The ubiquitous "radio session" has become a fixture on the promotional landscape of today's music scene. These sessions are usually comprised of a short interview and three or four songs played with a small acoustic line-up. They are a blessing for most bands, because they are a rare opportunity to get your music played on the radio and they are usually a welcome break from the monotony of a promo tour or the stress of the road. The only problem with radio sessions is that you never really know what you are going to face once you enter the station. Sometimes you are ushered in to the DJ booth where three or four people (with instruments) are asked to squeeze in to a space designed for one and then everyone fights for space around the single microphone dedicated to the session: other times you find yourself in a state of the art recording studio, with top notch engineers and equipment. When you do a session for the BBC's Radio One you can be pretty sure that it will be the latter.

Radio One is the BBC's primary station dedicated to contemporary pop music and over the last forty years or so they have pretty much set the standard by which all other radio sessions are measured. As a result of their professionalism and attention to detail they have an enormous and unparalleled archive of live recordings, which stretches over the past few decades. I think one would be hard pressed to find a relevant band or popular artist of the past thirty years that hasn't recorded at least one Radio One session (included in that list would be The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Captain Beefheart, etc). Strange Fruit is a small independent UK label that is dedicated to collecting and releasing these archives. In the past, they have released CDs of sessions recorded by The Birthday Party, Tim Buckley, Joy Division, Dinosaur Jr, Willie Nelson and dozens of others. We feel honoured to now be included in that list.

The twelve recordings on The Radio One Sessions are from three separate sessions. The first session (which includes the songs Sun Comes Up Its Tuesday Morning, Thirty Summers, You Will Be Loved Again, 'Cause Cheap Is How I Feel, Powderfinger) is from 1989 and was recorded on the occasion of the release of The Caution Horses. Performing on this session is Margo, Michael, Jeff Bird (harmonica, mandolin) and Jaro Czerwinec (accordion). The second session (Black Eyed Man, The Last Spike, Townes' Blues) is from 1992 and was recorded during the Black Eyed Man tour. Include on this session are Margo, Michael and Jeff Bird. The final session (A Common Disaster, Just Want To See, Lonely Sinking Feeling, Lay It Down) is from 1996 and was recorded during the Lay It Down promo tour. For this session we had all four band members (Margo, Alan, Pete and Mike) present.

So turn off the tele, pull yourself a pint and dial in Cowboy Junkies playing live on the BBC.........