It has been nearly five years since Adamson upped sticks and left Scotland to live with his American wife Melanie in Nashville, and as much as he misses Scotland, it’s a decision he’s never had occasion to regret.  

"You get to a certain stage in Britain where people just don’t want to play your music on the radio anymore," says Adamson from his home in the country music capital, and it’s heartening to hear that his voice hasn’t picked up some grating transatlantic twang (Sheena Easton take note).  

 "I just felt I had to leave and go live in a community that just makes music. Nashville is something that doesn’t really exist anywhere else in the world - a community of songwriters."  

And it’s in this community that Adamson found his collaborator in The Raphaels, US singer-songwriter Marcus Hummon. Ask him what he was trying to achieve with their debut album, Supernatural, which is released on Monday, and the answer is refreshingly unpretentious.  

"Nothing really, that’s the beauty of it. It’s a kinda mix between Celtic, country and R’n’B. We just wanted to make a record that we both loved and it disnae really have any connection to anything I’ve done in the past."  

And it doesn’t, which will no doubt cause much gnashing of teeth and rending of lumberjack shirts among Big Country fans. The double-barrelled bagpipe guitars that made Adamson’s former outfit the foremost exponents of anthemic jock-rock are gone, but Big Stu is adamant that he’s still being true to his roots.  

"I’m a big fan of Hugh McDiarmid and I always liked his ideal of Scotland looking outward rather than inward. It’s always looking into its own past and glorifying it," says Adamson. "With Big Country I wanted to take that idea and modernise it and see if it would play around the world."  

With the Raphaels Adamson has taken McDiarmid’s idea of looking outward to it’s logical conclusion - searching for the Caledonian connection in other cultures.  

"I think country music actually comes from a mixture of Scottish and Irish folk music mixed up with the blues," he says. "There’s quite a big Scottish community here. Every November they have a big Highland Games because the original settlers of Nashville were Scots from the west coast of Scotland."  

Some saw the Stateside move as further justification for stories about Adamson’s supposedly "troubled" personality. Two years ago Adamson, a former alcoholic, mysteriously "disappeared" when Big Country were supposed to be supporting Bryan Adams on the British leg of his European tour. The "troubled" Adamson couldn’t even be reached at his Nashville home. So do you want to talk about it Stuart? "Aye sure," he says brightly. "You know what? - that was a pile of bullshit, that," he says laughing. "It was all totally blown up by the press. I was actually on holiday at the time. I’d already told my management that I was gonna be on holiday and they called up and said they’d got a slot with Bryan Adams for me. I said that I was all booked up and I wasnae going back to Britain for one gig - so, sorry."  

But your manager called a press conference and said that you looked "troubled"? "Aaaw, I wisnae bothered by that, it got me plenty of column inches y’know. I couldnae have bought that kind of space," laughs Adamson.  

Wasn’t he at least "troubled" when he was a sober alcoholic who found himself running (and living above) his own pub, Tappie Toories, in Dunfermline? Surely, that must have been hard?  

"Do y’know what? That never really occurred to me. I suppose it was ironic, but we Scots love irony, it’s one of our strongest weapons," he laughs.  

The only thing "troubling" him now is his beloved Dunfermline Athletic toiling in the lower tier of the Scottish Premier League. "We get quite a lot of British football on the satellite. Unfortunately we only get the big Scottish games so I rarely get to see Dunfermline, though that’s probably just as well given the trauma of the last few weeks," says Adamson ruefully.  

And if the Raphaels never achieve even a fraction of the success that Big Country had, it’s unlikely that Adamson will care. He was the unlikeliest of rock stars, terrified by the adulation of teenage girls and deeply uncomfortable in the glaring limelight of pop stardom. "There’s no handbook to being a rock and roll star," he offers. "Nothing can prepare you for that situation.  

"Admittedly country music will always be the biggest thing in Nashville but there’s a lot more to the place than that," says Adamson.  

"There’s loads of radio stations and a really healthy alternative music scene. I like loads of different music and living here means I can be exposed to it. I’m like one of those old football managers," he laughs. "I like anything with a bit of character."  

      The Raphaels, La Belle Angele, Saturday, 7pm, £12, 0141-339 8383.  
                 Tickets also available from Virgin and Ripping Records