05/12/2025
Adam McNaughtan passes away at the age of 86. What a wonderful tribute Scott. Adam always had a great presence - standing tall with his gruff voice and great songs that always captured the essence of a situation. He was a regular guest at the Muchty Festival in the 1980s - sometimes with his group Stramash. Several years he took an integral part in the Muchty street pageant. He had an interest in the songs printed by the Poets Box in Dundee (late 1800s to 1950) that had been an important influence on the traditional song repertoire of singers in Dundee and Fife - including Eck Harley of Cupar - also a guest at Muchty.
Sad news yesterday that Adam McNaughtan passed away at the age of 86. An accomplished and much loved English teacher and bookseller, he will be best remembered as a dedicated Glaswegian of great humour, and a towering figure of Scots songwriting and performance.
I kent Adam all my singing life. He was one of the stars of the annual Muchty Festival in Fife, though many years he got no further north-east than that. His one appearance at Aberdeenshire's Cullerlie Singing Weekend is the maist recounted highlight of the event's 25 years, with his performance alongside Con Fada Ó Drisceoil (his - even taller - Irish counterpart) setting the standard for us all.
Adam had a great enthusiasm for maist aspects of Scotland's song culture: a co-founder of Glasgow University Folk-Song Club who, as a teacher, helped run the Rutherglen Academy Ballads Club. He was Traditional Artist in Residence at The School of Scottish Studies and (with Emily Lyle) edited Volume 5 of the Greig-Duncan Folksong Collection. He was also an expert on street songs, children's songs, and the songs of the music hall. During this time he was performing regularly as a solo singer and with his pals in Stramash (Anne Neilson, Kevin Mitchell, Bob Blair, John Eaglesham and Finlay Allison).
We baith performed at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington DC, and for the first couple of days would sit together on the bus going to the festival site. When the intense, early morning interrogations aboot the influence of The Poet's Box on the song traditions of Angus got ower much for me, it was time to get familiarised wi the Washington Metro 🙂 As well as the singing, Adam did a lot of MC-ing during his fortnicht there. Being a long way from Muchty, the festival had a list of ~20 event sponsors that the MCs had to keep mentioning. By Day 3, he had all the sponsors versified and a waiting list for the verses amongst the other MCs.
One weet Sunday in a late October, Dunfermline's aspiring songwriters and aspiring bothy singers turned out in insufficient numbers for the respective workshops we were hosting. The decision was taken that morning to amalgamate the workshops, and he proceeded to lay out his philosophy. He saw himself as being another brick in the road of two great traditions: performing-wise as an "indoor street singer" and writing-wise as a "rhymer". Mony of us think that Adam was the best writer of Scots song in the second half of the 20th century, though his largely unaccompanied style and emphasis on fun meant that he created his own mould as a singer-songwriter. At a celebration of his work at this year's Celtic Connections, Sheena Wellington said he was Scotland's best ever writer of humorous songs. There was naebody disagreeing.
In the last few years of his performing life, Adam was concerned that he couldna mind song words as well as he used to, and that he'd like someone else along with him when doing a full concert. These were some of the maist enjoyable concerts I've ever been involved in, with Adam getting big laughs from the very start: "Can I just say, how much of a pleasure it is to be performing this afternoon, alongside the artist formerly known as Young Scott Gardiner".
A good few years ago, Adam's younger brother David moved in with him, and their support for each other (while maintaining near constant piss-taking) brocht a big bit of Craiglang to King's Park. Anyone who visited would leave with a story to tell. My favourite memory is of them demonstrating their Alexa (not really something you'd expect to find in the McNaughtan household) which they used to play music. She couldna understand what David and I were saying, but jumped to attention when Adam, with his gruff voice and dark humour goes: "Alexa, play You're Still Gonna Die".
Thanks to Caroline Milligan for sending Ian MacKenzie's photo of Adam, caught mid-laugh while looking at a song-sheet. A true genius and a great character. He's much missed already.
