As announced late last year, James Reyne is dipping back into the Crawl File, hitting the road to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Australian Crawl’s first greatest hits collection. In a move sure to satisfy ardent fans, James has now unveiled a further 12-dates, running from the end of March right through to July and including locations in New South Wales, Tasmania, Western Australia and Queensland.
‘Crawl File’ plays like a classic gig, opening with the band’s debut single, ‘Beautiful People’, and closing with their most popular live song, ‘The Boys Light Up’. In between are some of the most-loved Australian songs of all time, including ‘Reckless’, ‘Errol’, ‘Oh No Not You Again’, ‘Lakeside’, ‘Downhearted’ and ‘Things Don’t Seem’. ‘Crawl File’ was the biggest Australian best-of of 1984, hitting #2 on the charts (kept out of top spot by the year’s biggest compilation, Choose 1985, which spent nine weeks at #1).
Without even time to let his Christmas dinner settle, Reyne hits the road on Saturday 6th January at Kingscliff Beach Hotel in New South Wales. We caught up with James as he was preparing to kick off this mammoth run of shows that will take him round to July, to discuss the legacy some of these songs have left on this country’s musical landscape, song writing in the early days and what music has been tickling James’s taste buds of late.
Sean: Good morning, James. Hope your well.
James: Hey Sean. Doing great thanks. Sorry for the early interview.
Sean: I was up early putting up some press releases, one of which was for a friend of yours.
James: Oh really? Who?
Sean: Tim Henwood. I was putting one up for the new Palace of the King album. He sends his regards. He mentioned you gave him his first tour.
James: Yeah, when he was 18 years old. It’s gone full circle now because Sean Johnson (also POTK) is out on tour with me now.
Sean: I did spot him when you were here in WA earlier this year.
James: They are all amazing, those guys. Incredible.
Sean: Well, January 2024 just kicks straight off for you with the start of the 40th Anniversary tour of Crawl File.
James: It does. We rehearse then we start – our year starts on the 4th of January. We rehearse on the 4th. And, I mean, some of the songs we play already, but we’re just going to learn or relearn, you know, the ones, the Crawl ones and then the first gig is on the 6th.
Sean: Wow, and a fantastic run of shows right around the country. And, of course, we’ve got you in June for a couple of shows at the Charles Hotel.
James: The iconic Charles Hotel, yep.
Sean: It’s still standing. I saw you at the Astor last year, so this is a chance to see a real intimate close-up show as well.
James: That’s right. And I think we thought that the best way to do this, if we’re going to do the 40th anniversary of the best of Australian Crawl, you know, let’s go to the pubs. And I think, you know, it’s just got a nice vibe about it.
Sean: Yeah, most definitely. I’d seen you at Red Hot Summer a few years back, but to see you at the Astor Theatre was just another level. It was just an incredible show with Ella Hooper opening for you as well.
James: Yeah, with lovely Ella, who’s another friend of ours. One of the great things about doing what I do, and having done it for a while now, is I’ve made some – you know, you’re talking about Tim and Sean and Ella – I’ve just made some really good friends along the way. You know, you work with people and – because when you’re working with someone and when you’re on the road with people, you obviously – you’re in very, incredibly close proximity to each other. You’re living with each other. So you become really good friends with these people and, you know, friends for life. It’s fantastic.
Sean: Well, it must be so hard to believe that it’s been forty years since Crawl File was released. There must be times when you’re looking back at so many milestones in your career, but forty years? It just can’t be.
James: Well, exactly. Well, if you think about when I started doing it, it’s like – I think the band first started doing it properly probably 1978. So what’s that? That’s a long time. That’s 40 – is that 45 years? Dare I say it? My God. Yes, forty years since that record came out. And my manager, Scott, who also manages Palace of the King, reminded me and said, “You know, it’s 40 years. Right?” This is a year ago. “So we should go out and do it, you know, celebrate it.” And I said, okay and so here we are. It’s fun and the band is great. You kindly said, you know, you’ve seen the band. And it’s the same band, eight-piece band. And it’ll be great.
Sean: Yeah. The quality from that band, from yourself to Seany and to the backing vocals, just incredible. It was a wonderful show. And with nearly one thousand people there, I was just transfixed just listening to the audience join in with some of the anthems of this country.
James: Yeah, well, it’s very kind of you. And, yeah, people are very good and they do sing along. And it is a great band. I always loved the sound of the bands of like, you know, the Allman Brothers and Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen. And I love Tedeschi Trucks and all those big bands with that big sound. So I’m lucky enough that, you know, we can go out on the road. And it’s a big, fat sound. You’ve got Melinda and Nikki singing backing vocals and all the band, the guys in the band sing as well. So it’s just – yeah, it’s great.
Sean: So taking you back all those years, when you were putting these songs together early on, did you ever have an inkling at all that these would still be parts of the soundtrack of an Australian’s music history?
James: No, not at all. I mean, I had a bunch of friends. We had a little band before Australian Crawl called Spiff Rouch. We had funny little bands before that. We never played to anybody really. But we were always writing songs. And I think we just did it because we just – I don’t know, we just did it for no other reason than we just liked doing it. And we never thought they were that good. We just thought they were funny little songs that kind of amused us. And because they only had a few chords, we didn’t think we were, you know, terrifically talented or anything. We just thought these funny little – you know, I mean, I used to say to people, I basically write novelty songs. I think a lot of them – to me, they’re sort of novelty songs with funny lyrics, you know, and they sort of amuse us. And I guess if it amuses someone else, well, that’s good.
Sean: Well, I just remember the night when you played ‘Reckless’, you could have heard a pin drop in the venue. It must just be such an incredible song to sing into a full house like that and get that reception night after night.
James: Oh, it is, of course. It’s incredibly gratifying. And, you know, it never ceases to amaze me. And I’ve said this a million times before. You know, when I write that song, and you hear this from other people that write songs, sometimes the ones that seem to hang around are the ones that come really easy – for some reason, they just kind of fall out. I don’t know why. And there are all sorts of theories about why that happens. And I’ve heard other people that write songs say similar things about their songs. You know, the ones that stand up, oh, yeah, it took me about 10 minutes to write. It just came out. And I think – I’ve said this before. I never thought it was that good. I always thought it was this clunky sort of song (Reckless). I didn’t play it to anyone for a little while because I just hadn’t – I thought, I’ve got to fix up the lyrics. The lyrics to me don’t make any sense. But then I didn’t because I’m lazy [laughs]. And for some reason, I think it was at the end of recording some record, and as usual, people would go, “You got anything else just in case we need B-sides?” And I said, “Well, I’ve got this, this thing.” And the band were the ones going, “Oh, we should record that. That’s pretty good.” And I went, “Really? Okay.” So I never knew. But now it’s become this thing. And I – yeah, you can – I sort of – I quite like it now. It’s an odd song. I’ve heard other people sing it. And it’s a weird song. It’s not hard. It’s just weird. Musically, it’s just a weird song. But it’s very gratifying that people love it.
Sean: Its funny that one of the most iconic songs in Australia is a weird song. [laughs] I love it. It’s such an easy description.
James: Yeah, and I never thought it was that good. I was sort of just, oh, dude, man, what does it mean? What’s – “she don’t like that kind of behaviour.” What does that mean? And then “throw down your guns.”
Sean: You used the word lazy just then. What was it like song writing back then? Was it very much a collaborative effort working together with the other band members or did you just come in with ideas and throw them in the pot back in the day?
James: It went many different ways. When it was the very, very beginning, I think before we made the first record, we all had songs. I mean, there were songs already that existed because we’d been playing around, like playing live gigs around for a while. So we had these songs. So they were already written. And they call it the sophomore jinx, you know, about doing your second album. They always call it the sophomore jinx. It’s like you’ve got your whole life to write your first record and you’ve got, you know, six months to write your second. But I think we also had other songs. And I think – I don’t know. I can’t remember, to be honest. [laughs]
Sean: Well, it was forty years ago.
James: That’s exactly right. I don’t know. It’s just songs. It’s one of those things that, as far as I’m concerned, we just – I just did it. I grew up – when we were teenagers, you know, we all wrote funny little songs. You know, I can still remember a song that we wrote – I wrote with my friend Brad and my other friend Dave. We wrote a song about our friend Rod Matheson, who does monitors for Tim Minchin. He does monitors for the Hunters and Collectors too. And, you know we all went to school together. And I can still remember. We wrote a song called ‘Dear Rod’ about Rod. And I can still remember it. And I played it recently and thought to myself, that’s actually not a bad song. So I might record it. But my point is we’re always just messing around just writing songs. We just thought that’s just what you did for just amusement. We never thought anyone else would ever hear them. We just did it because we enjoyed it and it made us, you know, sort of – usually just amused us. We’d just go, well, this is funny, isn’t it a bit silly? Yeah. You can’t write that in a song. Yeah, who cares? No one’s ever going to hear it. You know?
Sean: And how that all changed, because obviously you’ve had a fantastic solo career as well. Is it something that now you have to sit down and really work at to write a song? Or is it something just that jumps out at you – you’ve been walking down the street and a bird will fly backwards and you’ll think, oh, there’s something different.
James: Exactly that – what you just said, the latter. I can’t sit down and go, “I’m now going to write a song.” I just can’t do it because, I’m not always, but a lot of the time I’m messing around on my guitar or tinkering on the piano. I’m not a pianist. I can play basic chords. But sometimes you might go, oh, you start playing something. Oh, what’s that? What’s that? Oh, it’s something. But often it is a bird will fly backwards when you’re walking down the street. You go, that’s a good title for a song. The bird flew backwards. You know what I mean? But sometimes that’ll happen. And you go, right, that’s a title or that’s a first line or that’s a good line for a song. And, you know, for instance, recently I heard something or read something that Janis Joplin’s father – she used to – this is just as an example recently – Janis – and I never knew this – Janis Joplin’s father used to call doing – playing music – because I think he was a part-time musician – he used to call it the Saturday Night Swindle. And I thought, what a great title. Yeah. And I thought, well, that’s a good title for a song. So I’m madly trying to write a song for the Saturday Night Swindle. I haven’t come up with it yet. But for instance, to me, that’s a good title or a good line to have in a song. So that’s how it works, you know.
Sean: Well, if I see ‘The Bird Flies Backwards’ on the next album, I want 10% of the merch line [laughs].
James: [laughs] Yeah, I was just going to say, you can sue me. That’s right. Or I’ll give you, you know, 50%. I don’t care [laughs].
Sean: [laughs] I’ll just take a tee shirt. Just taking you right back I read that your father was a Royal Marine. And you can hear from my accent, UK-based. I was born and brought up a town called Deal in Kent, where the Royal Marine School of Music was based. So, of course, we used to have full Sunday nights, you’d go down the pub and there was a jazz band that used to play in the Clarendon Hotel. And the young bandies used to come in with their instruments. And it was a magical time back then. With that Royal Marine upbringing, was there music early in the family?
James: Yeah, he was a Royal Marine. He was a 45 Commando, and his father was an Admiral. So he was a very, very English guy. My parents played a lot of classical music. They played a lot of records. And my mother’s a singer. She was a soprano. I mean, she was a teacher but she used to do lots of amateur music like Gilbert and Sullivan. My father used to play a lot of jazz. But my father would play a lot of Fats Waller. There was a lot of jazz and a lot of Michael Flanders and Donald Swan. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of them, they were a duo from the sort of 50s into the 60s in England. It was sort of Donald Swan played the piano, Michael Flanders was a – he wrote the lyrics, was a kind of wit. He was in a wheelchair, told stories and wrote these songs. And they had several albums, ‘The Drop of a Hat’, ‘The Drop of Another Hat’. And our father used to play that a lot. So we were, all their words, I can remember every single word. And they had a song called ‘Design for Living’, from which I stole the line, “the garden’s full of furniture and the house is full of plants”. So they had a lot of great songs, so we were steeped in that sort of stuff. It was always there. So in a way, there was always music around. We were playing records in the house, you know. So yeah, there was definitely music in our house growing up.
Sean: Well, you touched on records and something that’s been fantastic to see, in a world where the music industry has struggled so much lately, it’s great to see Reckless Records doing so well.
James: Yes, well, we’re enjoying it. My manager, Scott and I, Scott runs it. I can’t take credit for it, because he set it up. But I mean, we both share any cost of it. But yeah, it’s really great. As I was saying earlier, it’s really nice that we’ve been able to have people like Ella Hooper on there, and other friends of ours. And Josh Owen, who’s a great friend of mine, he plays in our band. He’s got an incredibly great record that he’s made. In fact, the first single, ‘Hold Your Breath’, got released, I think, yesterday. What’s today? Saturday, I think, got released yesterday. There’ll be an album coming out. He’s finished the album. It’s all done. And it’s really good. It’s just really, it’s one of those records I listen to because I’m fairly critical. I don’t listen to a lot of music, but I heard that and went, “wow”. And even though I’m biased because I know him, it’s a great record. There’s a song on there called ‘Whiskey on a Fire’. That’s one of the best songs I’ve heard in years and years. It’s really good. So it’s great that we can do this.
Sean: Wonderful to hear your able to put back into the industry.
James: Yeah, we’re so lucky. And we’ve got, you know, a few other things. And so it’s just a nice thing to do. The Hollywood Waltz are a great band from Sydney. They’re on there. So, you know, it’s something that hopefully, because there aren’t really any record companies. There are probably two left. There are Universal and Sony, and that’s about it. Oh, and Warner probably. But it’s not the same sort of landscape as it used to be. So if you can provide some sort of, you know, profile for at least these records that might otherwise not get that much of a profile, that’s good.
Sean: Yeah. Brilliant. Well, I think we reviewed Hollywood Waltz recently live. They were supporting Baby Animals, and Scott got us in to review and shoot that show. Our reviewer said that they were great.
James: Oh, yes, of course. I saw that.
Sean: Hopefully they’ll come over to WA eventually. I’ll get to catch them.
James: Yeah, well, hopefully they will. I guess they might have to get some record company support. We have to be a good record company [laughs].
Sean: I won’t keep you much longer James. I’ve just got a couple of general ones to wrap up with, if that’s okay.
James: Yeah, of course.
Sean: If you could invite three musicians dead or alive, to join you for a bit of dinner, who would you have sat around with you for the evening?
James: Right. Okay. I love this. This question type of question leaves me stumped then I’ll think of sixty-five names when we finish. A great friend of mine, Rick Grossman, who plays bass in the Hoodoo Gurus, has also played bass in the Divinyls. He was also in Matt Finish. I love Rick, and he’s a great musician. He’s a fantastic raconteur, and he’s got the best memory of a musician I’ve ever seen. He remembers everything. I remember nothing. So Rick Grossman, probably Don Walker. And, I don’t know, let’s mix it up, and let’s say Randy Newman.
Sean: Great table.
James: …or Randy Newman, Warren Zevon, and Rick Grossman.
Sean: Look, I’ll just put a second table on for you, because I think you’ve got another sixty-one names to come [laughs].
James: [laughs] Yes. And now I think of millions.
Sean: I know you just said you don’t listen to a lot of music all the time at the moment, but what was the last album you listened to? I know we get sucked into a lot of playlists nowadays, so it’s nice to put an album on.
James: Yeah, well, I don’t have it going all the time. Whenever I’m in the car, I listen to music, so I’m in the car a lot, so I do listen to music. And sometimes I let the algorithm choose, you know, whatever I’m going to listen to. There’s a band I like called Strung Like a Horse. They’ve got an amazing song. Can I swear on here? It’s called…
Sean: Of course you can.
James: Okay. So they’ve got a song called “Fuck What They Think”, and it’s just a really beautiful song. So Strung Like a Horse, I’ve been listening to them. I forget what their album’s called. I should remember. You know Jason Isbell? I always liked Jason Isbell. I don’t know what his new record is like. I also like Sturgill Simpson. Sturgill Simpson did a great bluegrass album, which I forget the name of, of course, of Bluegrass versions of a lot of his songs. It’s fantastic. That’s what I’ve been listening to recently.
Sean: I’ll check them out this morning. Final question. Easiest to save for last. If you could be credited with writing any song ever written, what song would you choose?
James: Oh God. Wow, I don’t know. ‘God’s Song’ by Randy Newman.
Sean: Well, there we go. Randy Newman twice pops up in those last few questions.
James: Yeah. And ‘God’s Song’ is just, it’s one of those songs you go, wow, it’s sort of about everything. Or, or there’s another one. And again, Rick Grossman put me on this. Dave Dobbin, who I love, I don’t know if you know Dave Dobbin, but it’s Sir Dave Dobbin now. But he’s got this song called ‘Don’t Hold Your Breath’. It’s another one of those songs you go, it’s sort of about everything. Yeah. And you go, wow, how’d you do that? That’s amazing. How do you write a song about sort of everything?
Sean: And not about birds flying backwards? That sounds so much better [laughs]
James: No, no, but you could turn that, birds flying backwards, into a song about everything. You could turn a song about the world at the moment.
Sean: It’s a crazy crazy place. I don’t know if you can see behind me, I’ve actually got your Way Out West Tour poster framed up on the wall.
James: Oh yeah. The Reg Mombassa one. It looks great.
Sean: And Ella signed it after the show. I just caught Ella after the show and she signed it for me. And you were in the depths of the Astor Theatre. So I left you alone.
James: Was I? Oh God, I’m sorry [laughs].
Sean: [laughs] It’s all good. James, thank you so, so much for your time. It’s, it’s an absolute honour and pleasure to chat to you. I’ve been waiting to talk to you for a while, so it’s great that this has come up.
James: Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you very much for the time, Sean.
Sean: Well, we’ll hopefully see you in June when you get to WA, but have a fantastic start to the tour. Have a wonderful Christmas from all of us at The Rockpit.
