eldridge at The Old Fruitmarket on Tuesday evening. We’ve been playing Lauren’s music for the best part of a year now and we’re excited to hear her stories and listen to her own acoustic re imaginings of her album cuts.

We’ll still have time to reflect on some other CC highlights from Anais Mitchell and Brandy Clark as well as checking out some significant releases from Margo Price, Gill Landry and Andy Shauf. We will do all of this in two hours, and the only way you can find out how we manage this is to tune in live this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

Reading time: 2 min

general musings

Once More, In The Round

January 20, 2020 by ricky No Comments

There’s something about a round which is very special. To the initiated it’s a Nashville tradition. In truth I’m not certain where it started but its most celebrated home is The Bluebird Cafe on Music City’s west side. On any night of any week you’ll find a first and second house filled up with music loving locals and increasingly, visitors to the city, keen to experience one of the most celebrated experiences the home of country has to offer. The interesting adjoined to all this is that the songwriters in the round may not be familiar to any of the audience; it’s the songs that are the stars.

On nights when I’ve sat sipping a cold beer and eating some fried shrimp, served in holy silence by the most sensitive waiters in the world, I’ve been amazed to hear the raw, unrecorded version of a song I have loved forever. One night a couple of years back I had the amazing experience of hearing a song I’d co-written that week being performed. I then had the un-nerving experience of joining the round and inflicting one of my own on the assembled congregation.

The format is simple. The writers gather in the centre of the room and seated round them at tables and a few (latecomers only) rows of chairs and a couple of barstools are the audience. One of the four will launch into a number and for the best part of two hours with a short intermission four songwriters will tell stories, sing songs made famous by a variety of artists (sometimes including themselves) and your heart will get broken and put back together as you walk out to the cool of a Tennessee night. For $20 or so, it’s possibly the cheapest, best night out ever.

There are legendary stories too. A couple of years ago Kacey Musgraves told us the great story of how she met Ruston Kelly after spying him one night at The Bluebird. It was music of course… but love and marriage followed. We are not expecting that at our annual Celtic Connections round this week although we have had one or two great friendships. We think John Murry met his next producer on a smoke break after one of the nights we hosted. At the Bluebird the story goes that one night in a quiet corner of the room an up and coming singer called Garth Brooks was in to see what was happening. It was there he heard a song he knew was perfect for him. On the night he heard The Dance he told the writer, Tony Arata, ‘When I get a record deal, I’m going to record that song.’ You probably know how that one worked out.

In the AC round this year we have three great writers and some fabulous guest musicians. From Idaho along with guests John McCusker and Michael McGoldrick we welcome Pieta Brown. From Vancouver BC, for a return to our round, Frazey Ford and her band. And all the way from Liverpool, Robert Vincent. There will be stories, a few laughs, the occasional tear and two hours of song after song from three wonderful artists. We’re on air from five past nine this Tuesday evening unless you are lucky enough to be joining us at the earlier time of seven at the recording in Cottier’s Theatre in Glasgow.

Reading time: 2 min

general musings

A Different Country

January 14, 2020 by ricky No Comments

Over the weekend I drove up to my old hometown. Not just a quick burst into the city centre of Dundee but out to the outlying suburb of ‘The Ferry’ and dormitory town/almost suburb of Monifieth. It was a beautiful sunny Sunday morning all along the estuary and I have to admit I was sad to leave the old place behind knowing the rain would surely be on by the time we got near Cumbernauld.

I’m at the age now when there’s a good deal more in the past than in the future. I quite enjoy nostalgia so I am well suited to reflection on days gone by. However, I find the most difficult aspect of my own history is the reality that so much of it isn’t there anymore. There’s alot of the physical building blocks of memory around, though many of these too have disappeared, but that worries me less than the numbing reality that, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t step back into events as they appeared to me growing up. I’m not alone in this and it’s worse for some. I had an extended conversation around this very theme with my ninety one year old mother the other day and she is the most sunny person I know. Despite this she couldn’t help mourning the loss of so many in her immediate family and wider circle of friends who are no longer around.

Last week I attended the funeral of the elderly father of a good friend. When I encounter friends who’ve lost a parent I usually relate a little of my own experience. Long after he died I still wanted to phone my father up and share news that only he would understand. That, of course, could no longer happen. The shared experience is one of the most beautiful parts of our humanity. One of my favourite Paddy McAloon lyrics is ‘nothing sounds as good as, I remember that. Like a bolt out from the blue did you feel it too.’ Oh so true. We just want someone else to get it.

On my little sojourns up to Dundee I want to step back into the Gospel Hall my grandparents attended and drink in the atmosphere. I want the same faces to be in the pie queue at the football and I can’t understand when I see a guy with tattoos and a hoodie stepping out of a shop when I know there should be a gent in a suit and a trilby fastening his overcoat and steeling himself against the east wind. Ah it’s there but it’s not. The buildings still exist, the roads leading to and fro still reach the destinations but time has (rightly) moved on. There is no point in complaining. The past is a different country; they do things differently there. True, Mr Hartley, and besides, we no longer hold a passport.

Perhaps that’s why I still enjoy so much music which nods back to where it came from. On this week’s Another Country the man who makes history come alive on any given day in Music City, our very own Nashville correspondent, Bill DeMain will drop in to tell us more stories from the epicentre of our musical world. We welcome new music from The Haden Triplets (above) whose father Charlie was the great jazz bass player but whose grandfather was a country musician of note too. On a similar theme we will play you the first available track from our old friend, Nathaniel Rateliff who has gone back to the acoustic routes we knew him for on his early records.

There will be new music from A Girl Called Eddy, Lauren Jenkins, Lilly Hiatt and my song of the week this week from Lainey Wilson. It’s all starting at five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

Reading time: 3 min

general musings

Another World

January 7, 2020 by ricky No Comments

Here’s a shout out to a favourite Radio Scotland programme. On Sunday night I drove home to resound of Jazz Nights and, as ever with Jazz, it took me to another place. Seonaid Aitken was presenting a big band special and I recommend it to you. As I returned home I completed the acid test of all good radio, I stayed in the car to keep listening. I realised there were a couple of things going on. Firstly my mind went back to another Sunday evening over thirty years ago when we’d ventured over to deepest Brooklyn to visit one of my wife’s relatives and returning over the bridge to Manhattan in our yellow cab I soaked in the music coming from the driver’s AM jazz station. The sounds and the location came together as one. On Sunday, Seonaid slayed me with a classic Benny Goodman big band track which also reminded me of my youth. My father had a great album called Countdown by Benny Goodman. Starting with his big band, it moved through all the sizes of his live band until it went down to a brilliant duet between pianist, Teddy Wilson and vibes player, Lionel Hampton.

As I sat in the car listening to Benny on Sunday I remember what listening to that original Goodman album had meant for me. Not knowing anything about jazz or swing but simply imagining what was happening as the audience roared their approval, I was transported to somewhere else. I imagined the smoke-filled rooms and dance halls and another world which I’d never experienced but could conjure up in my mind’s eye in the grooves of that brilliant album. Music; it’s strong stuff.

That’s the thing about listening to records. Sometimes, on special occasions, it takes you somewhere you’ve never been. It’s often been the thing I’ve loved so much about country music too. There are hollers, creeks and honky-tonks I have to construct in my head…and sometimes that can be as interesting as knowing the reality. We can’t possibly know everywhere, so it’s with great pleasure this week we get taken to (for me) a new part of America’s South.

North Carolina is on my list of States I want to visit but has, so far, eluded me. From Durham, NC comes MC Taylor, who is best known by his band name, Hiss Golden Messenger. They’ve been making music for over ten years and have brought out an album almost every year in that time. We’ve enjoyed the music over that period but fell head over heels for the last record, Terms Of Surrender. Just before Christmas on a rare visit to Glasgow we invited him over to Studio One for a session and a long conversation. You can hear all of that on this week’s show…and I think you’ll enjoy it hugely.

We’ll introduce you to some new artists to the show including Robert Vincent, Bonnie Light Horseman, Ren Harvieu and Worry Dolls. We’ll play you some excellent new records from old friends including John Moreland, Pieta Brown and Frazey Ford. But, fear not, there will be some familiar music from Guy Clark, Elvis Presley and Lee Ann Womack too. As ever we’re on BBC Radio Scotland from five past nine. Join me if you can.

Reading time: 2 min

general musings

Thanks For Listening

December 17, 2019 by ricky No Comments

It’s been quite a year. We completed the last interview and session last week with Hiss Golden Messenger before signing off for Christmas. I keep notes for all the interviews…(I’m hopeless without them) and our guests make up a veritable who’s who. Ashley Monroe, The Delines, Devin Dawson, Israel Nash, Kathy Mattea, Yola, Brett Eldredge, Lylle Lovett, Ashley McBryde, Nick Lowe, Jaime Wyatt, Michael Ray, The Orphan Brigade, Hayes Carl and oh….Dolly Parton.

I hope I haven’t forgotten too many. We’ve also had our monthly Twang Town check ins from Bill DeMain and met an interesting new voice from Mu

It’s been quite a year. We completed the last interview and session last week with Hiss Golden Messenger before signing off for Christmas. I keep notes for all the interviews…(I’m hopeless without them) and our guests make up a veritable who’s who. Ashley Monroe, The Delines, Devin Dawson, Israel Nash, Kathy Mattea, Yola, Brett Eldredge, Lylle Lovett, Ashley McBryde, Nick Lowe, Jaime Wyatt, Michael Ray, The Orphan Brigade, Hayes Carl and oh….Dolly Parton.

I hope I haven’t forgotten too many. We’ve also had our monthly Twang Town check ins from Bill DeMain and met an interesting new voice from Music City,Marissa Moss. There have been gatherings down in Studio One with King of Birds and William The Conqueror and guest spots from our good friend Tia Sillers. Along the way we’ve heard some brilliant records from returning artists, take a bow Patty Griffin, Jenny Lewis and Son Volt and discovered new ones: Lauren Jenkins, Olivia Lane and Lula Wiles. For all those who have sent in records we haven’t managed to play can I say a huge thank you. Sometimes we just haven’t found time and space, sometimes it feels like the record is better suited to a different show and sometimes it just doesn’t connect with us. That’s not to say we are right about making any of these choices but we think it’s important to curate programmes which reflects the best of what’s around. As an artist who gets played/often-doesn’t-get-played-on-radio I understand this can be frustrating but there is one thing which, after eleven years of Another Country we haven’t changed: we like to think that we listen to everything. So thanks if you’ve sent some music in and sorry if it hasn’t been aired yet.

What’s also evident is there’s a lot of music around. Country (in the widest sense) in the UK is certainly going through a purple patch. American acts are coming over with increasing regularity and many new Country and Americana artists are keen to establish some UK cred before they launch properly back home. There is a host of new soft country UK acts…mainly duos it seems….and within that there is wide range of talent. It’s been exciting to see the career of Ferris and Sylvester moving in all the right directions and we are excited to hear what 2020 brings for them.

That’s enough about the artists. It is you, the listener, who really makes the difference to what we do. We are grateful for your posts on Facebook, tweets and emails. We love your suggestions and requests and we love the feedback we get from you. It’s been great to meet some of you out at gigs although my own business as an artist this year has meant I’ve made far fewer gigs in 2019..so sorry for the ones I missed. There have been some great nights though. The Delines earlier in the year and a wonderful evening with Sam Outlaw are two highlights for me.

There is a lot to be excited about in the new year. Country to Country will be upon us in a few months and we have some great plans to bring you close to the top acts of the weekend. So, as ever, we ask you to keep listening and on behalf of Richard Murdoch, Roslyn McCuish, Laura Seawright and myself a huge thank you for listening. We wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year when it comes.

Reading time: 3 min

general musings

You Never Stop Learning

December 10, 2019 by ricky No Comments

You never stop learning; or at least you shouldn’t. I’ve been away for a month or so and on my rather long flight home I grew tired of the idea of watching the films on offer. Flicking through the other options I found, to my delight, I could access the much coveted ‘Country Music’ documentary series by Ken Burns. Over the course of two legs of the journey I got to episode six where it brilliantly closes with The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s album, ‘Will The Circle be Unbroken.‘ Highlighting the tensions of racial hate, Nixon and Vietnam it shows how the younger generation paying respect to their elders helped ease some of the division happening in America at that time. Clearly this is a simplistic take on time where strife was never going to be resolved over an extended blue-grass jam, but nevertheless the idea of music being the balm we all need is a point worthy of some reflection.

It was good to be away from the UK when the General Election was taking place I have to admit. After five years of people falling out about almost everything it seemed to me another election was the last thing I could endure. I did tune in a bit from afar but being home for 48 hours I realise that, even as a casual bystander, it’s an emotionally exhausting process. My own therapy has always been music. It helps you celebrate and it allows you to grieve more deeply. It’s the soundtrack to falling in and falling out of love and when it’s great it can make you stop and change direction. Often it’s communal. I realised when we were out playing gigs that there must be a thousand different opinions under the roof of a venue on any given night..and yet…people find a common hope, comfort and sometimes an ecstasy in the songs we hold in common. In that sense music is a great leveller.

It’s often quite a shock to the system looking round an audience of an act you’ve chosen to watch at a bigger venue. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s been surprised to find strange bedfellows paying homage to a favourite artist. Any musical combo of merit will have a cross section of the population in the audience. It’s good for us singers too as it stops us assuming everyone agrees with our opinions just because they dig the music…an easy mistake to make.

It’s taken me years and a few bad decisions to learn this, and to take me back to the start of this particular ramble, I have tried not to stop learning. I remember an excitable moment in 1991 when we played in Manchester and United had just won a trophy. My wife and a friend found a cheap replica shirt and encouraged me to don it for the encore. No injuries were sustained but should you ever try to do this make sure they buy a tin hat along with the shirt.

This week on Another Country we can allow our minds to drift away from the political expediencies for a couple of hours and reflect on what we have loved in 2019. There has been so much to celebrate in country music. We’ll bring you recordings from favourite artists like Miranda Lambert, Maren Morris and The Delines as well as our new discoveries, Ferris and Sylvester, Tenile Townes and Logan Ledger. We’ll sprinkle in some Christmas offerings from Kacey Musgraves, The Stanley Brothers and JD McPherson. We’ll do all of this in two hours of radio on BBC Radio Scotland from five past nine. Join me if you can.

Reading time: 3 min

general musings

Tales From Music City

November 11, 2019 by ricky No Comments

Over the next few weeks we are going to bring you some great country stories from the beating heart of America’s Music City: Nashville Tennessee. This week’s blog is an introduction to the forthcoming delights.
On this week’s show we have lots of great new artists and releases plus one of Country Music’s great stories told through the lens of Canadian songwriter, Matt Patershuk. If the title of his song, ‘Ernest Tubb Had Fuzzy Slippers’ doesn’t intrigue you then it’s quite possible that country music may not be your thing. Needless to say, we were fascinated, and we have a little accompanying passage of songs we trust you will enjoy.
We also welcome Michael Ray who stopped in to say hello on the morning after his successful solo show in Glasgow. Since his first visit to Scotland at C2C Michael’s fast building a new audience here. You can listen to Michael’s own story of how he made the journey to Nashville from his native Florida in the second hour of this week’s programme. His current album, ‘Amos’ is named after his biggest musical influence: his late Grandfather, who taught him to play guitar and gave him his first live opportunities.
On next week’s show we’ll repeat the wonderful afternoon we recorded with three great songwriters performing in the round in Music Row’s Spotland Studios. Bob DiPiero, Heather Morgan and Allen Shamblin tell stories and perform the songs they wrote for artists including Tim McGraw, George Strait, Bonnie Raitt, Maren Morris and many more.
In two weeks time you can imagine yourself walking through The Country Music Hall of Fame to see and hear their current exhibition, Outlaws and Armadillos. Peter Cooper, archivist, country historian and as always, songwriter, will take me through the stories of the seventies outlaws as we hear the music of Waylon, Willie, Tompall Glaser, Jessie Coulter and so many more. We’ll compare these outlaws to today’s outlaws and we’ll cross the plaza to spend a little time in The Johnny Cash Museum too. As ever this will inspire some choice cuts from classic country albums.
If that’s not enough our Nashville season concludes with a very special programme with Jerry and Gordon Kennedy. Jerry was one of the guitar playing producers of the sixties who worked with a host of legendary names including Tom T Hall, Roger Miller, Jeanie C Riley, Roy Orbison and….. Elvis Presley. Gordon (his son) has carried on the tradition as a guitarist for (among others) Peter Frampton and Grammy winning songwriter for Garth Brooks and Eric Clapton. It’s a wonderful family conversation which came out of a couple of days I enjoyed in Gordon’s company writing for a forthcoming project. The shared love of music he and his father enjoy as well as their hilarious stories make this show on December 3rd a very special night in the AC calendar.
The nights have drawn in….the leaves are being gathered and we invite you to spend a couple of hours each week with some brilliant people who have created some amazing music. We’ll be on BBC Radio Scotland every Tuesday from five past nine.

Reading time: 2 min

general musings

Stories From The Edge of The World

November 5, 2019 by ricky No Comments

One of the interesting ways each week unfolds for me is how we end up with our running order for any given Tuesday night. As I drive home from the studio late on an AC night I often wonder what we might play next week. Sometimes there are piles of new things to listen to and on other weeks it seems nothing is really jumping out and demanding to be included. We always say (as it’s true) that there are so many things we don’t get round to spinning and we really could stay on air for a couple of hours longer. This week is no exception.

However there is a session and conversation we’ve been dying to share with you and we’re delighted that The Orphan Brigade‘s visit will be at the heart of this week’s Another Country. As I’ve played significant tracks from their current album for a few weeks I’ve probably bored myself by telling anyone who has cared to listen that ‘To The Edge of The World’ is one of these album where you just don’t want to skip any tracks. It’s full of beautiful surprises and it feels like a very natural successor to their two other albums.

In case you haven’t caught this story yet Ben Glover, Joshua Britt and Neilson Hubbard are three friends and musicians who like to find inspiration in very particular locations. Their first record took them to a haunted civil war era house in Franklin, Kentucky. So spooky were the surroundings that two of the band found themselves unable to spend the night in the house and took refuge in their car! Next up it was Italy and the caves under the streets of Osimo. This spring the trio headed over the ocean to Ben’s home county of Antrim and the spectacular north coast of Ireland. They wrote in diverse locations including boats, forests and mountainsides and recorded all their songs in a local church. You can hear more of these remarkable stories and some live versions of the songs this Tuesday night and honestly…it’s a great listen.

Elsewhere we’ll bring you new things from The Milk Carton Kids, Clint Black, Dori Freeman and Frazey Ford. We’ll introduce some new names like Kevin Daniels and from Scotland, Keri Watt.

We also reach the end of our year long walk through the Country A to Z. We have tried to avoid all the obvious choices and land on some names you may not have always picked first time round. We hope it gives you a sense of the great dynamic and sheer weight of great singing, songwriting and playing that’s out there in the country catalogue. What I love most of all however is it opens up one of the great stands of this genre – the stories. Country is nothing without a story. So we’ll close the book tonight, as we near the end of the year, with one of the great story tellers and country troubadours whose name is synonymous with the catch-all phrase of Americana. Sometimes that means blues, folk or soul and it’s easy to make the case that Townes Van Zandt had all three. There will be Townes and it will be on vinyl.

As ever we’re on BBC Radio Scotland from five past nine. Join me if you can.

Reading time: 2 min

general musings

Nashville Halloween

October 29, 2019 by ricky No Comments

On a morning like this, crisp, bright and bathed in autumn colour my mind goes back ten years or so to an early visit to Music City. It was mid October in Nashville and on every stoop and porch they were preparing the ground for Halloween. Pumpkins and fall fruit would be scattered over the entrances to the houses of the songwriter as I found my way to suburban writing sanctuaries. The sun was out but there was a little chill in the air compared to my earlier visit in the heat of late spring. In my midtown hotel no-one was seriously thinking of dipping into the swimming pool apart from the odd visitor from Scotland and fires were lit in the grates where dried flowers had been laid months before.

On these early visits to Nashville I stumbled from one writing session to the next. Sometimes the thrill of the experience could be as quickly extinguished by the trauma of the writing session. I’ll never forget my excitement at realising I was to be writing in the Orbison building only to find the session itself made me question everything I’d ever known about the craft. I came back to my hotel room and started to look for the quickest flight home. I was still searching for an exit the next day when I met the great Bob DePiero and he made me feel like I could hold on until the end of my visit. In miniature my experience of these writing days made me understand what many of the artists we play on Another Country experience. Stars in Hicksville Alabama, Georgia or Mississippi; they step off the bus in Twang Town believing it’s where they belong only to find they have to start climbing up the ladder of a lifetime. You may never be convinced about the worth of some of Music Row’s brightest stars but it is only fair to say they have worked a gruelling apprenticeship. All year round they assemble in writing rooms, publishing houses and back bedrooms as they clamber, one song at a time, to the top of the tree.

On this Tuesday’s Another Country we’ll walk some of these streets and cross the thresholds with our very own correspondent who has been in the rooms and knows the city as well as anyone…Mr Bill DeMain. Bill will be telling us a little about that Dolly Parton celebration at the Opry a few weeks back. Dolly, if it needs pointed out, followed the same songwriting career path outlined above and is still the inspiration for so many young hopefuls who come to the city. Bill will give us his own tales from the city live from The Row as well as bringing his tips for future listening.

Listen out too for some spooky things to set you up for Halloween. Also some new songs from Lost Brothers, Ags Connelly, Worry Dolls and The Highwomen. As ever it starts at five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

Reading time: 2 min

general musings

From The Country ….To Country

October 22, 2019 by ricky No Comments

I’m just back from a week up in The Highlands. It was one of these beautiful times when the weather indulged to give us sharp, frosty mornings and turned mild enough to allow us to be atop Cairngorm in shirt sleeves later the same day. One morning when the frost was even colder I walked through the woods in Abernethy and stood under a fall of leaves that was more akin to a gentle snow fall. It really was a glorious week and (if I’m honest) I really didn’t want to come back to the city.
It’s the space that’s the wonderful part of being in Speyside. Empty roads, wild paths with no travellers and views without crowds stretching every way you look. Getting back to Edinburgh and Glasgow on Friday was quite the culture shock. I remember a family trip to New York five years ago when we decided it would be the place to spend the mid term in October. I have a distinct memory of tramping down 5th Avenue dreaming of Rothiemurchus.
Sometimes music coincides with places perfectly. I remember listening to Neil Young’s ‘Harvest Moon’ one cloudless morning driving down to Loch Garten – it seemed we were the first vehicle to break into the bed of fallen birch leaves. Seeing them slowly scatter as Neil’s drummer swept along to the track with floor brush was almost too perfect. This week we drove along to The Orphan Brigade’s ‘To The Edge of The World’ in its entirety and it sounded heavenly.
So it seems ironic that on this week’s Another Country we’ll look forward to one of the busiest gatherings of the year, Country to Country. It is however also one of our favourite weekends too and C2C 2020 is shaping up to be very special indeed. We’re already making plans for our coverage (bigger and better!) and if rumours are true we should be expecting some very special artist on the stage at The Hydro. I don’t want to tempt fate here but I couldn’t help but notice that all those voices complaining about the festival shifting to the big arena have gone rather quiet. Correctly, the Scottish audience have realised that a full Hydro is an exciting space for C2C and the allowance for a bigger audience is only making the likelihood of more acts coming here more probable. More news on who’s coming this Tuesday.
I will also be playing you lots of new discoveries. I’m particularly excited to share new albums by Walker Hayes, Eleni Mandell, Jack Klatt and something new by The Delines. It’s going to be records all the way and expect to be buying some new ones by the end of the week.
As I look out from my Glasgow window I can see all the colours of autumn. It’s a glorious sight. It only needs some music to make it perfect. I’ll try to sort that out for you on Tuesday evening. It all starts at five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland.