Vanessa Amorosi sings the praises of Duane McDonald and Red Hot Summer ahead of her own shows

Vanessa Amorosi has just finished up touring for Duane McDonald’s Red Hot Summer and had the time of her life being back in Australia and on the road with people she considers her music family.

“I remember doing gigs for him 15 years ago and then coming back and doing the Red Hot Summer tour,” Vanessa tells Noise11.com. “It is unbelievable and the fact it is all familiar faces. He kept his team, he is so loyal to his team. I have respect for that. It is so very rare”.

Red Hot Summer paired Vanessa with her very good friend Jon Stevens and idol Daryl Braithwaite. “I’ve been on the road for so many years and I’ve done shows before with the artists on this tour,” she said. “It was like a family reunion. It is nice to able to watch other people’s shows. It is nice to sit on the side of the stage and watch Jon Stevens and Daryl Braithwaite, who had me in spits of laughter. He can hold ridiculous notes forever. It is effortless for him to hold these long notes. At one point he told the crowd “your turn”. It still makes me crack up. It’s awesome, it is such a great vibe”.

Red Hot Summer was an education for Vanessa. “If people say they don’t take notes off other artists they are lying. If you want to be great you have to learn from the best and I just went on the road with the best”.

Vanessa and Jon Stevens also have a connection to Dave Stewart, formerly of Eurythmics. “I started doing work with Dave Stewart and about four years in I said to him “there is a guy in Australia who is unbelievable”. I remember playing him a song Jon and I had written together and his jaw fell to the ground. Its kinda cool how the industry works like that. I have always been a massive fan of Jon Stevens voice. I’ve done a lot of work with him with some of his previous records, and even touring and knowing his players. I have always had such respect with him”.

The work Vanessa did with Dave Stewart focused more on her as a blues artist than the pop star she initially was in Australia. “It has always been in my genetics,” she says. “I have always loved blues and soul music. Even with the first record when I started writing at 13 or 14 I did a bunch of Gospel arrangements but by the time we came to the production they buried a lot of my arrangements. You can still hear some of it in ‘Power’, ‘Everybody’, ‘Shine’. It’s all there. So, when I got the opportunity in 2011 to start arranging melodies it really lit that fire again for me and I now incorporate it into all the new stuff I do”.

Vanessa has just released ‘Heavy Lies The Head’, her first new music in 10 years. “I was touring through Europe on the last record and by the time I got to the creative process again I just wasn’t creative,” she says. “I was writing very bland material. I decided I wouldn’t release anything until I had something worth releasing. I just don’t want people to remember me by bad songs. I had the chance to go to The States and work on stuff that was completely out of my environment, very uncomfortable. That spun off its own world. It wasn’t until recently that I started writing pop music that I couldn’t give to anyone else, I had to do it for myself. That is what had led me back”.