James Reyne releases anthology
James Reyne has collected 35 songs from his solo career, and put them together for his upcoming Anthology album, but there's always the one song that got away.
"I've got one I quite like called What A Pain In The Arse It Is To Run Into You Again," he says.
"It started about somebody specific but then it just becomes an amalgam of lots of people."
Reyne doesn't name the person who was the original influence for the song but says it`s a person he knew a long time ago who he says encroached on his personal space.
"That song was about (a person) that sometimes you know them very very well. It's got nothing to do with anybody who has approached me in a professional sense or at a gig, it's got nothing to do with that. It's much more a personal thing," he says.
"I love people coming up and saying hello, I love my fans." Whittling down his favourites from his ten-album solo back catalogue wasn't easy and there were other songs that didn't get included on the former Australian Crawl frontman's collection.
"Universal Music told me to put together a list, which I did and I got 50-60 songs," Reyne said.
The singer cut the list further until he ended up with well-known songs from his back catalogue, which form the core of the collection, and recent stuff which he says "people, generally, might not have heard".
Reyne says his more recent songs haven't really been played on commercial radio.
"Radio wasn't playing new things by people like me. A lot of the albums, the last four or five albums I've released, have largely gone unnoticed," he says.
He says this is something that just happens to "people of my vintage who've been doing this for quite a while ... and it's just how it works".
"I used to make that joke: `was there a day, Tuesday the 17th or something, that suddenly commercial pop radio just went `we don't play that guy any more'. I mean there must have been that point, there must have been that day," he says.
The singer says, as a craftsman, he believes he's getting better as he gets older.
"It's just like any craft, the more you do something the better you get at it," he says and explains his recent songs are some of the ones he's most proud of.
"People who buy the anthology will see on a lot of the more recent stuff there are certain evolutions," he says.
"I've gone off into all sorts of corners of the musical world, lyrically and musically." he says.
Reyne will soon head out on the road touring the anthology in regional areas.
"We're doing September and October to support this stuff and it will be acoustic duo and or trio," he says.
"It will be all the solo stuff that people know and there will always be two or three Australian Crawl stuff in there because you'd get lynched if you don't do them," he says.
Reyne also says he's open to audience requests and will play them if he knows them.
"But if it's an Australian act I'll say (to the audience) if you want to hear their song go see them'."
James Reyne The Anthology will be released on August 1 through Universal Music Australia
"James Reyne the Anthology Acoustic Tour dates:
September 5 -Laycock Street Community Theatre, Central Coast NSW
September 6 - Cessnock Performing Arts Centre, Cessnock NSW
September 12 - Illawarra Performing Arts Centre, Wollongong NSW September 13 - Wagga Wagga Civic Theatre, Wagga Wagga NSW
September 20 - GPAC Drama Theatre, Geelong VIC
October 5 - Caloundra Music Festival, Caloundra QLD
October 10 - Orange Civic Centre, Orange NSW
October 11 - Dubbo Regional Theatre & Entertainment Centre, Dubbo NSW
October 17 - The Glasshouse (Access from 2:00pm), Port Macquarie NSW
October 23 - Jetty Memorial Theatre, Coffs Harbour NSW
October 25 - Star Court Theatre, Lismore NSW
