Dear Scotland

A trawl through the 2012 SXSW music schedule published earlier today reveals that there at least 8 Scottish bands who have been invited to attend this year’s festival in Austin, Texas. We expect more to be announced in the next few weeks.

No-one predicted 2012 would be the best year for Scottish football in decades, and looking back, it’s still hard to believe what just happened. Motherwell’s amazing form from mid-January to May pushed the Old Firm until the last day of the season; three teams are in Europe past Xmas; and the national team sit clear [...]

Earlier today the South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) updated its list of showcasing artists for the 2012 music event. Included in that announcement are the first two Scottish bands who are expected to make the trip to Austin next March – Laki Mera and Three Blind Wolves. More below.

The draw for the 2014 World Cup qualifying groups will take place later tonight in Rio. Scotland are in pot 4 which means we could be in a Club Med group with Greece, Turkey and Israel or a Club Dread group with Spain, France and Ukraine. Details below.

If you’re looking for some off-season Billy, here’s a quick one – a Word Cloud I created from the McLeish Report. What’s a Word Cloud?  A visualisation of the relative frequency of words in a piece of text – which can give insights into that text. In this case, I cut and pasted the entire [...]

Since June 1, 2009 we have published 890 articles about Scotland and the talented people who give us reasons to be proud of our country and ourselves. But a lot has changed in two years.

This video was made on Friday afternoon here in Austin just before the Scottish day party at Latitude 30. Featuring Admiral Fallow, Kid Canaveral, Rachel Sermanni and Bronto Skylift this is really something quite special.

Wednesday night saw the Scottish Showcase, put together by our partners Creative Scotland; and it was triumphant. With an incredible lineup of The Twilight Sad, Admiral Fallow, Twin Atlantic, Errors, Kid Canaveral and Withered Hand, a packed out Maggie Mae’s at the heart of Sixth Street in Austin saw an unforgettable night of Scottish music.

The Detour Scotland crew, including Ally McCrae and David Weaver, have been here in Austin all week filming the Scottish bands, getting ridiculous tattoos and generally having their minds blown by the insanity that is South by Southwest. These are their video diaries: