Josh Pyke: Punks, Perpetual Motion & The Old Man.
An interview by Sarah Kidd.
At the age of 14 Josh Pyke began his journey into the world of playing guitar and songwriting. After winning the Jaxter Music Award in 2004 for his song ‘Kids Don’t Sell Their Hopes So Fast’ he used the proceeds to build his own home studio and made the transition to solo artist.
Now with several albums under his belt and a number of Aria awards, 2017 is shaping up to be one of the biggest years in his career to date.
You will be returning to New Zealand shortly for your shows – our country holds some special memories for you?
“Yeah, years ago and I went to the South Island with my girlfriend at the time who is now my wife and it was just a really seminal holiday for us. We did the classic drive around; it was just absolutely beautiful. I was blown away by it.
Then just last year [I] went back there with my wife and my two sons. We went back to the north island and we drove around for two weeks and again it was just absolutely stunning. It just kind of shocks me that I haven’t toured around there more than I have, I mean I fly five and a half hours to Perth all the time but I just haven’t been for the three hours over to New Zealand! It’s such a cool culture and everything. Wellington and Auckland are just so culturally excellent, so yeah I’m really excited to get back there in sort of a more work capacity.”
Congratulations on your last album ‘But for all the Shrinking Hearts’. The artwork on the cover is very interesting…
“That album as much as they’re sort of hopeful songs, I was really writing it from the perspective of being pretty disillusioned with the world at that point. Maybe it was a prediction about how the world is now. I wanted to make a sort of visual metaphor about that and long story short I was researching perpetual motion machines because I wanted to get a tattoo of [one]. But then I realised through researching it online that they have never really existed; no scientist has ever been able to make one. I read a story about a guy who made a fake one in the 1800’s and he charged people money to come in and look at this perpetual motion machine. When a skeptic came in and uncovered the truth; what was really happening [was] there was an old man sitting upstairs cranking a wheel which would run a little string coming down and make the machine appear to go perpetually. The way it was described was it was an old man and he was eating a sandwich with one hand and cranking the wheel with the other. And to me it just seemed like a perfect visual metaphor for the world we live in. These old white guys just running the world and [they’re] kinda bored and feeding themselves with one hand and doing whatever they do with the other hand.”
This is your fifth album to date since your first – Memories and Dust – back in 2007; how do you feel your music has evolved since then?
“I feel I know what I am doing more these days; not in a sense of writing better or worse songs just I think I can kind of follow my instincts a lot better now. When I write a song I cull a lot earlier than I did back when I was writing Memories and Dust. So the songs that make it onto the record these days are the ones that I’m totally in love with.
Production wise I’ve kind of refined what I do on records and so I’ve got a studio at home where I am right now in my backyard and I just spend all my time down there making music. Whether or not it’s for other people or me but different styles; I can do that a lot better than I could 10 years ago so it’s just experience I think.”
So what’s your favourite track off the album?
“Off the most recent one it changes all the time, but there is a song called ‘Someone to Rust With” for me it’s a very sentimental song. It harkens back to some of the songs I was writing when I did my first mini album called ‘Feeding the Wolves’ back in 2006, so there’s something about it that’s just really kind of sentimental to me.”
‘Late Night Driving’ is lyrically a rather beautiful song, what inspired you to write it?
“You know there’s that point in your life; there’s a line that you know you could cross and it would send you into a very different type of life. There have been dark points in everyone’s life and in my life there have been points where I’ve come close; where I could be down a very dark and different route to the one I ended up taking. It’s usually music and song writing that kind of gets those things out of my system so that I can continue to be a healthy person in my normal life.”
Speaking of a different type of life, you used to play in a punk band?
“Yeah I played in a band called An Empty Flight for years and we put out a couple of EP’s and stuff like that. It was going alright and then as so often happens it just started to kind of disintegrate and at the time it was disintegrating I recorded a few solo demos and sent that stuff around and that just kind of got an immediate response.
One of the demos got picked up on Triple J over here which is a big sort of youth radio station and so that just kind of kicked off from there. I mean I still love you know punk and bands like Trail of Dead and stuff like that, so yeah I [will] always love that type of music.”
It’s quite a change in scene to go from punk to your style now!
“Well its interesting because I put An Empty Flight, I put it all up on Spotify and ITunes just last year actually. I just had all the recordings of it and I was like, god I just gotta do something with these for my own kind of sense of satisfaction.
A lot of people have commented that it’s thematically and lyrically actually pretty similar [laughs] to what I still write about. You know melodically even I think it’s not too dissimilar; songs are songs in a way it’s just kinda how you dress them up that makes the big difference. So I think I’m a fairly similar songwriter to what I always have been.”
You once did a cover back in 2007 of Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’, musically who else influences you?
“I think I’m still kind of influenced by the stuff that I was influenced by when I was a kid. I still love the production on The Beatles and Beach Boys records, stuff like that. The Shins have been a big influence on me, the national bands like that. Recently I think it’s not what you would expect in terms of influences you know but that kind of Indie DIY. You’ve got bands like Car Seat Headrest and Sufjan Stevens [who] I’m a massive fan of. It’s usually the production, I love all the songs but it’s sonically rather than lyrically or anything like that that kind of influences me with those sorts of bands.”
You have co-written several songs with Passenger and you have recorded one as well. Is this collaboration something that we might see more of in the future?
“I don’t know, I mean we’re really good mates and we catch up whenever we can so yeah it’s likely. I think co-writes like that have to come about organically. Songs that we did together in the past have really been born from literally occupying the same space for enough hours that you end up having a guitar and mucking around! So yeah, there are no plans to, but it definitely wouldn’t be impossible.”
Back in 2015 you performed with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra which was an absolute triumph of a recording; what elements did you feel this added to your music?
“I play with a band a lot over here, but in my mind when I’m writing songs and when I’m envisioning them I hear a lot of them as quite cinematic. I could always hear those elements in there [but] I don’t read or write music so it was not something I could ever really get happening for myself. It was just something I had always fantasised about; the idea of having my songs reinterpreted in that way. But I didn’t do it like when you see Metallica with strings or whatever band playing with an orchestra. I wanted to really let the arrangers and composers – because we worked with ten different arrangers and composers – I wanted them to really creatively reinvent the songs. So it was just an opportunity to kind of fulfil a fantasy and it was amazing. We did two nights at the Sydney Opera House and it was one of the best things I have ever done, it was really cool”.
Edward Costelow from Dictaphone Blues will be performing a solo set at your show here in Auckland?
“Yeah well we’re old mates actually! Ed used to live in Australia for a while, for a few years he was in an amazing band called Degrees K. I was a big fan and so we played gigs around together and we actually worked together in a record store in Sydney. Then he moved back to New Zealand and we didn’t see each other for a while and then we caught up in the various times that I’ve been over to New Zealand and I was kinda asking him advice about how to get the shows here.
I don’t even know if I have a following there or anything it’s really kinda of exciting to just go over and see what happens! So when I got the chance to go over and play a few shows I really wanted to do one of them with Ed, so it’s really good. This time it’s pure relationship, relationship based on an old friendship which is going to be cool”.
Where to from here?
“So this year is… I can’t talk about it yet because I haven’t announced it in Australia, but I’m doing a big project which you know you’ll hear about at some point! But that will keep me busy for the rest of the year. I’ve also been writing songs for a kids TV show which has been really fun so I will be writing and recording those in my studio here.
Yeah there’s always stuff to keep me busy not including my two children [laughs]. It’s going to be a busy year of touring this year; I should be heading to the UK and Europe in October / November, so that’s kinda cool.”
Josh Pyke will be performing live at Auckland’s Winecellar next Wednesday, 19th April, followed by shows in Christchurch (Bluesmoke – 20th April) and Wellington (Caroline – 21st April). Limited tickets are still available for all shows from AAA Ticketing (But make sure you get in quick as each show is selling fast)!
