June marks the start of a busy couple of months for JOSH PYKE. Still riding high on the success of his fourth record, The Beginning and the End of Everything, the Sydney songsmith is gracing remote stages across regional Australia as part of his rebooted Lone Wolf solo tour and will soon be city-bound once more when he joins Chris Cheney, Phil Jamieson and Tim Rogers on a second outing of the critically acclaimed White Album Concert tour throughout July. Amidst his seemingly relentless tour schedule, Pyke found time to sit down for a chat with Amelia Parrott, discussing his upcoming shows and some surprising new material he’s been working on.
You’re starting this tour with some sold out shows, Josh. You’d have to be happy with that start.
I’ve been really lucky on the last couple of tours for this record that most of the shows have been sold out so it’s been really great. It’s all you could hope for really.
Do you want to tell me a bit about how this tour came to be? Was it hard to strip your songs back for these types of solo shows?
Yes and no. I mean, when I am in the initial writing phase it’s usually just on an acoustic guitar. I suppose it was kind of just taking the songs back to where they started. Then, I did want to incorporate some of the rhythm bits and some of the harmonies and some other layers, which you can’t really do unless you add some extra stuff so I’ve got the loop pedal with me on this tour so I can add bits like the piano line in White Lines Dancing and some rhythm section stuff and the harmony and the end vocals in the some Beginning and the End of Everything. It was kind of like, acknowledging that the songs worked fine as literally just guitar and vocals but also wanting to incorporate some other elements from the record as well.
Was it hard to let the songs speak for themselves more?
It was actually in a way easy and quite liberating actually. It was good to get songs back to that point and back to that initial story telling phase and for me as a writer, it’s let me have a chance to almost reconnect with what the songs are about after stripping them back from their extra adornments. It was quite fun bringing them back to that point.
How have you found performing alone when you’re used to that band behind you?
I love it. I’ve done a lot of solo shows over the years but it was just in this particular round of touring I wanted to focus in it as a special performance. I guess, in the past I’ve sort of thought about it as the band shows being the proper shows but over the past couple of years the feedback that I’ve got about the solo shows is that people almost prefer them so I really got into that notion and for me, as a performer, it’s actually really fun because you get to engage with the audience a lot more and it kind of becomes more like a conversation between the guy on stage and the audience rather than a monologue. There’s a lot of interaction and chat. I’ve really been enjoying it.
Is there more of the heckles and requests coming in from the crowd that usual?
Definitely. I’ve actually always gotten that from crowds but when you’re up there by yourself you can engage a lot more, which is my favourite bit of the show really. I guess, I’ve never scripted by shows in terms of what I say between songs and whatever so I kind of like having stuff to bounce off when the crowd is talking to me. It doesn’t bug me. It’s quite cool.
You’d probably have more of a feeling of having nowhere to hide when you’re performing alone. Were there any mishaps on the metro tour?
Yeah, there were a few, for sure. Just little things like doing a mistake on the loop pedal, it keeps looping and looping and looping and looping… and looping [laughs]. There’s kind of nowhere to go from there when that happens with no one accompanying you, you’ve just got to take it on the chin and stop it and apologise and move on and make a joke out of it. But I feel like people enjoy that element of the show. I’ve never felt that people want perfection out of my shows whether it’s solo or otherwise. It takes the pressure off a lot knowing that people aren’t going to storm out of there and ask for their money back if I fuck up a couple of times but I will say that you’ve got to recover in a professional manner you can’t just fall to pieces and storm off or chuck a hissy fit. I’m sure we’ve both seen lots of artists do that on stage and it’s just really lame.
Pretty much as soon as you come off this tour you’re heading straight into the White Album Concerts. It must be a busy time for you.
It is busy but that’s going to be great as well. We did that show five years ago and it was just so much fun and for me it was a hugely pivotal point in my career and just working with those other guys and being in the show with them as a contemporary. They were all guys that I had watched play in bands as a fan for a long time so it was a big deal for me. I’m really looking forward to doing that one again.
Those shows were five years ago and now you’re back doing four shows at the Sydney Opera House. Did you have any idea at the time that it was being so well received?
No, not at all. I actually really questioned whether it would be well received as all this time around. The first time we didn’t know and then it went really well and I was like, ‘Wow, that’s so cool,’ and this time I was like, ‘Well, surely people have seen it.’ More than our involvement in it, it’s just testament to the popularity of the Beatles. The majority of the world never got to see the Beatles play so I think fans of those songs will jump at the opportunity to hear them played live in a respectful and cool, kind of creative way and not in a cheesy way. We’re not trying to be the Beatles, it’s just us playing Beatles songs. It was quite surprising the first time and this time it’s just going absolutely nuts. I think it’s going better this time than it did five years ago which is really great.
Did you feel much pressure playing such phenomenally popular tracks? I mean, you play Blackbird, which is one of the most notable songs off the White Album, if you had to pick just one. How did you approach that?
Ah, yeah, I was absolutely shit scared [laughs]. I definitely feel the pressure and I play that song totally solo and we’re playing four nights at the Opera House so quite a few thousand people. So, yeah, it’s really scary and I definitely feel the pressure but that’s part of your job as a performer. You’ve just got to get on with it and do it.
In the midst of so much touring have you had the chance to be working on any new material? I saw last month you put of a picture on Facebook of some pretty impromptu laundry recording.
As much as I am touring a lot I’ve had the last month and a half at home just preparing for the next round. I spent four days and quite a few nights in the studio in my backyard where I kind of just hang out and write and record. I’ve got quite a few new songs and I’ve also been recording, that laundry jam was with a buddy of mine, we’ve been recording this pretty trippy, stoner rock album just on Friday nights. We’ve both got kids so when I’m not on tour I’m not out partying so he comes around to my studio and we record and hang out. I’ve been recording quite a bit actually. You never really realise until you get to the end of the month and you go, ‘Oh right. I’ve actually written about 10 songs in the past month.’ It’s been good.
I heard you interviewed on Double J with Myf and you were saying you’ve entered a new cycle of your life after this last album. Is stoner rock going to be the next life cycle for Josh Pyke?
I definitely want to release this thing. I don’t know when we’ll get a chance doing it in between my buddy’s day job and me touring for the next nine weekends. We’ll probably put it on Bandcamp and do a couple of shows.