Cold Chisel will get back together again for 2014 and there is more new music on the way.
The band sent a message to fans via their Facebook page today saying, “Getting ready to announce some new releases… sometime in the next week… We’ll post it here first.”
Work on the next record is in the early stages but underway and for the first time ever is a genuine songwriting collaboration. “We really actually for the first time in our history sat in a room, just four of us, and tried to write songs together and it was very enjoyable,” Don Walker tells Noise11.com.
Don Walker has written the bulk for Chisel’s material and occasionally collaborations have happened but never like this. “There have been Cold Chisel songs before that were written by various pairs of us but they weren’t written in the one room,” Don explains. “‘Flame Trees’ was not written with me and Steve sitting down in a room. He wrote something first, he wrote some music and then I wrote some words. Similarly with a song like ‘Juliet’, I had a set of words and Jim had some music. This is the first time that we sat in a room and tried somebody coming up with an idea and tried to work songs through”.
Don says it was a surprising exercise. “It was very revealing in the sense that various of us have certain unsuspected skills in that situation. We will be doing a lot more of that, time permitting. It is very difficult to get the four of us for a free few days that we can get together”.
Don Walker completely wrote the first two albums by himself. “Up until ‘East’, when the others guys really seriously started writing,” he says. “‘No Plans’, the album we put out last year, has probably got the most of my songs on it for a long, long time. I think that will be an anomaly and the other guys will be very much involved in what we do next. Also, Charley Drayton. We want to get Charley involved in the writing too”.
Drayton, formerly of Divinyls and currently with The Dead Daisies, joined Cold Chisel following the death of Steve Prestwich. “He came in quite late in the piece on the last album,” Don says. “We had already done some recording with Steve. Charley came in pretty much to a shattered band as a drummer to try and give us something to lean on in recording. It all grew from there”.
Prestwich died in January, 2011 and Don says there are still unfinished songs by Don that may surface on the next Cold Chisel record. “They are not complete but pretty close. I have got those at home,” he says. “I will also be working on them. I think from the discussions Steve and I had over many years he would be quite comfortable with that. What makes it on the record and what doesn’t is not decided until the very end. I would definitely like to get some of those songs of Steve into the choices”.
Don has just released his solo album ‘Hully Gully’ and will start a solo tour on November 1 at the Shoalhaven Entertainment Centre in Nowra.
Don Walker’s remaining live dates for 2013 are:
November 1, Nowra, Shoalhaven Entertainment Centre
November 2, Sydney, Camelot Lounge
November 8, Sawtell, Sawtell RSL
November 9, Brisbane, Old Museum
November 29, Melbourne, Caravan Club
Watch the Noise11 interview with Don Walker:
