Fresh from an extensive European tour that saw The Cat Empire play Romania and Portugal for the first time, singer and percussionist Felix Reibl admits to being energised “because we were playing a lot of outdoor festivals and it was summer over there and, you know, that suits the band just great and then I came back and I’m making the most of that rhythm in my mind from touring and then that translates to a good patch of songwriting”.

Not that The Cat Empire, who chalked up their 1,000th gig in their hometown’s Federation Square back in March, are going to allow Reibl that much of a break just yet, even if he also has a couple of films for which he’s writing music. No, it’s straight back out on the road, albeit their last off the back of their last album, Steal The Light, and last Australian jaunt for a while. But this tour comes with a twist, as he explains.

“When I was 17 or 18, I used to go out with Ollie [McGill, keyboards] a lot, and then Harry [James Angus, singer/trumpet] as well. We met more or less in this context, sitting in with other people’s bands. Melbourne had an older generation of musicians at that time who were very generous with us. They would often have us on stage and that’s really how we learnt a lot of the craft of performing. It was mostly Harry’s idea this one, but it’s got its place in a lot of our backgrounds.”

The idea is for musicians to submit audition videos up to two minutes long to The Cat Empire’s website, from which the band will then select at least one musician in each state to join them on stage at the show closest to the various winners’ hometowns. Better still, you don’t have to audition with a Cat Empire song. In fact, if they like your selection enough and feel it’ll fit into the spirit of a Cat Empire show, they’ll learn your song.

“That’s been going quite well. We’ve been looking at some videos – there’s a lot of young musicians have submitted videos – so it should be fun. I think it’ll also freshen everyone up. We’re not specifically looking for any one instrument and that’s the thing that makes it more interesting as well, because there are some really unique instruments that have auditioned that we would never expect or go out to try and find that could be really interesting.”

They’ve yet to have someone audition playing the “Crystal Organ” or “Cristal Baschet”, an instrument based on the same principle as running your finger along the lip of a glass, like the guy Reibl met on the last European tour, “but,” he admits, “it’s always nice to learn about new instruments. There are only seven Crystal Organs in the world so I don’t know if we’ll have one of those on our tour, but we’ll certainly have instruments that we wouldn’t usually have on stage.”