Josh Pyke (15/05/2014)
Josh Pyke has been one of the biggest Australian solo-artists of the past 10 years. After four fantastic albums, numerous projects and ARIA awards and nominations, Josh is bringing his indie/folk sounds to the very heart of Australia.
Beginning early June at the Montrose Town Hall outside Melbourne, the solo Lone Wolf Tour will span regional venues all across Australia.
Josh says he is looking forward to take his engaging indie/folk live show to new corners of the country.
“I'm just really looking forward to getting to some places that I've never been to before, like Broome and Toowoomba and ... I'm playing in a little theater in Pamona, which is near Newford, so, yeah, a bunch of places that I've never been, which is going to be really cool.”
Josh will be playing over twenty dates and amongst these small country towns, are venues that Josh has quite fondly played at before.
“Will I be revisiting ...? Yeah, there's some places that I have been to before, Coffs Harbour and stuff like that, and Port Macquarie. Milton Theater I've played quite a few times before. It's always been beautiful. It's such a beautiful area."
"There's a bit of regional circuit that I've built up over the 10-12 years that I've been touring, and I'm just kind of trying to slowly branch it out even further because particularly as an Australian artist, you can't just go around playing a couple of Cd's once a month. When you're kind of past a certain point, you kind of have to really branch out and get to as many places as possible”
Since his EP Feeding The Wolves, there has been an animal theme throughout the lyrics and album art. Josh explains how this came to be.
“It just happened. It was just how I was communicating my ideas at the time and it was how I was presenting the imagery of emotions and various situations in my life, was the best way I felt like I could interpret it, the emotion, use animals, imagery, and imagery from nature that kind of described those situations. That was what came and actually I just kept on ... I just didn't fight it basically. Just always been part of how I describe situations and I guess like ... not just on a ... whatever the animal version personifies, anamorphasise emotions, I guess.”
He has two distinct musical styles; the introspective or metaphorical style and the faster paced, catchy pop style that is better suited for radio. But does he have a preference between the two?
“It's hard with songs because they're all kind of like your children and I never set out to kind of write one type of song or the other, I just basically, during the course of 18 months, I'll just write as many songs as I am inspired to write and then at the end of it, I'll kind of break them down what would make a cohesive album with a good ebb and flow."
"I feel like an album needs the highs and lows of both those types of songs. For me, probably listening-wise, I probably prefer the more introspective songs. From a performance point of view, it's really fun playing the more upbeat kind of pop-y songs and the crowd response is always really immediate and engaging."
"They kind of have ... they both have their places ... their places where they shine, but yeah, from a listening perspective, it's probably the more introspective ones that kind of still really resonate with me, I think”
Josh’s music is full of beautiful and emotive lyrics, spun together in really creative and succinct ways, like you would see from somebody who has studied language for many years. This skill he picked up, he says, was built over time.
“Just practice. I've always read heaps and heaps and heaps, ever since I was really, really young. I was an avid reader. I've been doing music since I was 11 years old. I was in a band when I was 12 and I was writing songs from that time, as bad as they were. It's been a really long process of seeking out how I kind of want to communicate ideas and I still feel like I'm learning every day about how I want to do that, and learning new techniques and coming up with little turns of phrases where I am amazed that I never thought of describing something that way. It's just from doing it. I've never studied music or literature or writing or anything formally, it's just from doing it. “
Accompanying Josh, and opening shows on the Lone Wolf Tour will be Jack Carty.
“He [Jack Carty] did another regional tour with me a few years ago and we got along great and we just recently wrote a song together for his new record, which I actually think he's recording today. He sent me a message earlier. Yeah, it's going to be great having him on the road. He's a great dude. He's a great musician, a great songwriter but he's also a really great guy to hang out with, which is almost more important on a six week regional tour when you're spending five hours a day in a car together.”
Alongside Chris Cheney (The Living End), Phil Jamison (Grinspoon) and Tim Rogers (You Am I), Josh will be returning to play another The Beatles White Album Concert in July. Josh wants to keep what songs he is playing a surprise.
“We did the show five years ago and it was a real roaring success, so we're doing it again and obviously you're limited to the songs within the White album, so I do know which ones. I won't say all the ones that I'm doing but. Although, I'm pretty sure it's probably freely available online, since we've done the show before. Blackbird is one of the ones I'm doing and Martha, My Dear is one of the other ones. It's such a kick doing that show. It's so much fun. We did it five years ago, so I'm very, very excited to be doing it all again.”
“Beatles were like ... pretty much the Beatles and the Beach Boys, which were my ... my upbringing into music when I was like five and six year's old and really starting to engage with music, and wanting to listen to the songs and stuff. For me, Sergeant Pepper's ... just that album, blew my mind with its storytelling and the kind of contents within it. And the production is like nothing I've never heard. It was very, very sentimental stuff to me.”
Josh recently played a small set for the Spotify sessions. The relatively new streaming service has been under fire by many artists for its relatively small profit turn over to the musicians. Josh explains his thoughts on the service.
“I know there's a lot of conjecture about it and there's been high-profile artists like David Byrne and Thom Yorke who say that it's bad but I feel like I can't really see that there's any other alternatives, apart from streaming services. Like, piracy is largely killed by streaming services. People aren't really buying records anymore and what other alternative is there? You can't force them to buy stuff. I don't want them to pirate it, so streaming seems to be the way forward."
"I subscribe to the premium subscription, and so far, from a customer point of view, I absolutely love it. I thought of a band the other day, the Dodos. I was like, what's that band, the Dodos, I haven't listened to them for a while, and I was able to pull up every single thing that I'd ever heard. If I hadn't that kind of immediacy, I would have forgotten again and I probably wouldn't have gone out and found it. Where are you going to track down a Dodos record from a record store?"
"For me, I think it's great and the problem at the moment is how it's monetized. I think that I'm happy and hopeful about it. I think it will all remedy itself if Spotify hopefully phases out the free, ad-based service and just has the paid service. The problem is not with Spotify, Spotify pays a fair royalty rate. I've looked into it. It's the fact that the labels aren't passing on that royalty to their artists because that what labels do. They screw over artists; that's what they've always done."
"That's really where the problem lies, is the relationship between the record label and the artist, in terms of what get passed on from the streaming revenue. Unfortunately, the streaming revenue is not very big at the moment because everybody is using the free service. If it gets bigger, then there'll be more money in it for the artist.”
Josh has many new and exciting projects in the works, he says.
"I'm really looking forward to the White album thing but after that's done, I'm going to be digging recording and demoing a bunch of new stuff, which I'm excited about. I've also got a project, which I'm trying hard to get off the ground. I'm not sure if it's going to happen but I'm trying to get together an orchestral show, a collection of my songs with a full orchestra. I'm hopeful of that will get off the ground before the beginning of next year and squaring all that up and getting all that happening, doing all the arrangements will take two or three months, I'd say. That's kind of going to be nothing I'll actually personally be doing myself; I have no musical expertise to do that. Working with an arranger and everything will take a long time. Hopefully, that will be taking up my time in the next in the second half of the year."
Ryan Hyde
Beginning early June at the Montrose Town Hall outside Melbourne, the solo Lone Wolf Tour will span regional venues all across Australia.
Josh says he is looking forward to take his engaging indie/folk live show to new corners of the country.
“I'm just really looking forward to getting to some places that I've never been to before, like Broome and Toowoomba and ... I'm playing in a little theater in Pamona, which is near Newford, so, yeah, a bunch of places that I've never been, which is going to be really cool.”
Josh will be playing over twenty dates and amongst these small country towns, are venues that Josh has quite fondly played at before.
“Will I be revisiting ...? Yeah, there's some places that I have been to before, Coffs Harbour and stuff like that, and Port Macquarie. Milton Theater I've played quite a few times before. It's always been beautiful. It's such a beautiful area."
"There's a bit of regional circuit that I've built up over the 10-12 years that I've been touring, and I'm just kind of trying to slowly branch it out even further because particularly as an Australian artist, you can't just go around playing a couple of Cd's once a month. When you're kind of past a certain point, you kind of have to really branch out and get to as many places as possible”
Since his EP Feeding The Wolves, there has been an animal theme throughout the lyrics and album art. Josh explains how this came to be.
“It just happened. It was just how I was communicating my ideas at the time and it was how I was presenting the imagery of emotions and various situations in my life, was the best way I felt like I could interpret it, the emotion, use animals, imagery, and imagery from nature that kind of described those situations. That was what came and actually I just kept on ... I just didn't fight it basically. Just always been part of how I describe situations and I guess like ... not just on a ... whatever the animal version personifies, anamorphasise emotions, I guess.”
He has two distinct musical styles; the introspective or metaphorical style and the faster paced, catchy pop style that is better suited for radio. But does he have a preference between the two?
“It's hard with songs because they're all kind of like your children and I never set out to kind of write one type of song or the other, I just basically, during the course of 18 months, I'll just write as many songs as I am inspired to write and then at the end of it, I'll kind of break them down what would make a cohesive album with a good ebb and flow."
"I feel like an album needs the highs and lows of both those types of songs. For me, probably listening-wise, I probably prefer the more introspective songs. From a performance point of view, it's really fun playing the more upbeat kind of pop-y songs and the crowd response is always really immediate and engaging."
"They kind of have ... they both have their places ... their places where they shine, but yeah, from a listening perspective, it's probably the more introspective ones that kind of still really resonate with me, I think”
Josh’s music is full of beautiful and emotive lyrics, spun together in really creative and succinct ways, like you would see from somebody who has studied language for many years. This skill he picked up, he says, was built over time.
“Just practice. I've always read heaps and heaps and heaps, ever since I was really, really young. I was an avid reader. I've been doing music since I was 11 years old. I was in a band when I was 12 and I was writing songs from that time, as bad as they were. It's been a really long process of seeking out how I kind of want to communicate ideas and I still feel like I'm learning every day about how I want to do that, and learning new techniques and coming up with little turns of phrases where I am amazed that I never thought of describing something that way. It's just from doing it. I've never studied music or literature or writing or anything formally, it's just from doing it. “
Accompanying Josh, and opening shows on the Lone Wolf Tour will be Jack Carty.
“He [Jack Carty] did another regional tour with me a few years ago and we got along great and we just recently wrote a song together for his new record, which I actually think he's recording today. He sent me a message earlier. Yeah, it's going to be great having him on the road. He's a great dude. He's a great musician, a great songwriter but he's also a really great guy to hang out with, which is almost more important on a six week regional tour when you're spending five hours a day in a car together.”
Alongside Chris Cheney (The Living End), Phil Jamison (Grinspoon) and Tim Rogers (You Am I), Josh will be returning to play another The Beatles White Album Concert in July. Josh wants to keep what songs he is playing a surprise.
“We did the show five years ago and it was a real roaring success, so we're doing it again and obviously you're limited to the songs within the White album, so I do know which ones. I won't say all the ones that I'm doing but. Although, I'm pretty sure it's probably freely available online, since we've done the show before. Blackbird is one of the ones I'm doing and Martha, My Dear is one of the other ones. It's such a kick doing that show. It's so much fun. We did it five years ago, so I'm very, very excited to be doing it all again.”
“Beatles were like ... pretty much the Beatles and the Beach Boys, which were my ... my upbringing into music when I was like five and six year's old and really starting to engage with music, and wanting to listen to the songs and stuff. For me, Sergeant Pepper's ... just that album, blew my mind with its storytelling and the kind of contents within it. And the production is like nothing I've never heard. It was very, very sentimental stuff to me.”
Josh recently played a small set for the Spotify sessions. The relatively new streaming service has been under fire by many artists for its relatively small profit turn over to the musicians. Josh explains his thoughts on the service.
“I know there's a lot of conjecture about it and there's been high-profile artists like David Byrne and Thom Yorke who say that it's bad but I feel like I can't really see that there's any other alternatives, apart from streaming services. Like, piracy is largely killed by streaming services. People aren't really buying records anymore and what other alternative is there? You can't force them to buy stuff. I don't want them to pirate it, so streaming seems to be the way forward."
"I subscribe to the premium subscription, and so far, from a customer point of view, I absolutely love it. I thought of a band the other day, the Dodos. I was like, what's that band, the Dodos, I haven't listened to them for a while, and I was able to pull up every single thing that I'd ever heard. If I hadn't that kind of immediacy, I would have forgotten again and I probably wouldn't have gone out and found it. Where are you going to track down a Dodos record from a record store?"
"For me, I think it's great and the problem at the moment is how it's monetized. I think that I'm happy and hopeful about it. I think it will all remedy itself if Spotify hopefully phases out the free, ad-based service and just has the paid service. The problem is not with Spotify, Spotify pays a fair royalty rate. I've looked into it. It's the fact that the labels aren't passing on that royalty to their artists because that what labels do. They screw over artists; that's what they've always done."
"That's really where the problem lies, is the relationship between the record label and the artist, in terms of what get passed on from the streaming revenue. Unfortunately, the streaming revenue is not very big at the moment because everybody is using the free service. If it gets bigger, then there'll be more money in it for the artist.”
Josh has many new and exciting projects in the works, he says.
"I'm really looking forward to the White album thing but after that's done, I'm going to be digging recording and demoing a bunch of new stuff, which I'm excited about. I've also got a project, which I'm trying hard to get off the ground. I'm not sure if it's going to happen but I'm trying to get together an orchestral show, a collection of my songs with a full orchestra. I'm hopeful of that will get off the ground before the beginning of next year and squaring all that up and getting all that happening, doing all the arrangements will take two or three months, I'd say. That's kind of going to be nothing I'll actually personally be doing myself; I have no musical expertise to do that. Working with an arranger and everything will take a long time. Hopefully, that will be taking up my time in the next in the second half of the year."
Ryan Hyde
JOSH PYKE
THE LONE WOLF SOLO TOUR
With special guest Jack Carty
FRI 06 JUN | MONTROSE TOWN CENTRE, MONTROSE VIC (ALL AGES)
Tickets available from www.yarraranges.vic.gov.au | 03 9761 9133
SAT 07 JUN | THE MEMO, HEALESVILLE VIC (ALL AGES)
Tickets available from www.yarraranges.vic.gov.au | 03 5966 4500
FRI 13 JUN | FANNIE BAY GAOL, DARWIN NT
Tickets available from www.nookeventmanagement.com.au
* Jack Carty not appearing. Special guests Mike Meston and Ward Hancock
SUN 15 JUN | DIVERS TAVERN, BROOME WA
Tickets available from www.moshtix.com.au | 1300 GET TIX | All Moshtix Outlets
* Jack Carty not appearing. Special guests TBC
FRI 20 JUN | EMPIRE CHURCH THEATRE, TOOWOOMBA QLD (ALL AGES)
Tickets available from www.empiretheatre.com.au | 1300 655 299 | From the Box Office direct
SAT 21 JUN | MAJESTIC THEATRE, POMONA QLD (ALL AGES)
Tickets available from www.themajestictheatre.com.au | 07 5485 2330
SUN 22 JUN | BYRON THEATRE, BYRON BAY NSW (ALL AGES)
Tickets available from www.byroncentre.com.au | 02 6685 6807 | From the Box Office direct
WED 25 JUN | JETTY MEMORIAL THEATRE, COFFS HARBOUR NSW (ALL AGES)
Tickets available from www.jettytheatre.com | 02 6652 8088 | From the Box Office direct
THU 26 JUN | PIER ONE @ PANTHERS, PORT MACQUARIE NSW
Tickets available from www.oztix.com.au | 1300 762 545 | All Oztix Outlets
FRI 27 JUN | MANNING ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE, TAREE NSW (ALL AGES)
Tickets available from www.qtcc.nsw.gov.au/bookonline | 02 6552 5699 | From Movies, Games & More – Victoria St
SAT 28 JUN | CESSNOCK PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE, CESSNOCK NSW (ALL AGES)
Tickets available from www.cessnock.nsw.gov.au | 02 4990 7134
SAT 05 JUL | MILTON THEATRE, MILTON NSW (ALL AGES)
Tickets available from www.miltontheatre.com.au | 02 4455 3056 | From Country Leather
THE LONE WOLF SOLO TOUR
With special guest Jack Carty
FRI 06 JUN | MONTROSE TOWN CENTRE, MONTROSE VIC (ALL AGES)
Tickets available from www.yarraranges.vic.gov.au | 03 9761 9133
SAT 07 JUN | THE MEMO, HEALESVILLE VIC (ALL AGES)
Tickets available from www.yarraranges.vic.gov.au | 03 5966 4500
FRI 13 JUN | FANNIE BAY GAOL, DARWIN NT
Tickets available from www.nookeventmanagement.com.au
* Jack Carty not appearing. Special guests Mike Meston and Ward Hancock
SUN 15 JUN | DIVERS TAVERN, BROOME WA
Tickets available from www.moshtix.com.au | 1300 GET TIX | All Moshtix Outlets
* Jack Carty not appearing. Special guests TBC
FRI 20 JUN | EMPIRE CHURCH THEATRE, TOOWOOMBA QLD (ALL AGES)
Tickets available from www.empiretheatre.com.au | 1300 655 299 | From the Box Office direct
SAT 21 JUN | MAJESTIC THEATRE, POMONA QLD (ALL AGES)
Tickets available from www.themajestictheatre.com.au | 07 5485 2330
SUN 22 JUN | BYRON THEATRE, BYRON BAY NSW (ALL AGES)
Tickets available from www.byroncentre.com.au | 02 6685 6807 | From the Box Office direct
WED 25 JUN | JETTY MEMORIAL THEATRE, COFFS HARBOUR NSW (ALL AGES)
Tickets available from www.jettytheatre.com | 02 6652 8088 | From the Box Office direct
THU 26 JUN | PIER ONE @ PANTHERS, PORT MACQUARIE NSW
Tickets available from www.oztix.com.au | 1300 762 545 | All Oztix Outlets
FRI 27 JUN | MANNING ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE, TAREE NSW (ALL AGES)
Tickets available from www.qtcc.nsw.gov.au/bookonline | 02 6552 5699 | From Movies, Games & More – Victoria St
SAT 28 JUN | CESSNOCK PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE, CESSNOCK NSW (ALL AGES)
Tickets available from www.cessnock.nsw.gov.au | 02 4990 7134
SAT 05 JUL | MILTON THEATRE, MILTON NSW (ALL AGES)
Tickets available from www.miltontheatre.com.au | 02 4455 3056 | From Country Leather