It is not uncommon for Tasmania to be overlooked in a band’s touring schedule and Pete Murray has an idea why.
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The Byron Bay singer-songwriter has always played in regional areas and is keen to bring his latest national tour leg to Launceston on Saturday.
However, Mr Murray said it wasn’t the journey across the Bass Strait deterring some musicians from touring Tasmania.
“There is a bit of a fear about coming to Tassie … sometimes it’s hard to sell tickets to shows,” Mr Murray said.
“Maybe Tasmanians need to actually get out a bit more and see some live music to try and change that so that bands will want to come down.”
“If it’s risky, they won’t take it because they don’t want to lose money,” he said.
“All I can say to Tasmanians is don’t miss out.”
It has been about two-and-a-half years since Mr Murray last played in Tasmania, but he still holds fond memories of the state, which he has been touring since 2003.
“It’s one of my favourite places to go to, it’s chilled with beautiful scenery down there.”
Several of his crew members are from state, including his tour manager and his “sound guys”, who Mr Murray said were looking forward to returning across the strait.
Touring his latest album Camacho, Mr Murray said playing with hip hop beats, drum beats and loops created a more stripped back approach and a bigger sound, which was getting great feedback.
“There’s never been a tour before where I’ve played every single song off a new album,” he said.
“The band has been on fire, everyone’s going on about how good the shows are,” Mr Murray said.
He stumbled across the name for his new album several years ago while rifling through 70s Spanish magazines for inspiration to help name a bar he was opening with friends.
Asking one of the backpackers in Byron Bay who spoke Spanish, he discovered Camacho roughly means to have a cool attitude.
While the bar ended up being named after his kelpie, Camacho fit with the vibe he wanted for the new album.
Mr Murray is pleased with the end result, after six years of putting the album together with a range of producers.
“Having time to put it together was a good thing in the end, it seems like that six years of anticipation with fans and even media that it was kind of nice to give everyone a break from what I’ve done before, so when I came back, it felt really fresh,” Mr Murray said.
The recording schedule for Camacho, when he would jump in and out of his studio at leisure, was quite different to his previous albums, which often took less than two months.
“I find when you record something in four to six weeks, sometimes you don’t record it to its full potential because you’ve got a certain time to finish it by,” he said.
Supported by a new band, the show will have a combination of live sound drums, pads and samples to produce sounds “way larger and more anthemic”.
- Pete Murray will play the Launceston leg of his National Camacho tour on Saturday at the Launceston Country Club. Tickets for the over-18 event are still available at TixTas.