Jimmy Barnes rocks our socks off

At 63, Jimmy Barnes is showing no signs of slowing down.

Instead, the rock singer is enjoying a creative new chapter in his career.

Confronting the demons of his childhood in his best-selling memoirs and their accompanying sold-out theatre tours has cleared the path for a flurry of new music in his new No 1 album My Criminal Record.

“I’ve cleared all the backlog of stuff that was blocking me,” he says.

“Writing those books, doing those tours has led me back to making a rock ‘n’ roll record. I’ve got to be happy with that.

“Some of the stuff I’ve written about is similar subject matter, but from a different perspective. Those issues are no longer holding me down or stopping my creativity. Opposite to that, they’ve loosened me up. I‘ve got stuff to say and write about. I can’t wait to get out and play music.”

Barnes’s Your Town Tour, which kicked off last month (September), arrives in Toowoomba this month. “It will be bigger than what I’ve done

in the past. We’re

looking at making this as special as we possibly can,” he says.

“I want to inject some of this new material into the set. Earlier in the year we did the Red Hot Summer Tour, which was six months before my record came out, and on that tour we did five of these new songs. Normally you’d only put one or two in, but all five songs fit seamlessly into my set because I wrote them and recorded them with the intention of playing them live.

“We’ll have eight or nine of these (new) songs in the tour, but there are 25 songs in the set so there will be a whole bunch of classic stuff. When I go see a band if they don’t play the songs I love them for then I get upset. I like to give them what they want, but also challenge them.”

Fans have embraced My Criminal

Record, his first original rock record in a decade, wholeheartedly, sending it to the top of the ARIA Albums Chart in its debut week.

As Barnes’s 16th No 1 album – 12 solo albums combined with four Cold Chisel records – it sets a new ARIA chart record, eclipsing U2 and Madonna for the most chart toppers.

“I’ve been at work longer than them (laughs),” he says.

“To nudge away from them a bit, I don’t take it lightly or for granted. At 63 years, 46 of those on the road, I feel like I’m at the start of a climb. I don’t think I’m peaking at all. The best work is still left inside of me. I just had to get to that point where I sifted through a lot of crap to throw out a lot of baggage and things I’d been avoiding.”

The Your Town Tour takes its name from the album’s second single

Shutting Down Our Town, which was penned by country music legend Troy Cassar-Daley.

While the song was inspired by the closing of the Holden Factory in Elizabeth, South Australia, where Barnes worked in his youth, it has become an anthem for battling communities across the country.

“Troy, like me, spends a lot of time on the road and we’ve seen that happen to towns all over the country. It’s such a kick in the guts,” he says.

“Townsville, Mackay, Grafton – where he comes from – and even Melbourne, industry is shutting down all over the place. Families are struggling to keep their heads above water and the song’s saying we’re not going to take this.

“North Queensland has suffered as much if not more than anywhere else in the county. We’ve got to find ways to keep our sense of hope and stand there and support each other. You can’t rely on the government to do it for you.”

Don’t expect Barnes to get political when he’s up on stage though — he prefers to let his music do the talking.

“Peter Garrett can do that better than me,” he says.

“I don’t like talking much between songs at all. The less I talk the more music can be fitted in. I want them (concert-goers) to forget about their troubles.”

Jimmy Barnes’s Your Town Tour plays at the Empire Theatre on Thursday, October 17.

‘‘ The best work is still left inside of me. I just had to get to that point where I sifted through a lot of crap to throw out a lot of baggage and things I’d been avoiding.” — JIMMY BARNES