Colin Hay
Colin Hay
Colin James Hayis a Scottish Australian musician and actor who made his mark during the 1980s as lead vocalist of the Australian band Men at Work, and later as a solo artist. Hay's music has been frequently used by actor and director Zach Braff in his work, subsequently leading to a career rebirth in the mid-2000s...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth29 June 1953
CountryAustralia
albums audience battle call calling came cards compass decided guess holding involved kindness label last letting liked matter nashville nice potential records three touring until weird won
These are just weird times, but then the last 20 years have been kind of weird for me. It's just a matter of doing what you can. You just have to play the cards you're holding and letting your audience know where you are. I've been on my own pretty much for the last 20 years. I've just been touring and you could call the albums that I've been making my calling cards. I haven't even had a label until the last two or three years. Then Compass Records came along. They're out of Nashville and they liked the stuff, so I guess they could see some kind of potential in me. They decided to get involved and I like them. They're nice people. These days, every battle won is like hand-to-hand combat.
face found grateful hear people songs songwriter ways
Let's face it, ... I'm not the most marketable songwriter out there today. But there are still some people who want to hear those songs. I'm grateful I've found ways to get the songs to them.
honest remember wish
I can't remember too much about the '80s, to be honest with you, ... I wish that weren't true, but it is.
audience audiences building change coming decade five gone hundred night people playing six somewhere tour
Sometimes I'm out on tour and you feel you're really getting somewhere and the audience is building and there's five or six hundred people coming to see you every night just from word-of-mouth. And then you go somewhere and you feel like you've gone back a decade and you're playing to 15 or 20 people. You think to yourself, 'Should I change my life, get another job?
associate bit hit people playing problems string
I have no problems playing (Men at Work) songs, ... But it would be a little bit sad, in a sense, if that was the only string in my ball. I play them because they're hit songs. I play them because I like the songs. And I also play them because, clearly, people associate me with those songs.
couple happened mainly people sadness sources thinking
There were only a couple of people I would really trust, which has a kind of sadness to it. It doesn't really have anything to do with you, just to do with other people's perceptions of what's happened to you. It mainly had to do with people thinking you had untapped sources of wealth.
bit four later people playing three
I had a very strange career. I mean I went from playing to 150,000 people in 1983/84. Three or four years later I was playing to four people, you know, in Melbourne. I thought - bit strange, you know bit odd, bit erratic.
great men songs work
I do everything from Men at Work right through to the songs I'm working on at the moment, ... It's great when you have new songs to play.
guitar singing sitting
In certain ways I still feel like I'm finding my way. I feel pretty comfortable playing acoustic guitar and singing, but then I feel pretty good sitting on a reggae groove as well.
writing thinking years
I tend to write pretty much by myself. I always did that anyway. I used to write with Ron Strykert 'cause he was the only guitarist and we played well together. We lived in the same place. I would play a certain style and he would kind of dance around what I did, in a sense. I learned from him and also vice-versa. With this band, I think I bounce ideas off everybody. Perhaps on the next album they'll be more collaborative stuff, but for the last 2-3 years, I've been pretty well writing by myself.
musical style different
I feel pretty comfortable in a lot of different musical styles. I like rhythm, and I like melody and so forth.
running strong people
It strikes me there's a bunch of people in power who have really strong intentions of running the world and adjusting the world to exactly how they see it.
character soul lines
There's a fine line between character building and soul destroying.
jesus talking
I tried talking to Jesus, but he just put me on hold...