DREAMVIEWER, the second solo album by Kirsten Adamson, drills down deeply into matters of the heart. Spurred on by real life and personal issues over a given period, the album confronts emotionally raw terrain yet closes on a note of positivity. Daughter of Stuart Adamson of The Skids and Big Country fame, Kirsten and her band, The Tanagers, travelled to London to record the album at producer Joe Harvey-Whyte’s Karma Studios. Despite the soul-searching depth of the material, the sound is often upbeat and always enthralling, with Kirsten’s delicate vocals perfectly placed in the mix. ‘These songs just came out because of things that were happening in my personal life; they're real songs,’ Kirsten told Lonesome Highway when we recently chatted with her.
Early memories of what drew you to music?
My dad was a musician and songwriter, so I was kind of subconsciously immersed in it from such a young age. And I think when you're young, you don't even realise how much of an effect that has on you. I was taken to gigs at the Barrowlands, Glasgow as a child, and I still remember those gigs clearly and the atmosphere. Seeing bands live from such a young age, it must have been really influential for me, although I didn't know it at the time. I then got really into doing musical theatre as a child; I was a singer. I've always been a singer since I can remember.
Had you dipped into songwriting in those younger days?
No, but when I was sixteen and my dad passed away, I picked up a guitar for the first time, and I started to write my own songs. I'd been in Nashville for three or four summers, staying with my dad. So not only had I been immersed in music, but I’d also been immersed in country music from twelve or thirteen years old as well. I started hearing all these country artists across there in the late 90s, like Gillian Welsh and Faith Hill, and that's the kind of music that I felt I connected to. So, when I started writing my own stuff, it came out with a bit of an American tinge to it.
That led to the formation of your first band.
Yes, I started writing songs at about sixteen. Then I moved to Edinburgh and formed my first band, The Gillyflowers. We were an eight-piece country-rock band. We played for quite a good few years, and we recorded an album, but it never saw the light of day; it didn’t make it out of the studio before the band ended up separating. I found myself on my own, and I put out a solo record, more of a sort of pop-style record. I think that was a bit of a product of people telling me what they thought I should do and not just going by what I felt. That was back in 2015, and I then went on to create a sort of country harmony duo called The Marriage, which is me and a songwriter called Dave Burn from London. We're still together; he is in my band, of course, but the distance between us as a duo meant that it never really worked.
And your solo career then followed.
Yes, when lockdown hit, I really started getting back into writing, just mainly by myself. In 2023, when my record LANDING PLACE came out, at that point, I think that the way I wanted to communicate, via music, started to come out properly. I first toured that record with my guitarist, John Mackenzie, and then we toured it again with my band, The Tanagers. The grouping with the band really worked, not just in a studio setting, but also live. We went out on tour and started playing some of the newer material I had, and some of those songs ended up on the new album, DREAMVIEWER.
DREAMVIEWER is very much Kirsten Adamson, a reflection of what you really wanted to write and record.
Yes, LANDING PLACE was a personal record in terms of the song content, but DREAMVIEWER is even more so, because it's about the last few years of my life and the stuff that's happened to me. When I go to write, there’s no day job to distract me from what I'm feeling and thinking, so these songs just came out because of things that were happening in my personal life; they're real songs. They're not scenarios, and they've come from a place of grief, even though some, a lot of them are quite upbeat.
Joe Harvey-White produced the album. How did that connection come about
I had met Joe Harvey-Whyte a couple of times over the years through my friend Dave Burn, and we reconnected when I was down at the Americana Awards in January of 2024. I'd gone because My Father's Songs, from LANDING PLACE, had been nominated for Song of the Year. I had a brief conversation with Joe, and he said he’d love to produce the next record. And that was it, really, and I just thought, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. I love Joe's playing; he is an incredible multi-instrumentalist, and he has his own studio, Karma, in London. I tend not to overthink these things, because I feel like these little meanings are signs that you should follow. So, we went down to Karma Studios in October, which is pretty much a year to the day today, and we started recording DREAMVIEWER.
How long did the recording take?
We had already done some of the pre-production ourselves; all the arrangements were kind of already in place, really. With the three boys from The Tanagers and me, we recorded the record in about five days, and most of it was recorded live.
I particularly love that you always sing in your own natural Scottish accent.
People often comment, ‘We were expecting me to sound like someone else, but you don't.’ That is a massive compliment for me, because it would be very easy to try and imitate something else, but it's harder just to be yourself and put your own identity out there.
There is a natural flow to the album’s stories, starting with the candid My Life and followed by the bittersweet In The Next Life. But you do sign off with the title track, which offers hope and optimism in the future.
When I went to pick the songs for the album, I had about thirty-five to choose from. About half of them went on EPs that were released over the year. Those eleven tracks that are on the album were carefully selected in terms of how they flowed musically and how they shaped the story of the album. With a lot of records these days, they're imagining that people are just going to listen to the tracks separately on Spotify or something like that. I don't really like to do that; I like to have the record shaped and formed into something that people can create a story in their head or connect with some form of flow. I decided to place many of the more uplifting songs at the start, make the middle a bit more reflective, and finish with DREAMVIEWER, which I think is a bit of a sad song. Still, it was also quite hopeful because the story is left open. That's the point I reached in my life when I wrote that track; the story hadn't been resolved. But I was hopeful that it was going to be resolved, and that's what proved to be the title track.
The song Backseat Driver does not have a happy ending, but that might be for the better in the long run.
That song came from a situation that wasn't really that pleasant. But, again, I was hoping that things were going to be fine in the end and that someday we were going to take off on this imaginary highway, and that there wasn't going to be anyone in the background. It came from a frustrating situation, and I felt helpless, but I still could see what might be on the other side of that. So, it was therapeutic for me to write that song because it gave me hope. Hopefully, that's how it comes across.
Another open-hearted song that I love is Perfume. It speaks of childhood memories; did motherhood have an input into the song?
One of the lines in the song is the ‘time to forget the bad side of me.’ I think that's been the effect that growing up with a father who committed suicide had on me and feeling like I really didn't get the chance to be a teenager. I was only sixteen when that happened, and it affected me for a long time. I didn't even really realise how badly it affected me until I had my own child and started looking back. Having children can trigger things in yourself you've almost forgotten about, and so after I had my little one, I started really reflecting on that, and quite literally. I still have all these perfumes but spraying them on would transport me back to something dramatic. So, the song is about ‘why do we hold on to these things that remind us of bad times that we've had? And maybe it's time to just kind of throw them out and be free of the burden.’
You mentioned your dad, and I often wonder how offspring in the arts deal with having a famous parent. How do you react to being mentioned as Stuart Adamson’s daughter in the media?
My dad had such amazing fans that years ago, I kind of tried to shy away from it all. But after being on the road, going through Covid, and receiving support from a vast number of his fans, I realised the importance, so I tend not to shy away from that connection now. It might be because I've felt like I have reconnected with my dad through covering some of his songs during lockdown on my live streams, but also, I've connected with a lot of his audience, both online and through live gigs. I just feel like, for me to heal and be proud of my heritage, it's important to keep that connection with them. But that's only something I've realised over the past few years; I never would have even mentioned it ten or fifteen years ago. I don't know if it does me any favours in the press or gig booking, but I think it's just important to keep that heritage going.
Congratulations on DREAMVIEWER. It’s a great listen, and I understand you have recently been signed to Renaissance Records in Arizona to reach a greater audience in the United States.
Yes, the head of SGO Music, who publishes my songs, had posted a tiny clip on his Facebook Page, and Renaissance Records commented on it, asking if they could represent me. We chatted with John Edwards from the label, and they are going to distribute the album globally.
Interview by Declan Culliton Photograph by John Mackiec