Kimberly Junod

Rumor has it David Bowie stole one of the famous decorative stars from the Barrowland Ballroom (a.k.a. Barrowlands) in Glasgow, Scotland. Guitar great John Martyn used to play in the corner by the fireplace of The Scotia, the city's oldest pub. And Glasgow's Grand Ole Opry is truly a country Western homage to its Nashville namesake.

It's been 40 years since Steve Forbert released his debut album, Alive on Arrival, and he's marked the occasion with a new album and a new memoir. The new album is called The Magic Tree, a collection of songs, all but one of which have never been released before and some of which he started writing back in the '80s.

On our recent trip to Glasgow, we made a musical pilgrimage about six miles outside the city center to a venue called Platform. It's a community arts space where residents of the Easterhouse neighborhood (which has historically been known for poverty and equality) can get together and express themselves. Platform is the birthplace of an album Conflats, based on stories told by members of the Easterhouse community to two musicians; James Graham, lead singer of the Scottish indie punk band The Twilight Sad, and Scottish Album of the Year Award winning artist Kathryn Joseph.

Melbourne-based band Oh Pep! caught a ton of well-deserved buzz with its 2016 debut album, Stadium Cake. The duo wound up on international festival dates and capped off a whirlwind tour sharing the stage with Billy Bragg at Glastonbury Festival.

When we planned our recent World Cafe Sense of Place trip to Scotland, many people from the Internet hive mind recommended we visit Martha Ffion. So we met up with the artist at The Hug and Pint, a vegan restaurant and music venue that was instrumental in Ffion's early career, for a chat and performance.

Ffion treated us to songs from her debut full length album, Sunday Best, along with a new song called "Kennedy Hair." She talked about drawing inspiration from jokes on American TV shows and explained the term "curtain twitching."

When you're surrounded by thousands of fans at a Mumford & Sons show, you're not likely to actually get to shake hands or share a sweaty hug with the members of the band. But you might leave feeling like you just did.

When World Cafe went to Edinburgh, Scotland as part of Sense of Place series this past fall, the National Museum of Scotland was showing the first major exhibition dedicated to Scottish pop music.

PJ Morton loves Christmas. He even joked that he's been making music just so he could be able to record an album of classics (and a handful of originals too).