With tracks like Alcoholiday, Party at the Harvey’s and Yeah I Like Beer, its fair to say Aussie country legend Adam Harvey is in celebratory mode on his latest longplayer, Harvey’s Bar … The Backyard Sessions.
The album will be released on Friday, November 20, and follows on from the success of Family Life and the Great Country Songbook, his collaboration with Troy Cassar-Daley.
To celebrate the release, Harvey will stop in at Richmond Records from noon on Sunday, November 22, to meet with the fans and sign copies.
If he could, there’s a fair bet, he’d crack open a coldie and share a story or two.
The album was written in a place Harvey fondly refers to as ‘’the people’s republic of Bateau Bay’’, with an acoustic guitar at his home bar.
He was able to gather up friends and neighbours for an afterhours singalong with a few beers and his trademark one liners.
The latest single from the album, Harvey’s Backyard Bar, is a running commentary on any given night at Harvey’s place.
“Because I’ve written a few drinking songs in the past and I talk about how ‘this happened in the bar, or we wrote this in the bar’, I have a lot of people that come up to me and say, ‘God, I’d love to spend a night in that bar,’’ Harvey said.
“I started to think, ‘why don’t we try and take a bit of that bar atmosphere and bring the bar to them’.
“That was the whole idea of the album. I started thinking about some of the songs that we would be singing in the bar. I got the guys in and it didn’t matter if they made a mistake.
‘’It’s all about a bunch of guys sitting around together having a good old night, and a few drinks, and having a bit of fun playing the music.”
Prior to the recording, Harvey went into serious (and not so serious) writing more mode.
Occasionally helping out with the writing were good mates Clint Crichton and Luke O’Shea.
The final mix was created by Jeff McCormack.
The finished album shows a man at the peak of his country music powers, relaxed and jovial. The results – 13 tracks – are infectious.
The tracklist is: Harvey’s Backyard Bar, Alcoholday, Whose Arms You think You’re In, Yeah I Like Beer, A Little Less Lonely, Party at the Harvey’s, Paper and Pen, King of The Bar Room, Bartender Blues (feat. Lyn Bowtell), Just Another Player in the Band, Misery and Gin, The Nips are Getting Bigger and Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down.
Harvey is a multiple ARIA Award nominee and eight time CMAA award winner.
He boasts half a million sales, and gold and platinum albums.
Richmond Records is located at 161 Windsor Street.
