Spencer Tweedy on "In a Big Country" by Big Country

Drummer and writer Spencer Tweedy joins A Song For You for a deep dive into this Scottish '80s anthem

Welcome back to A Song For You — a weekly series of conversations with artists, writers, and creators about one song that holds a special meaning to them.

Each post dives into one song that has changed how our guest sees the world through three parts:

The Journey Behind the Music: I set the scene to explore the song’s history, cultural impact, and the story of how it came to be.

In Their Own Words: Our guest reflects on their chosen song, sharing the personal story behind why it matters to them.

A Song For You: A carefully chosen recording or performance of the song, selected by the artist.

Our guest this week is drummer and writer Spencer Tweedy. He wrapped up a tour with the Tweedy Family Band earlier this week alongside his dad Jeff and brother Sammy. The band played songs from the Tweedy’s 2025 triple album Twilight Override.

Spencer’s Song For You is “In A Big Country” by Big Country.

The Journey Behind the Music: Sammy’s Thought Bubble

If you told me Spencer’s song was a tune I love, and then gave me 1,000 chances to guess it, I still would’ve come up empty-handed.

I’ll admit I had my assumptions going into our conversation. Maybe he’d pick “The Late Greats”, the Wilco song he drummed at Madison Square Garden on his 13th birthday before the band opened for Neil Young. Or perhaps something from his sessions with Mavis Staples or Waxahatchee.

The Tweedy Family Band performing live at The Shedd in Eugene, OR, on March 30, 2026 | Photo by Todd Cooper

Instead, he picked a synth-drenched 80s arena rock anthem. Pretty punk rock, if you ask me.

The band is Big Country. The album is Big Country. The song is “In a Big Country”. It was all over MTV in 1983, and it made Scottish guitarist Stuart Adamson a star.

In an era when rock music was becoming increasingly big, slick, and homogenous, the idea that it could sound like home — specifically, Dunfermline, Scotland — wasn’t exactly a natural fit. Adamson and guitarist Bruce Watson developed a two-guitar technique designed to mimic the sound of a full pipe band. No actual bagpipes — just two guys coaxing the sounds they grew up hearing out of modern rock equipment. It was an act of musical regionalism hiding in plain sight on Top 40 radio.

The performance Spencer highlights later in this post was recorded at Barrowlands — a Glasgow ballroom that has been a cathedral of live music since the 1930s, and one of the most hallowed rooms in Scottish music.

Spencer has a lot to say about why this record still matters. I’ll let him take it from here.

In Their Own Words: Spencer Tweedy on “In A Big Country”

“In A Big Country” is a bit of a funny pick for me, because I don’t love the 80s, and this song is peak ’80s. It popularized the MXR harmonizer rack-mounted guitar effect sound, along with U2. It’s full of reverb and it sounds digital, which I don’t love.

It’s also part of a decade that scares and disgusts me. I probably inherited some of my distaste for the ’80s from my dad, because he was a teenager then and felt very alienated from it. It was Ronald Reagan’s world — carry a big stick, be tough, everything is big. The world was becoming so big and technologically imposing, it wasn’t built for people anymore. My dad was interested in the Carter Family and the Minutemen: people who were real humans making art, not interested in dominating anyone.

But this song breaks through all of that to me. In the face of all that, it’s profoundly yearning and earnest.

Adamson (left) and Watson (right)

At the core of it, the message is really simple. It’s wanting to be okay when things feel really sad and light feels out of reach. When he sings, “I’m not asking to grow flowers in the desert / just to hold on / but I can live and breathe and see the sun,” he’s not talking about the impossible. He’d just like to see the sun. That’s a pretty modest request, and I find that really sweet.

The recording I chose is a video of Big Country performing it in Barrowlands in Glasgow, and you can really see what I’m talking about on display. They’re a real band, really playing with each other. You can see how much they all love each other by the way they’re smiling on stage. It’s got all the hallmarks of an ’80s sound, but it’s personal.

Watson (left) and Adamson (right) | Photo courtesy of Getty Images

The song’s yearning feeling is embodied not just by the lyrics but also by the melody. A pentatonic scale is just like a needle straight into my heart, always. I think the majority of affecting music has pentatonic melodies, and it just really speaks to me.

And the overall effect is so alien! Even in the way the melody carries over each bar. If you listen to the bass line Tony Butler is playing, there’s nothing typical or regimented about the way the chord progression works. But it completely flows. It’s very intuitive. Listening to it as an American, I’m like, “What the hell, that’s so weird… this would be hard to cover.” But it’s another one of the aspects that makes you hear this song on the radio and feel like it’s an alien transmission, yet familiar and comforting at the same time.

Finally, “In a Big Country” is a Scottish version of what the Pogues did with traditional Irish music. Shane MacGowan once said, simply, “Let’s get ethnic.” And to me, Big Country did that, too. They digitized and modernized Scottish traditional sound. I love when people do that, because it adds to the biodiversity of music and it brings something new to something old. It’s great to have regional influences to carry things forward from your people. Rather than dividing us, it brings their culture to the table for everyone.

Big Country | Photo courtesy of Getty Images

Looking around us today you see some of the same things that made the ’80s so imposing. Technological advancement, a very cold state being erected around us and around our lives. It’s probably another reason why the song still speaks to me. We’re looking for warmth. We’re looking for people who see this and are trying to seek refuge. To live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime.

A Song For You: “In A Big Country” and “Auld Lang Syne”(Live at the Glasgow Barrowlands)

This performance was recorded during Big Country’s New Year’s Eve show at the Glasgow Barrowlands on December 31, 1983, and featured on the album Live at Barrowland 1983 (The Homecoming).