Look at any summer tour schedule, and you’ll find plenty of bands and solo artists essentially living off of their pasts. They fill amphitheaters and stadiums even though they have not had a hit in decades. 

Some have even stopped making albums because they’ve found their audiences just want to hear the songs they know. The fans come out to the concerts to hear those and relive the time those songs formed part of the soundtrack of their lives.

That’s all fine and good, but Colin Hay is not one of those artists. 

This musician, who enjoyed huge popularity during the 1980s fronting Men At Work, finds that not only are his fans not overly interested in the hits of yesteryear, they want to hear new music to go with songs from the 14 solo albums Hay has released since Men At Work broke up in January 1986.

“I’m very lucky in that way. I’m very grateful for the fact that that is the case,” Hay said in a phone interview from his home near Los Angeles. “I think it would be a bit glum if they were just coming along for a couple of songs. 

“You would still do it because you have to put food on the table or if that’s your job, it’s your job. But it would be a little bit soul destroying if that was the case.”

Fans will get to hear some of Hay’s newest songs mixed with others amid his Colin Hay Solo Tour 2024, which rolls into The Clyde Theatre on Tuesday, March 26.

Recording amid pandemic

The demand for fresh music is one reason Hay remains focused on writing and recording songs. 

In September, he released a deluxe version of 2022’s Now and The Evermore, which included seven unreleased songs.

Hay had to wait nearly two years to feature songs from Now and The Evermore in his shows. 

He was well along with the album in 2020 and planned to release the album that fall. But the pandemic hit and sent Hay home to Topanga Canyon, California, that spring. There, he did what songwriters do: He kept writing, eventually recording more than 20 tracks, of which 10 were chosen for the album.

“We ended up with this bunch of 10, for various reasons,” Hay said. “But it seemed to be just kind of a mood that was created with this particular batch of songs that I liked. And there are quite a few of the songs, like five of the songs have these quite beautiful, dare I say so myself, string arrangements on them that my friend, Fred Kron, and I did. 

“So that just really worked really well for me. When I heard those string arrangements, I wanted to hear some more of them. So that’s in some ways partly how we chose the songs.”

As that quote suggests, Now and The Evermore is a fully fleshed out, at times lush, album. The overall mood is one of joy and optimism, although the lyrics also reflect the struggles of the pandemic and life.

“It’s always a little strange talking about your own work in a way, but I think there is a lot of beauty in the record,” Hay said. “When I listen to it, there’s pain involved with that beauty as well. But that’s the way things are in this world. But I love the way it turned out in that sense.”

Hitting the covers

After finishing Now and The Evermore, Hay was waiting for venues to reopen. One day, he was in his home studio and thinking about Gerry Marsden, the frontman of Gerry & The Pacemakers, who had recently died. Hay started strumming and singing that group’s hit song “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying.” Liking how it sounded, he recorded it and sent the file to longtime collaborator Chad Fischer.

“I thought it sounded nice with just an electric guitar and a voice,” Hay said. “I sent it to him and said ‘What do you think of this?’ And he said ‘Oh, I love it.’ And he orchestrated some stuff, put some stuff on it and sent it back. Then he said — he was in between jobs — and he said, ‘That was really cool. Send me something else.’ ”

Soon, Hay was recording his guitar-and-vocal versions of other songs that connected him to moments in his life and sending them to Fischer, who added orchestration and other parts.

In the end, Hay and Fischer chose 10 covers for 2021’s I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself. Included are the Kinks classic “Waterloo Sunset,” a pair of Beatles songs (“Norwegian Wood” and “Across the Universe”), Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman” (which Glen Campbell made famous), and, of course, “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying” and the title track, a Burt Bacharach/Hal David song Dusty Springfield turned into a hit. 

Returning to roots

Touring to promote the two albums may not be all that keeps Hay busy this year. 

He has been a regular member of Ringo Starr & His All Starr Band. Hay may also do shows fronting his new incarnation of Men At Work.

“It’s basically the same band that I have that I go out with as the Colin Hay Band,” he said. “It’s basically the same band, except that we just do a Men At Work set.”

Men At Work enjoyed major success, beginning with their 1981 debut album Business as Usual. It spawned the No. 1 hit singles “Down Under” and “Who Can It Be Now?” and the album spent 15 weeks atop the Billboard 200. That debut was followed by another hit album, Cargo, in 1983, which included two more hit singles, “Overkill” and “It’s a Mistake.”

But the band ran into internal issues and broke up after releasing a third album, Two Hearts, which failed to come anywhere close to the success of the first two albums.

Hay still enjoys the Men At Work material and found in playing the hits on the 2019 All Starr Band tour  that there’s an audience who wants to see him perform those songs.

“It’s really exciting and the audience really loves it. It’s because of the fact that that music has got some kind of timeless quality to it,” Hay said. “It just feels like it always did whenever I play those songs. And I love playing the songs with this bunch of musicians I work with here in L.A. because they have become more or less my musical family.”