Sadly our main transmitter is very ill, I have spent a lot of time trying to get it working. Being almost as old as I am the parts are not easy to find The desgn of the equipment is peculiar; a collection of interdependant modules, when one goes wrong the others are affected. In our case the oscillator was the offending part.
A friend in England has offered us a loan of a small transmitter, we are expecting that it will be delivered very soon. 
Presently the city is playing host to the Scottish International Piano Competitions, and Celtic Music Radio is providing a special event broadcast service to this event.  A FM transmitter was installed on top of Livi tower and is sending programming on 106.6mhz FM and identifying in RDS as “PIANO”, during periods when there are no  competions the transmitter is carrying the progammes of Celtic Music Radio.
Unfortunatly during our engineering tests we discovered an unlicensed station operating on the same frequency and causing some interferance on the outer edges of our range, this transmitter would appear to be located in the Johnstone area, we have approached Ofcom to ask for assistance in clearing the frequency.  
 I would like to take this opertunity to thank our listeners who have made donations to assist us in repairing the main transmitter and to purchase a standby unit.  Your help has gone a long way to getting CMR back on the air, long may it continue.

In 1986, at age 32, Baker was traveling in Peru when, as he says “I got in the middle of somebody else’s war.”  A terrorist bomb (the Sendero Luminoso or “Shining Path” Maoist group) blew up the train he and some friends were riding on.  Several passengers died, including a German boy and his parents, who were sitting next to Baker.   Though he nearly bled to death, Sam survived but suffered a constellation of injuries and aftereffects—shrapnel in his leg, renal failure, brain damage, even gangrene.

Sam Baker guests on Homeward Bound, Thursday 9 September, 4.00pm

Listeners are invited to email, phone-in the studio on 0141 548 4041 or text the studio on 07588 15 1530 during the programme with their questions.

Karen Whitelaw Smith  is one of the leading coaches in personal development and has built her reputation by word of mouth as The Positive Thinking Expert, Inspirational Speaker, Therapist, Personal & Spiritual Development Coach and International Author of The Butterfly Experience — Inspiration For Change. She has a unique talent of helping you connect with your soul. Karen has been featured on television and radio and in the press.

Karen lives in the south side of Glasgow and consults from Glasgow and London. Passionate about positive thinking, she has dedicated her life to transforming, improving and healing the lives of people from many different backgrounds and has spent years researching the secrets of success, and now teaches her own techniques.

Karen’s aim is to impart universal laws, knowledge and spiritual wisdom through to enable people to fulfil their ambitions and lead happy, abundant lives. She has worked with the world’s top mind-body-spirit leaders.

 Through The Butterfly Experience coaching and presentations she teaches others to use their intuition; positive thinking; listen to their own body; how to cope with stress; have an attitude of gratitude; understand how the mind works; visualisation and to attract abundance; self-relaxation techniques; affirmations and how to discipline your life.

Join Mary K Burke and Karen Whitelaw Smith from 7.00pm on Sunday 19 September.

Muirhead’s Music – Monday 7.00-8.00pm; Tuesday 12.00-1.00pm

Celtic Music Radio will be participating in The Great Big Small Charity Car Draw.

A group of small charities have got together to organise a raffle. We will be selling tickets during spring and summer 2010. At the end, a winning ticket will be drawn, and someone will win a brand new car – a Mini One!

Tickets cost £2 each, and you can buy as many as you want. 95% of the income will stay with Celtic Music Radio to support our broadcast and internet services.

Contact the Celtic Music Radio team at cardraw@celticmusicradio.net, or ask any presenter.

This lottery is promoted by our friends at the Foundation for Social Improvement, a charity which helps small charities like us.

Don’t miss this chance to see world renowned, thrilling and colourful Russian traditional music, song and dance from the world famous “Don Cossack Balalaika” from Rostov on Don, in concert with the Ideal Band, one of Scotland’s most exciting recent line-ups.

You can catch them in St Andrew’s In The Square, Glasgow or Eastwood Park Theatre, Giffnock.

You can see this event tomorrow night (Sunday 5th Sept) at St Andrew’s In The Square. Concert starts at 8pm. Tickets are available from www.ticketsoup.com

Celtic Music Radio will be along at the Eastwood Park Theatre on Saturday 11th September from 8pm.
Why not come and join us? Tickets are available from the Box office 0141 577 4970.

“The Seedboat sails from Barra shore, young Donald’s gone to Newry. And though he swears a swift return, til then she’ll miss him dearly.”

Lines taken from a beautiful bitter-sweet Scottish Gaelic love song. This song has inspired these two musicians, both extremely highly regarded exponents of their respective traditions, to recall an historic voyage between their homelands with a bi-lingual treasure trove of song and story, old and new, in celebration of the musical bridges between Ireland and Scotland.

“The Seedboat is a totally captivating experience of tunes, songs, stories and rememberings crafted together seamlessly by two master musicians, singer/songwriter and traveller Colum Sands and Gaelic singer and harpist Maggie MacInnes.

Maggie and Colum are superb performers individually: together they achieve a sweet harmony that transports you gently and effortlessly to another time and place.With such capable hands on the tiller, The Seedboat is a journey for the soul.” Jan Nary

We at Celtic Music Radio can’t argue with that quote!

Click here to purchase a copy of this excellent album for yourself!

Ian has been described as ‘the song-writers’ songwriter’.  He originally helped organise and perform in Scottish folk clubs, especially in Glasgow and Rutherglen, Lanarkshire.

Ian is known mostly as a top songwriter with almost 300 songs in traditional and modern styles, half of them written in the 1990s.   His songs are being sung in clubs and festivals all over the world and recorded by artists like Peggy Seeger, Archie Fisher, Adam MacNaughton, Ed Miller, Brian McNeill and Toni Wood.

Ian has won every song-writing competition in Scotland including all of them in one year, and retired from competition a number of years ago.

He also teaches song-writing at festivals and university adult classes and judges song-writing competitions and is an active member of the Glasgow Song-Writers Club and Glasgow’s ‘Live at the Star’ folk club.

As a performer, Ian has sung on both radio and television, in folk, poetry and music clubs and festivals in Scotland, Ireland and England. Many years ago his group did the first recording of the popular ‘Jeelie-Piece Song’ and performed frequently as support to famous names like Tom Paxton, Matt McGinn, Billy Connolly, The Corries, Christy Moore and Eric Bogle.

In less than 10 recent years Ian has produced several CDs of newly written songs, and a double CD and a triple CD packs containing ‘Best of…’ from which some tracks are regularly broadcast.

Visit Ian’s MySpace page.

Carissa Bovill (pictured above) from the southside of Glasgow will be joining Ian in the studio as they are working on various projects together.  Carissa was the ‘castaway’ on last week’s Dorris Island on Ciaran’s Sunday Session.  Music has always hugely influenced Carissa’s life. She began taking piano and fiddle lessons both classical and traditional at the age of 8. She now teaches Scottish music and song at the Junior RSAMD every Saturday.

Stewart will be chatting to Charlie on his current tour and his CD release ‘Nothing Lasts Forever.’

Stewart Fenwick Country, Sunday 5 September, 12noon-2.00pm

Grammy-nominated Tift Merritt, Eilen Jewel, Gurf Morlix, Girlyman, Kevin Welch and Frazey Ford from The Be Good Tanyas are among those heading to the city for the highly popular festival that has become a firm favourite on Scotland’s music festival map.

Tift Merritt has a growing fan base that admires the intimate story telling in her songs and her June 1 release “See You On The Moon” was included Paste magazine’s 25 most eagerly anticipated albums of the summer.

Eilen Jewell, who is a rising star in a new generation of roots musicians, made her Scottish debut in Glasgow last October and sparked off glowing reviews. She has a folk base but is equally at home with the blues, rockabilly and even garage rock.

Gurf Morlix, the Americana Music Association’s Instrumentalist of the Year for 2009, is a top-drawer songwriter and solo artiste while the likes of Lucinda Williams, Ray Wylie Hubbard and Mary Gauthier have all benefited from his expertise as producer.

Girlyman, who have never toured in the UK before, clocked up a biggest selling album accolade on CD Baby recently with current release “Everything’s Easy.” The Independent Music Award winners have enlisted JJ Jones, formerly drummer with Po’Girl, who played the festival last year, for their visit.

Frazey Ford, well known as one third of Canadian all-girl band, The Be Good Tanyas is a welcome addition to the line-up. She has a solo album “Obadiah” due for release next month.

Log cabin dweller from Texas, Kevin Welch, whose latest CD is “A Patch Of Blue Sky,” is highly rated, pipped only by the likes of Steve Earle, Robert Plant/Alison Krauss to top music awards in recent years.

“I am pleased these first-class, well-respected and hugely admired artistes have agreed to come to Glasgow for the 4th Americana Festival,” said Kevin Morris, promoter of The Fallen Angels Club.

“They join a roll call of great names who have graced the Festival since we started, like Mary Gauthier, The Wailin’ Jennys, Robbie Fulks, The Handsome Family and many more.

“We are staging the Festival in October for the first time, it is running over five days for the first time, we have more acts than ever before and we’ve attracted a class line-up that will satisfy the tastes of all roots music fans.

“Previous festivals have generated positive responses and I’m sure this will be the same. The Festival will be a musical boost before we head into the dark days of winter. Hopefully with continued support from the Scottish Arts Council and Glasgow City Council Glasgow Americana will grow year on year.”

Tickets for all shows available from Tickets Scotland 239 Argyle Street Glasgow 0141 204 5151 www.tickets-scotland.com

More details at the Glasgow Americana Website.