Kiefer Sutherland's gig in Glasgow revived his family connection to Scotland
The Hollywood star of Stand By Me, The Lost Boys, A Few Good Men and television series 24 enthralled the crowd during his gig at The Old Fruitmarket in Glasgow. His visit to the city revived a family connection to Scotland that stretches back hundreds of year.
Kiefer Sutherland arrives on stage a conquering hero, an actor who has turned the joy and camaraderie his finds in music into a second career. He talks frequently to the audience between songs, engaging them in an easy manner. There are no Hollywood anecdotes or talk show punchlines. His illustrious career in cinema is largely absent from the evening in Glasgow. He remains instantly recognisable, despite the beard and oversized hat. His tales, like his music, are rooted in an old fashioned type of storytelling, a folk tradition that predates motion pictures.
He riffs on heartbreak, family, disconnection, a feeling of belonging. At one point he talks about the debt he owes to the reaction of a Glasgow audience at one of his early shows, which provided fuel to continue his live touring ambitions.
Since Sutherland embarked on a series of live tours with his band, he has been a frequent visitor to Glasgow, describing a 2019 gig at the Queen Margaret Union venue as the “best night of my life.”
He tells the crowd that he feels at home in Scotland. It’s a line we have heard many times from visiting musicians, but it is a sentiment that Kiefer has more right than most to claim.
His famous actor father, Donald Sutherland, was born in 1935 in the Canadian city of Saint John, New Brunswick, but his family have Scottish roots. His grandfather was a Scottish church minister and he has previously spoken about his pride in his ancestry, saying: “We are descended from Peter Sutherland who came over from Scotland in the 1770s to fight in the Revolutionary War”.
Kiefer Sutherland grew up wearing a kilt every day starting from age nine while attending St. Andrew's College, a military school in Canada. He has spoken of his deep affection for his maternal grandfather, Tommy Douglas, the Scottish-born Canadian statesman, Premier of Saskatchewan and the first leader of the federal New Democratic Party.
Douglas is remembered in Canada as the architect of universal healthcare, but his political ideals were shaped long before Saskatchewan or Ottawa. They were forged in the working-class communities of Scotland.
Tommy Douglas was born in 1904 in Camelon, near Falkirk. In 1910, at the age of seven, his family emigrated to Canada, where they settled in Winnipeg. During World War I the family went back to Scotland and stayed in Glasgow. They returned to Winnipeg in late 1918, in time for Douglas to witness the Winnipeg general strike.
The Glasgow Douglas knew was a city of shipyards, overcrowded tenements, labour activism and stark inequality. It was also a place where working-class political consciousness was rapidly developing. According to biographical accounts, Douglas witnessed poverty and social hardship firsthand while living in Scotland. Those experiences later informed his belief that healthcare should be a public right rather than a privilege.
After emigrating permanently to Canada, Tommy Douglas became one of the country’s most influential political leaders. As Premier of Saskatchewan, he introduced North America’s first universal public healthcare system, laying the foundation for what became Canadian Medicare.
Douglas’s daughter, actress Shirley Douglas, later married actor Donald Sutherland. Their son was Kiefer Sutherland, making the Hollywood star the grandson of one of Canada’s most transformative political figures.
For his part, Kiefer Sutherland was born in London by virtue of a quirk of fate as his parents were there for filming obligations. He was raised between Canada and California.
He has spoken of his Scottish grandfather’s influence on his career and outlook, telling The Guardian: “You can’t not be political when you come from a family like mine. My grandfather Tommy Douglas was the premier of Saskatchewan and I’ve never met anybody who lived by a stronger moral compass: he got ferocious if he thought something was unjust.”
Kiefer Sutherland spent the day before the gig in Glasgow wandering the streets of the city centre, many of which would have been familiar to his grandfather.
Four albums into his musical career, and about to release new record Grey at the end of the month, Kiefer fits with the nostalgic setting of The Old Fruitmarket as he reaches back through the ages, through layers of folk, country and Americana, to find the musical elements that fits the stories he wants to share.
His performance is honest, a man with his friends, playing music that he believes in. There’s a country-rock bravado underpinning proceedings - raw grit without straying too far into melancholia. The crowd sing along to tracks including Something You Love and Chasing The Rain.
As far as the crowd is concerned, Kiefer Sutherland is a very welcome visitor to a city that’s part of his own personal history.
He is currently midway through the UK and European leg of his Love Will Bring You Home headline tour. The new album, Grey, will be released on 29 May, which continues his excursions in the country and folk genres.
The ten-track album has been previewed by the singles Simpler Time and Goodbye California. Kiefer wrote or co-wrote nine songs on the album, which is completed by his take on Merle Haggard’s The Bottle Let Me Down.