Camilleri’s Creative Confidence

Having recently returned from a visit to Malta I am excited to be interviewing Maltese Australian musician Joe Camilleri, soon to visit Tasmania as part of the APIA Time of your life tour, together with Daryl Braithwaite, Ross Wilson, and James Reyne. He believes the combination of songwriters and pop stars is a good mix. Apart from humorously timing Daryl’s rendition of Horses to ten minutes!, the guys are getting on very well with no dramas just support for each other.

Joe loves visiting Tasmania as both a performer and a tourist. He believes Tassie is undervalued and reminisces on some great gigs he had in Tassie last year, including a people packed afternoon show at the Republic Bar, as well as taking part in Rock Whiz, combining as part of a wonderful weekend in Tassie.

While we are speaking Joe is taking care of his little daughter Aurora, although beautiful as her name suggests she doesn’t always share the ‘sleepy’ nature of her namesake.

In fact Aurora has a little incident with a painting on the wall as we speak and it prompts Joe to get talking about Mona, a place he hasn’t yet been able to visit but would love to and he would also love the opportunity to perhaps perform there.

Joe comes from a musical family, with his sister playing the piano, older brother the accordion, his mum a singer and dad a tuba player. Joe says rather than musicians he believes the family were music fans.

He calls his love for all the arts as a tapestry, and sees a clear connection between the visual and musical arts. His interest stretches to architecture and fashion. Joe says if he hadn’t been a musician he might have been an architect, drawing the comparison with constructing a song something like how an architect constructs a building. Making a sound foundation and solving problems that may come up during the process of creativity. Joe enjoys communication through his music and also on a broader base communicating and chatting to people.

On this tour Joe aims not to play safe, yes, there will be some of his hit songs like ‘Harley and Rose’ but he’s also going to showcase some songs from his new album due to be released soon. He realises it can be a little dangerous to go into uncharted territory but he has a great belief in the energy a new song produces.

He admits to sometimes ‘falling over’ but he says he doesn’t mind taking the chance.

At the moment Joe is working with Vince Jones and Vikki Bull on a show in Melbourne paying homage to Van Morrison.

And what does Joe hope for Aurora’s possible future career? Well, Joe says Aurora has perfect pitch and takes after her mum, also a singer, but does Joe want her to enter the music industry? He says there are too many singers and he’d prefer her to be a doctor.

Joe feels very blessed with his career and is still doing a 130 shows a year with no plans to retire which bodes well for Joe’s continuing love of, and visits, both as a performer and tourist to Tasmania.

You can see Joe and his talented friends Ross Wilson, Daryl Braithwaite and James Reyne at the Hobart casino on Friday 3 May 2013. The Country Club concert on 4 May 2013 is sold out.

Paula Xiberras