Steel and dobro special on Radio Tircoed via mixcloud

[Chris Tweed]

I did a live radio broadcast about steel guitar and dobro on a local radio station here in deepest, darkest Wales in the UK. It occurred to me it might have some appeal to others here.

I was a little constrained in my choices (not too much traditional country), but you might enjoy hearing some of the tracks I played. It's available here.

Please excuse the "man of steel" epithet. Having an interest in all things steel related is a a bit of a novelty in the UK You may need to cover your ears also when I deliver my mangled description of how a PSG works. I wasn't expecting that question. Doh!

Enjoy.

[Mark Eaton]

Haven't been able to really listen to it much yet, I think the thing to do is to start the show then hit the pause button to let it load so that you can "fast forward" since your portion of the show is occasionally interspersed with other items and few of us can commit to almost two hours of listening straight through.

Thanks for sharing the Bap Kennedy tune - somehow I forgot about that album coming out produced by Mark Knopfler and including some Jerry Douglas. I remember when it was in the works - I'm huge on Jerry, huge on Mark, and I like Bap.

Speaking of Jerry and Northern ireland, he's there right now and will be playing in Derry/Londonderry at the Fleadh Cheoil on Saturday. They made "street drinking" legal for the festival, no doubt the drinkers are primed and ready to go as we speak!

[Chris Tweed]

Sorry to hear you're having problems listening to the programme. It's t'internet, no doubt. Thanks for persevering.

Allowing people to drink on the streets of Derry—grew up calling it that although my perceived religious background suggests I should call it Londonderry—sounds like a very risky thing to do In my youth, I played many gigs in that city on both sides of the river and political divide. I love the place, which makes its recent history so sad.

Jerry D seems to spend a lot of the year either in Scotland or Ireland whether with Aly Bain recording and performing in Transatlantic Sessions. I used to live in Edinburgh and went to the same local pub as Aly, but never ran into Jerry, sadly.

I think the whole transatlantic bluegrass/celtic thing started with an album called Atlantic Bridge by the Irish uilleann piper, Davy Spillane, which also featured Bela Fleck and Mark O'Connor. Davy then disappeared from the scene and the collaboration between Jerry and Aly began a few years later. Of course, Jerry also played on Maura O'Connell's album, which created another Irish link.