“Hey man, you made it, you actually did it.” Josh Pyke reflects on 20 years in the music industry.
A national treasure, Pyke is touring regional Australia in celebration of the 20th anniversary of his debut album ‘Feeding The Wolves’.
The beloved singer-songwriter will bring the tour to intimate venues with a stripped-back performance.
In a break between his supporting slot while on tour with Scottish rock band Travis last month, Pyke shares that touring regionally is “one of the best things that has come out of being a musician for me”.
“I’ve seen more of Australia than almost anyone I know and it’s because of things like [this tour]. I always try to see the place where I’m going and get out.
“I don’t just stay in the hotel room and sort of scroll, I get out and see things. I try to have a swim if we’re at the coast or try and find a national park if we’re in the hinterlands. So, I absolutely love it.
“This tour in particular, I’ve really made an effort to be playing in the regional arts centres and theatres and so it’s nice as well.
“I’ve done so much regional touring where I’m playing pubs and clubs, which were really fun in their day, but I’m too old for that sh.t now, I just want to play nice theatres and have a nice time.
“I can’t expect everybody just to come to the capital cities to see me. I say this to any emerging artist reading or listening – you have to take your music to the people.
“You can’t expect people to come to you. It’s hard and it’s expensive, and it’s really risky but if you don’t do that then you’re really limiting your growth.”
After 20 years, some artists don’t connect with the lyrical content of the songs they’re singing anymore. That’s not the case for Josh. The ‘Feeding The Wolves’ songs were written at the start of one of the most important journeys in his life.
He considers it a real blessing to be able to revisit them each night. “All of these songs are pretty much written about my – at the time – burgeoning relationship with my wife,” Pyke explains with the guitar he wrote these songs on hanging up behind him.
“They really resonate with me because it’s this time capsule, but it also enables you to reflect on how far you’ve come and all the insecurities and doubts I had about my life then.
“You get to reflect on that, which is kind of rare. When you’re in your 40s and you’re busy and stuff, it’s not often that you get to really reflect word for word on an experience that you were having 20 years ago. . . It’s kind of like therapy.”
Even though he’s now living the life he dreamed of 20 years ago, Josh still feels like the same person he was then.
“I still have all the same insecurities and anxieties and everything. So it’s kind of a nice framer to be able to sing these songs and think exactly about the lyrics.
“‘Fill You In’, for example, is a song that I really love playing because it really poetically expresses all the insecurities that I continue to have with self-doubt and anxiety.
“It’s nice to reframe that in the life that I have now, as opposed to the life that I had then, where I really didn’t know what the f… was going to happen in my life. Then to sort of be looking back and go, ‘Hey man, you made it, you actually did it’, that’s really nice and poignant.”
Josh Pyke plays Kingston Butter Factory Cultural Precinct (Brisbane) on 1 March.
