It’s Neil Young Day In Italy, Andy White Talks Joyce and Kerouac, and a Joni Mitchell Album Reminds Us Why Great Art Endures

Now and then, On The Record with Brian Wise and Michael Mackenzie wanders into territory that feels less like a podcast and more like the best conversation you’ve accidentally joined in the corner of a music festival bar.

Returning Australian listeners may be forgiven for assuming Neil Young devotees are a niche tribe. Not so, according to Belfast singer-songwriter Andy White, who drops in from Ireland with a story that sounds almost too good to be true.

In the northern Italian city of Reggio Emilia, there is, apparently, an annual celebration called “Neil Young Day.

Not Neil Young’s birthday. Not the anniversary of Harvest. Simply an entire day devoted to the Canadian songwriter.

White had been invited to perform alongside local musicians who’ve built careers around Young’s catalogue.

Fans wandered between tribute bands, merchandise stalls and conversations about Cortez The Killer as though this were the most natural thing in the world.

The story becomes less eccentric when White explains the region’s remarkable musical heritage. Major festivals featuring Neil Young, Bob Dylan and countless other international artists have shaped generations of Italian music fans, leaving behind a cultural ecosystem where roots music isn’t an afterthought but part of everyday life.

It’s the kind of reminder Australian audiences occasionally need: elsewhere in the world, this music still occupies centre stage.

White also reflects on touring Italy with a locally assembled band, a collaboration that has steadily evolved over successive visits.

During the COVID lockdowns, those friendships produced “The Empty Streets of Florence“, written to help support a struggling music venue during one of Europe’s darkest periods.

Like many of the episode’s best moments, it’s a story about music building communities long after the applause has faded.

The conversation then takes an unexpected literary turn.

Fresh from appearing at the Belfast Book Festival, White discusses the impossible task of nominating the five books that shaped his life. His selections—including James Joyce’s Ulysses, Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, Patti Smith’s Just Kids and Robert McLiam Wilson’s Eureka Street—become less a reading list than an autobiography in disguise.

His admiration for Just Kids is particularly heartfelt.

Smith’s memoir, chronicling her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and the artistic ferment of late-1960s New York, is described as perhaps the finest book ever written by a musician.

Mackenzie readily agrees, recalling its emotional honesty and portrait of young artists determined to remain faithful to their creative instincts.

There are affectionate diversions into Richard Scarry children’s books, French poetry, The Big Lebowski, and even the prospect of rewriting Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” as “Harry Kane” to commemorate England’s football captain.

Like many great ideas born in conversation, it’s simultaneously ridiculous and strangely plausible.

The music itself remains the episode’s emotional anchor.

Marking the 55th anniversary of Joni Mitchell’s Blue, the trio debate where it sits within her extraordinary catalogue.

White makes the case that Blue remains almost untouchable—not simply because of its songwriting, but because its sparse arrangements have rendered it timeless.

Wise counters with affection for Court and Spark and Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, illustrating that arguing about the “best” Joni Mitchell album may be one of popular music’s happiest impossibilities.

The discussion captures what On The Record does particularly well: celebrating disagreement without diminishing anyone’s enthusiasm.

As the episode closes, White reflects on Neil Jordan’s appearance at the Belfast Book Festival, where the acclaimed Irish filmmaker hinted that The Crying Game may yet find new life as a television series. It’s another reminder that stories, like songs, rarely stay finished for long.

Episode 29 ultimately becomes less about any single artist than about the curious ways creativity travels—from Belfast to Bologna, from Florence to Melbourne, from literature to songwriting and back again.

It’s a celebration of artistic curiosity itself, and of the conversations that keep it alive.