Beth Herzhaft
Hopeful notes have fueled Hay's songwriting.
Colin Hay is in a thoughtful mood when he picks up the phone in his L.A. home, having just returned from touring in England and Scotland.
“I don’t feel particularly weary,” the Aussie singer-songwriter says. “My knees are shot from playing soccer when I was younger, but you fake it. You push through.”
There’s no question Hay’s had himself an eventful, even milestone year. February saw the release of Next Year People, his 12th solo album since those halcyon ’80s days when he fronted Men at Work. He spent the summer touring with Violent Femmes and Barenaked Ladies, a pair of musical survivors who also have multiple decades under their belts. In August, Waiting for My Real Life, the documentary based on the tumultuous twists and turns of Hay’s musical and TV career — you remember those guest stints on Scrubs, right? — debuted at the Melbourne International Film Festival.
And we haven’t even gotten to the Oct. 31 gig he’ll be playing at the Barrymore.
Hay’s latest disc is a 10-pack of tunes that marry regret and world-weariness with hard-won wisdom and optimism. The title track is about Depression-era farmers who endured a decade of droughts and dust storms. Hay is personally partial to “(Did You Just Take) The Long Way Home?,” a song about a failing relationship that actually incorporates memories of his own childhood — in particular, the way his mother would always pick the wrong fork of a five-way intersection in Melbourne when making the weekly drive to buy eggs.
“I would never say anything,” Hay recalls. “I just enjoyed taking the time to be in the car with her, talking.”
It’s those hopeful notes that have fueled Hay’s songwriting throughout a three-decade solo career that’s seen him clash with his old bandmates and steadily build a dedicated audience.
“I feel hopeful about being alive,” says Hay, who turned 62 this spring. “The hopeful thing is useful for people, and it’s useful for me. The tendency is toward melancholia — that’s part of the human condition.”
Hay admits he’s found his own exacerbated by the current state of world events, including the recent Republican presidential debates.
“There’s this feeling of what you suspected might happen years ago has happened,” Hay says. “The people running the world are going nuts. But when you’re [getting older], you have to enjoy yourself. You can imagine those last 20 years — it can go by really quickly. You’d better get on with it.”
Solo gigs like the one he’ll do at the Barrymore give Hay the freedom to interact with his audience and dig a little deeper into his extensive song catalogue. The Men at Work tunes still dot the set list — “Overkill” and “Down Under” are the usual suspects — but the shadow those songs cast is neither long nor imposing.
“You embrace it. You take it with you,” says Hay of the ’80s-era fame. “Part of achieving longevity is to not have that as your yardstick.”
As for whether he’s planning anything special for the fans who’ll be skipping trick or treating and/or Freakfest to hang with him on Halloween, Hay opts for cryptic rather than creepy.
“Well, let’s just intimate that the show may be a little more frightening than usual.”
