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James Yorkston on his year ahead: 'I'm just doing what I love to do, which is hiding from the world and creating'

Singer-songwriter and author James Yorkston is gearing up for a busy 2025 after taking some time out this past year. He’s back with live solo gigs, more dates for his much-loved multi-artist Tae Sup Wi’ A Fifer evenings, plus a new novel. Yorkston chats to Fiona Shepherd about solo touring, stolen avocados and creaky old hotels

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James Yorkston on his year ahead: 'I'm just doing what I love to do, which is hiding from the world and creating'

How was 2024 for you? It’s been about family, that’s the truth of it. Family going and family growing. Unfortunately, this year my father died which was obviously very hard. Against that, it’s been great having a year at home after the previous year when I was touring almost non-stop with Nina [Persson of The Cardigans], which was fantastic but tiring.

What can we expect from your run of solo Christmas shows? This Christmas tour is supposed to be easy and fun and that’s all I want from it. I don’t have a setlist which means I can interact more with the audience. With the last record, we played with eight or nine of us on stage: The Second Hand Orchestra and me and Nina. It’s great fun but it’s stressful touring with that many people. When it’s solo, it means that the soundchecks are six minutes long rather than two hours. You can chill out, there’s space in the dressing room and no one steals the last avocado.

What was it like working with Nina Persson? It was amazing. She’s a great singer, she’s very professional and she never stole the last avocado. I love working with her, just being onstage with someone who’s so good is a privilege. We get on very well on and off stage. Travelling with someone who knows how to travel and not get stressed out really helps touring. They are not in your face all the time, and then we still get to show off every night. 

You start 2025 with the publication of your latest novel, Tommy The Bruce; tell us about the title character If you look at the characters in most of my novels, the main guy seems to be this harmless chump who’s floating around the world doing the best he can, even though he has no understanding of the world whatsoever. And you can point that at me quite easily. I don’t particularly understand what’s going on, I just try to make my way through it.

Tommy ‘runs’ a fleapit family hotel in rural Perthshire which unwittingly attracts a felonious clientele. What inspired this non-cosy crime setting? As a child, we used to travel around the Highlands and Perthshire and see these places. I love these old hotels. I love when I’m doing a show and you get put up in a hotel which isn’t a Travelodge and you can see the faded grandeur and imagine what’s gone on there over the years. I just placed a story in one of them and the further away it was from my own life meant I could dream on slightly; I could put the baddies in and see how the characters react to that kind of outside influence.

The novel was written a few years ago, before 2022’s The Book Of The Gaels. What was it like returning to edit it? It comes down to trusting yourself as a writer but also trusting yourself as an editor; the second part of that is really important. All these years later, I edit without any fear. It’s the same story I wrote seven years ago but I’ve taken out any paragraphs that were just there to show off. There are authors like Lewis Grassic Gibbon who was a master of writing incredible spiralling prose that can take you to other places. It’s tempting to go down that route when it’s not always the best thing for the story, so I cut out a lot of the unnecessary thorns. I try to trust my creative voice so I don’t approach books saying ‘this is going to be like this’. It’s more about accepting what’s coming out and letting it happen. There is a lot of grief in the book, but then there seems to be a lot of grief in most of what I write.

Your travelling songwriters’ circle Tae Sup Wi’ A Fifer is back on the road in February with something of a school reunion line-up of Fife friends, including KT Tunstall and Johnny Lynch aka The Pictish Trail I know Kate from when she played in St Andrews when we were teenagers, and she and Johnny are great friends. The three of us did an album in 2014, The Cellardyke Recording And Wassailing Society. I’ve been asking Kate to do Tae Sup for years and this time she said yes which I am over the moon about. And she’ll probably be pleased too as it means I will finally stop nagging her about it.

What are your plans for the rest of 2025? There is a new album coming out next year. Nina’s on it but so is somebody else. I can’t announce who it is yet. I’ve got two albums ready to go and right now I’m editing a collection of short stories. Basically I’m just doing what I love to do, which is hiding from the world and creating.

James Yorkston plays Montrose Playhouse, Tuesday 3 December and Futtle, Bowhouse, St Monans, Saturday 7 December; Tae Sup Wi’ A Fifer, Byre Theatre, St Andrews, Saturday 8 February; Tommy The Bruce is published by Oldcastle Books on Saturday 25 January; Yorkston appears at Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, Thursday 20 February, as part of Granite Noir.

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