“I’m just at home at the moment,” Pyke says. “I’m actually doing a quick two and a half week UK tour before heading into the regional shows, so I’m off to the UK in a couple of days.” Isn’t it a little bit trippy playing in London one day and Castlemaine the next? “It is different,” says Pyke, “But I’ve done it so many times nowit kind of feels normal for what it is. The main thing I find is with the smaller shows in the regional areas is that people…enjoy it more. It’s not necessarily every week that artists they want to see are coming to town so when they do they seem to enjoy it a lot more and appreciate it a lot more, it’s really lovely.”
“I don’t really pay attention to what other musicians do, but I’ve always done a lot of regional touring, I see it as a completely necessary part of being an artist, a touring artist with hopefully a long career in Australia. You kind of just have to take your music everywhere that you can take it. For me, I’m really grateful that I get to play there as well. It’s a real blessing to be able to play any show where people want to be there and will pay money to come and see you.”
Jackson McLaren and his band The Triple Threat are joining Pyke on the Victorian leg of his tour, playing songs from their debut LP Songs To Greet The Dawn,released last May. “Jackson was always an easy choice for me,” says Pyke. “I love his music and he’s a total champion of a guy. He grew up in Warrnambool and I met him there at a show, I’ve known him for a long time. It’s a no-brainer for me to get him on shows whenever I can. For me, choosing supports, you’ve got to see how an audience of yours would respond to their type of music.”
“It’s either there’s an act that I specifically want like, ‘I love that band, they should come on tour with me,’ that’s happened a few times, like with Cloud Control and stuff like that, and then at other times it’s like Jack[son] is another example. I liked his music but I didn’t really know him and I met him at a mutual friend’s farewell party and we had a beer and I thought, ‘I like this guy, I’m going to get him to come on the road with me,’ ” he explains. “He’s a good guy to hang out with. I have a really awesome team, my managers and booking agents so they’ll put together a list of like, 20 possible acts that are available and might suit my thing and I’ll go through and have a think.”
“Sometimes it’s good to have supports that aren’t that similar to you but they offer something that your audience will also like. I had support from The Jezabels years ago before they kind of blew up on quite a long regional tour and they’re very different from me but it just worked so well. Every night the audience was captivated and they sold a lot of CDs. You’ve kind of got to curate it like you would anything, and think about it rather than just thinking, ‘I’m a singer/songwriter so I’ll put on a singer/songwriter as a support.’ ”
The Lone Wolf tour has been a bit of a marathon, stretching over the best part of the year. “The most frequent question I get asked is, ‘Will I be playing a range of stuff, old stuff as well?” he says. “The answer is yes – I’m definitely playing a mix of everything.” Not that fans would complain if he stuck to newer material – The Beginning And The End Of Everything is an ARIA-nominated record after all.
When he’s not touring, Pyke, being the all-round nice guy he is, runs the Busking For Change project, raising money for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation through an annual concert on Indigenous Literacy Day, with the latest concert being held on Thursday September 4. “I’ve been doing it for five years now. It’s a really casual thing, pulling in favours from mates I’ve been working with on and off during the year. The first time I did it I pulled in some guys from The White Album tour, which I’d been doing that year. It’s just a really casual event the crux of it is that we raise money for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation which I’ve been an ambassador for about six years now. It’s been great. We’ve raised $50,000 now and I hope it’s helping.”
BY JOSH FERGEUS
