Bryan Adams posted a short film on Instagram this week, made by filmmaker Katarína Orešanská to document the first night of his Bare Bones show in Poland.
The collaboration says something about how Adams approaches this kind of work. He credited Orešanská by name in the caption – “A little film from Katarína Orešanská of our first night in Poland with the Bare Bones show” – along with a white heart, a skull emoji, and the hashtag #bryanadamsbarebones. Orešanská is a Slovak filmmaker. Her involvement means the footage carries a distinct creative perspective behind it. This isn’t a phone clip. It’s a short film.
The Bare Bones name does a lot of work on its own. Adams has been writing and performing for more than forty years. His catalog includes some of the most durable songs in rock. “Summer of ’69” still gets radio play decades after its release. “Everything I Do (I Do It For You),” from the 1991 Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves soundtrack, spent sixteen weeks at number one in the UK. These are songs that hold up. They don’t need much help from production. The Bare Bones format is built around that reality.
There’s something worth sitting with in the stripped-back approach, especially at this point in a long career. The pressure to add more – more production, more spectacle – is always present. Choosing to remove things instead takes a different kind of confidence. It puts the focus entirely on the songs and the room they get played in.
Poland was where the Bare Bones show first appeared in this run. Orešanská’s film is how that specific night gets preserved. A filmmaker’s record of a particular evening, not a promo clip.
Adams has thought carefully about visual documentation for a long time. He’s a working photographer with published books of portraiture and travel work. His interest in image-making goes well beyond album covers. That background explains the instinct to bring Orešanská into the process. He understands what it means to put a skilled eye behind a camera and let that perspective shape what gets recorded.
The white heart and skull in the caption aren’t accidental. They echo the show’s name – something unguarded, stripped of anything extra. The hashtag #bryanadamsbarebones gives the whole run a consistent identity. Anyone following the tour can use it to find everything connected to these dates in one place.
Poland was the beginning. Orešanská’s film is where that beginning lives.
