CELTIC Music Radio is planning a festival of music during Celtic Connections 2017. Over the event’s seventeen days the Glasgow-based station, which is run by volunteers, will broadcast for 136 hours and feature more than 70 live acts on 95FM and DAB across Glasgow and via its website. Programmes will include live, up-close-and-personal sessions from international and local acts, new and upcoming bands and headlining artists who are appearing at the festival. The station will be on air from 11 am to 5 pm every day, broadcasting from the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall’s Buchanan Suite on weekdays and from its own studios in Admiral Street, Kinning Park on Saturdays and Sundays. Celtic Music Radio is also broadcasting the Danny Kyle Open Stage live from Glasgow Royal Concert Hall daily throughout the festival.

celticmusicradio.net

AWARD-winning Canadian troubadour Stephen Fearing begins his latest UK tour with two Scottish concerts, in Edinburgh and Eyemouth, in early February. Fearing, pictured, who has collaborated with musicians including Nick Lowe, Shawn Colvin, Richard Thompson, Emmylou Harris, and Bruce Cockburn, was born in Vancouver and grew up in Dublin, where among his schoolmates were future members of U2. He has worked as a solo artist, recording ten albums including his latest Every Soul’s a Sailor, as well as forming one of Canada’s top bands, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings with Colin Linden and Tom Wilson, and has won two Juno awards, the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys, and a Canadian Folk Music Award. His tour begins at Edinburgh Folk Club on Wednesday, February 8 and continues at The Hippodrome, Eyemouth on Thursday, February 9.

stephenfearing.com

EDINBURGH-based Captain Beefheart celebrants Orange Claw Hammer have announced Glasgow and Edinburgh concerts to mark the release a new album, Cooks the Beef. The band, which mutated from the improvising quartet Ego Ergo Aggro, originally intended to play a once-only tribute a month after Beefheart’s death in December 2010. The tribute saw them interpreting Beefheart’s songs mostly as instrumentals and was so well received that the band decided to continue as Orange Claw Hammer. Although only featuring occasional vocals, the band stay close to the original Beefheart blueprint. They play Duke’s Bar, Old Dumbarton Road, Glasgow on January 27 and Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh on February 9.

orangeclawhammer.net