CONCERT PREVIEW
Colin Hay
With Heather Maloney. 8 p.m. Feb. 5. Sold out. Variety Playhouse, 1099 Euclid Ave. N.E., Atlanta. 1-800-745-3000, www.ticketmaster.com.
Even though Men at Work are really only heard on ‘80s channels and Flashback Fridays, the voice of singer Colin Hay remains one of the most distinctive in pop-rock.
Hay has, mostly quietly, engaged in a solid solo career that brought glimpses of mainstream recognition — appearances on “Scrubs” and “The Larry Sanders Show,” a contribution to the hip 2004 “Garden State” soundtrack — the past 30 years.
In February 2015, Hay released his 12th solo album, “Next Year People,” and he’ll bring those new songs to a solo acoustic show at Variety Playhouse on Feb. 5 as part of a five-month tour that currently finds him tooling around the U.S. in a Mercedes Sprinter van.
In a thoughtful, soft-spoken tone, Hay, 62, recently chatted from a tour stop in Dallas about the new album and his relationship with those Men at Work classics.
Q: Last summer, you toured in bigger venues with Barenaked Ladies and Violent Femmes, but you’re back to playing intimate rooms this time. Do you have a preference?
A: (Laughs) No, I like my crowds anywhere. The Barenaked Ladies, Violent Femmes thing was really good. It was something unusual for me as I haven't done that (type of) show for a long time. Playing those bigger places opened new audiences in a way, but I've more or less been playing intimate places for 20 years, like the Variety (Playhouse). I've been playing there a number of years. It's a nice size room, it's a lovely place. It's kind of the perfect size for a solo acoustic show.
Q: You do play a couple of Men at Work songs in your set. Do you still enjoy playing them or do you do it mostly to appease the old fans?
A: (Pauses) I’m not sure about the answer. It’s not like I want to appease old fans because there was a period I didn’t play any of those old songs, when it was closer to the band breaking up. I think it’s really that I have a relationship with these songs. They’re big songs, and they’re important songs to me in my life. In a way, you’re making more of a statement if you leave them out. It’s part of my fabric in a way, it’s part of who I am. I still play “Overkill” and “Who Can It Be Now” and “Down Under” and I like playing them because they’ve been very good to me, and I have a pretty good relationship with them. In some kind of way, you have to let a song be reborn every time. I find that when I do that, it’s always a pretty joyous experience. At the end of the day, it’s about trying to create that joy.
Q: What is the meaning of the title of your latest album, “Next Year People”?
A: It could mean many things. At the time, I was watching a Ken Burns documentary, and I wrote down the phrase next year people. … That's who they were, those people, through all adversity they believed in the next year that everything was going to be fine. I related to that, not in as bleak a way, but I would notice myself that when I would be touring and playing to nobody I was playing for 15 years on the road without any kind of record label — it did feel like walking in the wilderness for quite a number of years. But I always felt that next year would be better.
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