When Adam Harvey hears a Kenny Rogers song he is immediately transported back to his family home, hearing his dad sing country tunes while cooking bacon and eggs on Sunday mornings. "We'd be trying to sleep in and he'd be singing this stuff as loud as he could," Harvey remembers. "It takes me right back to trying to get some damn sleep .
.. while the old man was madly cooking this breakfast that none of us really wanted.
"We just wanted sleep." Harvey's new album Let The Song Take You Home, released on Friday, honours the music and moments that have shaped his life, complete with a cover of Rogers' 1978 track Sail Away. "That was always one of dad's favourites - he used to sing that damn thing as loud as anything and he didn't sound anything like Kenny Rogers, I can tell you.
"I wanted to record that as a tribute to dad." As he approaches 50, the nine-time Golden Guitar Award winner has found himself feeling particularly reflective, with more stories to tell than ever before. The album's mid-point is marked with a slow ballad, Remember Me, about watching his mother's memories fall away with dementia.
Harvey, who's sold more than half a million records, wrote the song after a conversation that made him realise her condition was taking hold. On the way back to her aged care home after an outing together, she described Harvey as "the son I never had". "I thought she was kidding and I laughed and said, 'Very funny mum, did you want a son?', Harvey told AAP.
"She said, 'Yeah, it wo.
