He’s visiting us down under for the first time, and returning to Australia for the first time in three or four years.
“It’s been a quiet year,” Pug has spent most of 2016 at home in Austin, Texas, having finished off the bulk of the Windfall tour last year. “I don’t imagine I’m going to forget the life lessons I learnt,” he says referring to needing that time at home that he didn’t have as much in earlier years of his career.
Windfall is a very clean album, “It was very much recorded with performing live in mind. I hate falling in love with an album and then seeing a show and it being totally different.” The album focuses on the trio that has always made up Pug’s live show, with less trimmings than you’d often find on records these days.
“At this stage in my career it’s still three guys in a white van touring around, so the touring lifestyle doesn’t let me write much on the road, but it’s amazing, getting to all these big American cities.”
“I’ve been working on another record, and I imagine, barring strange circumstances, that there’ll be a new one next year! Definitely I’ll be making sure I can play it life, but I’ve got some ideas to make this one different.” No hints yet as to what that will be, we’ll have to wait and see.
He’s not bringing the trio down to us, instead performing solo. “That’s what I was doing a long time before I played with the band, I still always keep up the solo show. It’s completely different from a performance aspect and at the end of the day it is the fundamental of what I’m doing.”
Despite the non-stop touring, and not coming down in the van with the boys he’s excited to get to us, “Oh hell yeah man, my work takes me literally to the other side of the world is something I don’t take for granted, I’ve been down a few times and I’ve got some good friends down there who I haven’t seen in years (in Australia) so that’ll be good to catch up with them. It’s going to be great.”
Catch Joe Pug at the Tuning Fork with Robert Ellis onWednesday 12th October as part of the Southern Fork Americana Fest. Tickets at the link!
(FINN MCLENNAN-ELLIOTT)
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