Star Scene: Russell Morris

Russell Morris‘ scene is, according to him, “incredibly boring”. He explains “I drive people nuts if they come around and happen to ask me the wrong questions. When it comes to my obsession I love anything to do with history. I also love about reading anything about astrophysics.I drive people crazy about black holes and that sort of thing the extent of the universe dark matter dark energy and that sort of stuff. People’s faces usually glaze over…”

He’s currently in the studio completing the last in the trilogy of Australiana albums. “I have to move”, he tells me, “I’m making too much noise while we’re recording harmonica”. He’s using the same band as on the previous albums. “It’s the ones I’ve done the other albums with – Shannon Bourne on guitar, Adrian Violi on drums, Mitch Cairns on bass and Chris Wilson on harmonica. So it’s just a real Blues Rootsy sort of album. We’re sort of excited about it.” The last two went very well. “Yeah it’s been great, they were both top tens. Hopefully this one can go top 10 too. We’re going to Canada in November once the album is released and all that sort of stuff. That’s only a very quick trip to do some showcases, but we’re going there hopefully next year in June and July to do the blues festival tours because there are a lot of Blues festivals on.”

Do they know “The Real Thing” over there? “Yeah well that’s so long ago I think everyone’s forgotten The Real Thing now, so I’ll actually be a new artist. (laughs) It will be fun”.

Morris will be playing the Adelaide leg of the One Electric Day tour. He explains “It’ll be fun. Everyone on the tour works and knows each other, we’ve worked together for years. John [Farnham], Daryl [Braithwaite], Ian Moss, Joe Camilleri and John Swan – we’ve all been mates and it’s great to go on the road together. I just wish it was a whole national tour it would have been fantastic. He’s played Adelaide a lot before. “We tend to go over there and do the Nord Hotel and the Governer Hindmarsh. We like working over there. We’ve done a few fesitvals over there and this’ll be another one. The great part is the weather will be great. hopefully it’s not going to be be too hot. If it will be 40 it will be horrifying. I’m just hoping it will be quite pleasant like 26 or something for the Punters because there’s nothing worse. The Suzi Quatro tour we did, which was the Red Hot Summer Tour, and it really was a bloody Red Hot Summer. It was so hot at every concert they felt like they were going to pass out it was just horrifying.