With strong ticket sales, their first live album on the way, a new generation of fans, and fresh onstage ideas, A Day On the Green headline act Icehouse are in fine form leading up to their appearance in Mudgee soon.
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“We’re really looking forward to it,” singer Iva Davies said.
“We did a run of A Day On the Greens with Hall and Oates a couple of years ago which was great fun, I loved the atmosphere of, it’s just completely different to be involved in an outdoor show in such relaxed conditions.
“And this time we can bring our own big production to it.
“I think the reaction to this particular lineup has been incredibly enthusiastic so far.”
Icehouse’s live performances are priority of the moment and they are set to release their very first live album, Icehouse: In Concert, as a 2-disc CD set in store and via iTunes from Friday, August 28.
Iva said it’s a “faithful” reproduction of what it’s like to be at one of their concerts and a preview of what to expect at ADOTG.
“It’s actually very surprising that it’s taken this long to produce a live album, there’s never been one, and I’d say we’ve been one of the very few acts that have had a history as long as this and not had one,” he said.
“But I’m glad that we waited because the band has never sounded better.
“We recorded seven shows and out of those our bass player and lead guitarist sifted through and selected all of the best versions.
“I said ‘it seems to me pretty obvious that we should do the track listing the way we did the shows’ so it’s a very faithful album in terms of recording what we do and how we do it.
“There were certain things we were doing at that time that we weren’t doing before, such as a little acoustic set in the middle of traditional set, which worked so successfully that I insisted we do it for A Day On the Green.”
The band – originally known as Flowers - worked hard and toured for three years before they released their first album, Icehouse, to a ready made fan base who had been waiting for it.
A name change, more albums and hit singles followed before 1987’s Man of Colours burst into the charts, with hits including Electric Blue, Crazy, and the title track which saw the band break into the US top ten.
Icehouse took a 15-plus year hiatus from the mid-1990s before returning and hitting the road again in 2011, albeit to the slight trepidation of their frontman, but he needn’t have worried as there were still plenty of fans out there and some new ones as well.
“I was nervous about whether people would want to see the band after that amount of time,” Iva laughed.
“One early show comes to mind, and in hindsight I was probably insane to agree to, and that was a proposal from the promoter of Homebake.
“He said ‘we want you to do a show and we want you to focus on your first album, oh and by the way most of your audience will be about 20’.
“And I said to him ‘are you completely insane, that album is more than 30 years old?’
“We went on stage and there were about 20,000 people, and right from the first song all of these 20-year-olds starting singing and they sung the entire set.”
ADOTG is at Robert Oatley Vineyards, Mudgee, on Saturday, October 31, 2015, where Icehouse will be joined on the bill by James Reyne, Mark Seymour, Moving Pictures and Pseudo Echo.
Iva added that his fellow performers are hard working professionals, all borne out of the classic Australian pub scene.
“I think that all of those guys are incredibly experienced, because I think we came out of an era of very hard touring around the pubs,” he said.
“And without even nodding to each other, all of us will understand that we have that kind of experience and we share it, it’s a common thread.”
All tickets for the concert cost $99.90 and are on sale now from Ticketmaster on 136 100 and the Mudgee Visitor’s Centre.
