The Best Back Porch Session Ever.....

.....is the tag line given at the beginning of each programme of series three of the BBC4 tv show Transatlantic Sessions. This disc somewhat confusedly is Volume One of Transatlantic Sessions 3. All three series contained much fine music but the songs on series three particularly grabbed me. The conceit of the programmes was informal get togethers of folk and country musicians from Scotland, Ireland and the US in a remote farm house in the Highlands of Scotland converted into an impromptu recording studio. The constants in the series, representing each side of the coin, are the Scottish violinist Aly Bain and the American dobro virtuouso Jerry Douglas. They act as musical directors and arrangers for the various combinations of musicians that are put together for each song. Obviously the musicians have been hand picked to gell and combine and the whole thing is seamless and proves, if it needed proving, the shared roots of this music. What works is that it is not in fact a loose "session" or jam but a collaboration of like minded individuals helping out friends to give the best possible setting for each song. Gems on this particular disc in the series are Paul Brady's Lakes Of Pontchartrain, Darrell Scott's Shattered Cross, Bruce Molsky's Blackest Crow and Joan Osborne's Saint Teresa but there is not a dud among the nineteen tracks, including several spirited instrumentals.