If Colin Hay’s singing voice ever goes, he’s got a fine future ahead doing standup. He’s quite the raconteur. I found myself still laughing days later at some of his stories about hanging out with Paul McCartney (who showed up at his house, ate a bit, and offered to do the dishes — but “did a crap job” according to Hay), moving to L.A.’s Topanga Canyon (which he called an “old Indian word that means ‘septic tank problems’”), and being a dog owner (“you find, if you have a dog, you spend a lot of time with a bag of shit in your hands — sometimes two”).
But as entertaining as his banter was at the Lobero on Wednesday, the Scottish-born singer’s unique vocals are still as lovely as ever, with an impressively wide range, and smooth melodic delivery, alongside a distinct Australian accent (his parents moved the family there when he was a teenager and Hay said he made an effort to learn the accent to fit in).
The renowned and widely influential frontman of Men At Work is definitely still going strong at 72 years old, doing a mix of solo shows and as part of Ringo Starr & His All Starr Band. The Lobero show was the kick off to a series of solo tour dates that will take Hay across the U.S. and then to the U.K. and Scotland in November, with Santa Barbaran Glen Phillips joining him for that leg, followed by several dates in Australia. He’s clearly still got the energy, and the voice, of a much younger man, with the perspective of someone who experienced huge fame at a young age and lived to tell about it.
Hay opened his set with an acoustic version of Men at Work’s iconic hit, “Who Can It Be Now,” then quipped, “I play that song so you’ll know you’re in the right show.”
Men at Work was active from 1979-1986, but they were big: The first Australian artists to have a simultaneous number one album and number one single in the U.S. Billboard charts, they won the Grammy for Best New Artist in 1983, and they have sold more than 30 million albums worldwide. But these days things are a bit quieter. Hay joked about hearing, “Who Can It Be Now” at the supermarket and telling the 18-year-old checker he wrote it. “She was obviously very unimpressed.”
She might have been unimpressed, but I found Hay’s performance quite mesmerizing. Not only is his vocal range still super impressive, so is his range of songs. From the story song “In the Cornfields” (from the 1992 album Peaks & Valleys), to “Come Tumblin’ Down” (a song about dancing when the world ends from the 2017 album Fierce Mercy) to “Going Somewhere” (from his 2001 album with the same title), with the thoughtful lyrics, “So tantalizing the things that I’ve seen / I know you know exactly what I mean / Can never look back to where you’ve been when you’re / Going somewhere,” I found it all compelling and just as engaging as the songs I loved in the 80s like “Overkill” and “Waiting For My Real Life To Begin.”
Unlike some of the New Wave artists who are still banking on the same old, same old stuff with reunion gigs year after year, Hay is the real deal. Not to say that there wasn’t a lot of nostalgia in the crowd. The whole audience was on its feet and singing along with the encore — Men At Work’s biggest hit “Down Under” — which Hay identified as “the most successful song I’ve been involved with — so far.”
So far, so good.
