Joe Camilleri Clocks Up 50th Album And Brings Back Producer Peter Solley

The next Black Sorrows album ‘Saint Georges Road’ will be the 50th album for Joe Camilleri. The album also reunites Joe with producer Peter Solley, who worked with him on The Falcons’ ‘Screaming Targets’ and the hits ‘Hit and Run’ and ‘Shape I’m In’.

Joe tells Noise11.com, “On Saint George’s Road I got the beautiful Peter Solley to come back in my life. It was nice not to be the guy who is listening to what’s being played while you are doing it, making decisions on the spot. I became a musician again. I’ve never slept so soundly”.

Solley also produced ‘What I Like About You’ by The Romantics and once has a stint as a popstar with Noosha Fox in Fox and the hit song ‘S-S-S-Single Bed’. “He doesn’t talk about that one much,” Joe says. “It is a big career that he has had but he tells me he likes me the best”.

You’ll hear sounds in ‘Saint Georges Road’ that will remind you of early Black Sorrows. One song ‘Chiquita’ would fit on the first Sorrows album ‘Sonala’. “Peter loved that song,” Joe said. “He was obsessed with that song. It’s a ditty, just a little ditty. He was pushing towards an American country sound that he was pushing towards and I said ‘we need the piano accordion’. This was a throwback to ‘Sonala’. If I had this song in 1982 this would have been a classic song for this band”.

Watch the Black Sorrows ‘Saint Georges Road’ interview with Joe Camilleri.

The title to ‘Saint Georges Road’ is deeply personal to Joe. He lost friends and family in the past few years. His greatest loss was his brother Tony.

“’Saint Georges Road’, the title track is about lost friends and family,” Joe tells Noise11. “It is the saddest time but it also gives you an opportunity to reflect and celebrate. At the end of the recording, me and Nick had both lost members of our family. When I lost my brother I was in Phillip Island, we were doing a few shows and I remember driving at night after the gig and getting to see him that weekend before he passed away. It was a long goodbye, a sad goodbye but I had the opportunity to see him. I woke up one morning and I thought I heard a train. I got the call that ‘Chet’ (Stuart Fraser of Noiseworks) had passed away and Martin Armiger (The Sports) had passed away. I heard a train in my head and my other brother rang to say Tony had passed away. I had to play that afternoon. They are always difficult things but it turned out to be a joyous occasion because I played the song he always asked me to play, a song we fought over for years, one he loved by Chuck Berry. I played the gig, told the story and it was just a rocketing version of the song. You celebrate it. It relates to the song ‘Saint Georges Road’. Raise a glass of three for our true lost friends”.

The ‘Saint George’s Road’ album is the 50th Joe Camilleri album including the works with Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons, Revelators, Bakelite Radio and his solo recordings. The album will be released through Robert Rigby’s Ambition.

Here is a sneak peak of the record, the first single ‘Livin Like Kings’.