Rob's home from latest US 'stravaig' ... for now!

PROMOTER Rob Ellen (Picture: Gair Fraser) returns to the Highlands this week afer 10 months of travelling, recording and broadcasting on Facebook.

He has been driving the roads of America in a Moose mobile home and catching up with musicians Stateside, including Carrington McDuffie who plays north dates this week.

Rob said: “Since Belladrum last year I did 10 dates in Ireland and the south of England with Chuck Hawthorne and Libby Koch from Texas – Libby returns for Belladrum this year – and I holed up in Kent on the Isle of Sheppey where my brother Mark lives.

Texas is like Scotland with 250 years' sun on it and way cooler neighbours

“I did a lot of live radio on the Isle of Sheppey with Mark on ‘stravaigs’ out to the Home Counties, recording sessions and broadcasting on Facebook from The Medicine Show Radio Moose Mobile.

“At that time I successfully crowdfunded a Stateside Moose Mobile to help non-American artists tour there.

“We bought a lovely old Chevy RV and travelled 14 US states and 14,000 miles in that, visiting radio community festivals, house concerts, community venues and music heritage spots, culminating in a Medicine Showcase during SXSW (South By South West annual music conference).”

Below, Rob answers some questions about his travels and the musicians he has met on his 'stravaig' this year so far.

Q What have been some highlights of your travels this year so far?

ROB: So many. I loved watching my travel companion Ruth Purves Smith from Calgary win over fans and friends wherever we went on her first American tour.

Oklahoma was wonderful. The spirit of Woody Guthrie is still strong there and steeped in the red dirt, music is everywhere. We stayed with The Cimarron Songbird Monica Taylor on her family pecan plantation and got to see John Fulbright with an eight-piece band of friends at the Cimarron Breeze Concert Series.

In the old church in Perkins, I met Byron Berline (who introduced Gram Parsons to Emmylou Harris) and heard him play his fiddle in his fiddle show in Guthrie, Oklahoma.

I was shown round Ardent Studios in Memphis – home of Big Star - by drummer Jody Stephens. So many of my all-time favourite albums were recorded there – Joe Cocker, Led Zep, ZZ Top and on and on.

Studio manager and friend Nancy Apple took me on her singing tour of Memphis, on a bus full of Fifers - true story!

Sun Studios gave me shivers down the backbone (and shakes in the knee-bone).

We went to Muscle Shoals and fell into a session and jam with Snake Man Travis Wammack who was Little Richard's band leader for 20 years with a room full of friends and musicians who played on hundreds of famous hits by the likes of Otis and Aretha.

We visited Hank Williams' grave, heard jazz on the street and partied on a Tuesday night in New Orleans, ate crawfish listening a Grammy-winning zydeco band The Lost Bayou Ramblers on a hot Sunday afternoon at a craft brewery near Lafayette.

We had a Cajun breakfast in Breaux Bridge with nearly 50 fiddlers and accordion players.

I saw David Ball play all his hits including Driving With Private Ryan for the dancers on Honky-Tonk Tuesday at The American Legion Nashville.

I was in Nashville and attended the launch of Will Kimbrough and Tommy Womack’s new Daddy album and for Stephanie Urbina Jones' album launch too at the Texas Troubadour Theatre.

However again Texas took the biscuit for theatre. I half-jokingly always say Austin is my second home and I often get 'second home' sick.

The live music scene is extraordinary there. You can go see a musical hero every night of the week for the price of a beer and what you can afford in tips.

For me as a publicist, so many of them want to tour Europe and I’m able to help in a very hands-on way while I’m there.

I always say while there the Scots are the original Texans. They like that thought, but it is a true story. So many Scottish footprints are there and the mentality is the same.

Texas is like Scotland with 250 years' sun on it and way cooler neighbours.

The fact that Gurf Morlix, Bill Kirchen, Bianca De Leon, Chuck Hawthorne, Libby Koch, Lazarus Nicholes, Rachel Laven, the Rosellys, Jim Wyle, Tommy Lewis, Ordinary Elephant, Emily Herring, Adam and Chris Carrol, Susan Gibbs and my travel companion Carrington MacDuffie (who brought her great band with her), all turned out to play for me at Threadgill’s (no less) just blew this pilgrim away for ever. I can die happy).

[Threadgill's restaurant there has been one there since the 1930s - contains a large portion of memorabilia from the musical hey-day of Austin in the 1970s. The jukebox holds 100 albums of artists who played the 'Dillo and the piano hanging from the ceiling was played by artists as diverse as Count Basie and Commander Cody, Jerry Lee Lewis and Ray Charles, Leon Russell and Captain Beefheart.

Q What new musical encounters have you had introducing you to music you would tip us all off to?

ROB: I always come back with 14 songs for a compilation to introduce artists wishing to tour here to European media. The Looking For Europe Collection will be released on Medicine Show Records on July 14 and promoted through Medicine Show Promo.

Look out for Cary Morin, he is an award-winning native American blues man playing at a high level Stateside with equally high level technique and consciousnesses.

Erica Blinn is for me the new Bonnie Raitt, she was our next-door neighbour in East Nashville for the 10 days we were there.

Jim Wyle has been writing amazing songs and playing in famous Texan bands across Texas for 40 years. He’s finally releasing his first solo album with Chuck Hawthorne producing, so just imagine how good that is going to be!

Patterson Barrett, multi-instrumentalist and famous producer, Stephanie Urbina Jones' musical director and Buddy Miller's sideman - he took me to meet Buddy, has a new solo album (at last) and will be with us for Belladrum (hoorah!).

And of course Scotland need to see just how amazing my travel companion Ruth Purves Smith is.

So I have my hands full with all of that and Belladrum Festival Hootananny Potting Shed Stage's 10th year celebrations.

And we will round off the summer at The Findhorn Bay Arts Festival in September.

We're also taking submissions for the next Looking For America Collection which we will scatter like seeds on the “From Findhorn Bay To Fan Francisco Bay” next Stateside stravaig!

We are going to explore the West Coast this winter. I'd like to go to the Ameripolitan awards in Memphis, spend Christmas in Mexico and go to the annual Townes Van Zandt wake in The Old Quarter in Galveston on New Year's Day.

Anyone fancying taking part in that adventure should contact me now! Contact: rob@medicinemusic.co.uk