I'm very pleased to say my guest blogger for the next week is Steve Knightley - one half of (or one third, these days) and one of the best songwriters these islands have produced.
His songs Red Diesel, Country Life and Roots are, in my opinion, are some of the best new songs to enter the folk canon in recent years.
Take it away Steve!
The worst aspect of the job I do is that there's never enough time to get everything in.
At the end of every week I still find myself with a stack of unplayed CDs cursing and moaning that we've run out of time again.
I just wish I had more time so that I could play more of the great stuff that lies there on my CD library shelf.
I must be one of the luckiest blokes in the world, in that I not only have a job I really enjoy (i.e. playing folk music on the radio to people who actually want to listen!) but that doing that job, I often get to go to interesting places such as Washington DC, San Diego, Sidmouth and Glasgow.
I was in Budapest last week for a four day city break.
I timed it really well too - I was full of a military strength cold and feeling very sorry for myself - so a trip to a Mittel-European city in the grips of the worst winter in years, with ice floes rolling down the Danube and a night time temperature of -11C was just the job.
I'm sure the staff at the hotel were really impressed with this wheezing, sneezing, hacking, nose-blowing Englishman and his grumpy visage mooning in and out of the lobby.
It was no fault of Hungary or the good people there - but it was not one of my best little jaunts.
writes:
Hello again!
I woke up to a snow covered Dumfriesshire this morning, I've got another gig back up in Glasgow tonight so the drive there should be very interesting ...
writes:
I'm now up in Glasgow where the festival is off to a great start.
Nothing can quite prepare you for the madness that is Celtic Connections - it's what gets us Folkies through the winter. Three weeks jammed-packed full of brilliant music at venues all over Glasgow.
My guest blogger this week is singer, musician and song writer , whose most recent album Too Long Away is one of my personal favourites of the past 12 months.
You can hear a track from it on my programme this week.
Now all you banjo-haters had better put your fingers in your ears right now because I am more than a little excited about a recent discovery vis-a-vis the instrument, and am likely to go on about it at length.
It was shortly after I started presenting the folk show - some time way back in the mists of antikitty - that I got a phone call inviting me over to
"A happy New Year to one and all" said Tiny Tim, as he bit the bum off the chocolate elephant, and I do hope that the coming year is as good to you as it was to him.
So far it's been el crapolata for me.
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