Nine-time Golden Guitar winner Adam Harvey thought his mother was kidding when after "the best day" out she said he was like the son that she'd "never, ever had".

"And I said, 'Oh, that's really funny, Mum,'" Harvey told ABC News.

"And she was serious.

Harvey's mother has dementia, prompting Harvey to pen a track called Remember Me, which is on his 17th studio album Let The Song Take You Home, released on Friday.

"It's a sad song, but it's not all heartbreak and doom and gloom, because Mum still has those moments as people with dementia do," he said.

"You think they're completely lost, and then they have these moments of clarity, that she's back.

"Sometimes she'll say things where I'll have to just walk off or say, 'I've got to go to the bathroom', and you go and have a cry and shed a few tears," he said.

"But then other times she comes out with some funny things, too.

"My daughter Leylah is studying to become an opera singer, and she's an amazing singer.

"And one day, out of the blue, Mum was having her lunch, and she just said, 'Leylah is a great singer'.

"And I said, 'Yeah, mum, she is.' And my mum looked at me dead serious and said, 'I've got no idea where she gets that from'.

"I said 'no, neither do I, Mum," Harvey laughs.

Harvey, who is an Ambassador for Dementia Australia, says his mother's diagnosis made him realise just how many families in Australia are dealing with dementia.

"A guy bailed me up in the supermarket the other day, and he said, 'Oh, mate,' he said, 'I heard that song. Remember Me'.

"He said, 'You don't know me from a bar of soap, but I've just got to tell you, I lost my wife to dementia. And every time I hear that song, it just brings me to tears'.

Also on the album is the previously released It's Gettin' Late, which is riding high on the country music airplay charts, Sail Away, which was originally recorded by Kenny Rogers in 1978, the tongue-in-cheek What's a Man Gotta Do and the title track Let The Song Take You Home, which is about how closely related songs and memories are.

Harvey, 49, is a long way away from the "young kid that dreamt of recording one album", but to him, it doesn't seem that long ago.

"You blink your eyes and you've been lucky enough to record 17, that's amazing," he says.

Growing up, Harvey only ever had one goal.

"There was no other option for me."

For a while there, however, he thought it wouldn't happen.

"I was working full-time, and I thought, 'Well, maybe it's not meant to be, and music's just meant to be the hobby that I do when I get home from work and get the guitar out and have a bit of a strum for therapy and sing a song for family and friends.'"

But when, in 1998, Harvey's duet with Tanya Self called Drive Away won him his first country music award in Tamworth, it looked like his dreams were going to come true.

"That same night, I got a record deal and it just went from zero to 100 in a heartbeat," he said.

That deal wouldn't last, however, with Harvey having to pick himself up, dust himself off and "start from scratch".