Solo Man

"It was just a collection of songs that I had and I'd always wanted to make a record by myself at home where I played all the parts and just did it in a very modest, efficient, cost-efficient way, where I could just chip away at it over periods of time and not feel like I was on the clock in a recording studio,” Barber recalls. “I guess there are a few people that make records that way. Lenny Kravitz, I think makes records that way some times. A few of my songwriting heroes here, people like Jason Faulkner and Brendan Benson who's in The Raconteurs, he's made a couple of records that way. And I admire people who can make a record and it's really a singular vision, and they play every instrument on it – Paul McCartney is another good example, he's made a couple of records that way. You do miss a little bit of the life of a full band performing music, but you gain something else that can be interesting, I think. And yeah, it was a fun process”

The Songwriters Circle Tour will see Barber sharing the stage with Steve Balbi, Nicholas Roy and Asa Broomhall as they perform their work and share tales of their work and their influences. Barber's been touring his latest work in Canada (The Haunted Hillbilly, a set of songs originally written for a theatrical adaptation of a book of the same name) as a four-piece, but he'll be playing solo on the Australian shows which, he says, allows a little more freedom.

“I've been doing more solo stuff now than I did when I first started out about eight or nine years ago, but I still do at least one kind of band tour per year, if not more, and it's just a different approach to the show altogether,” he explains. “When I play solo I'm a lot more free to play anything, any song from my whole entire repertoire, which is nice. So I feel like you can go with a little bit more of a spontaneous kind of rhythm to the show when you're just doing it yourself. But then playing with a band is just a lot of fun, just fun travelling with other guys and just sort of having some camaraderie and just other people to play off of onstage, that's fun too. They're just different shows and I do kind of have to adjust my approach to them. It's a different way of relating to the audience.”

Barber's last few records have been moving away somewhat from the heavier indie-rock that began his career, something he puts down to a gradual shift in personal taste. 

“I think generally speaking, in the last few years, the music I make tends to mirror, a little bit, the kind of albums that I like to listen to,” he admits. “I find myself more inclined to put on stuff that I guess is a little bit less on the harder-edged kind of more aggressive, electric guitarist kind of stuff. I don't listen to that kind of music as much as I did at one time in my life. I'm not saying I won't go back to it, or that I don't still love it, but the last few albums have been a little bit mellower, generally speaking. But there is still a part of me that yearns to make another full-on rock'n'roll album so, I don't know, we'll see if I have that in me over the next few years or not.”

Matthew Barber will be playing the following shows:

Thursday 25 October - The Vanguard, Newtown NSW
Friday 26 October - The Brass Monkey, Cronulla NSW
Wednesday 31 October - Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane QLD
Thursday 1 November - Bon Amici Cafe, Toowoomba QLD
Friday 2 November - Woombye Pub, Sunshine Coast QLD
Saturday 3 November - The Loft, Gold Coast QLD
Thursday 8 November - Worker's Club, Melbourne VIC
Friday 9 November - Spirit Bar & Lounge, Traralgon VIC
Saturday 10 November - Baby Black Cafe, Bacchus Marsh VIC