James Reyne’s Crawl File Tour, celebrating the 40th anniversary of Australian Crawl’s first greatest hits collection, has seen unprecedented demand for tickets, with shows selling out across the country or very limited tickets remaining.
Kicking off in January, the show will make its way to the Central Coast when Reyne and his eight-piece band performs at the Sunken Monkey, Erina, on April 12.
The Crawl File plays like a classic gig, opening with the band’s debut single, Beautiful People, and closing with their most popular live song, The Boys Light Up.
In between are some of the most-loved Australian songs of all time, including Reckless, Errol, Oh No Not You Again, Lakeside, Downhearted and Things Don’t Seem.
Crawl File was the biggest Australian best-of album of 1984, hitting number two on the charts, but kept out of top spot by the year’s biggest compilation of various artists, Choose 1985, which spent nine weeks at number one.
The best-of album capped a bittersweet year for Reyne and Australian Crawl.
The band sponsored 1984’s Bells Beach Surf Classic, Reyne won a Logie for Most Popular New Talent following his starring role in the hit mini-series Return to Eden, Australian Crawl won Most Popular Group at the Countdown Rock Awards, but then the band was rocked by the death of Guy McDonough and a planned US tour was cancelled.
Reyne is an artist who doesn’t live in the past – but occasionally he pays it a visit.
“It was all a long time ago,” he said.
“And sometimes I feel like it was another person who lived that life.
“But I’m still making music and I’m still on the road.
“Australian Crawl was a great apprenticeship.”
Catch Reyne with an eight-piece band – guitarists Brett Kingman and Josh Owen, bassist Andy McIvor, with Sean Johnson on keys, drummer John Watson (who was part of Australian Crawl with Reyne) and backing singers Melinda Jackson and Nicky Kurta.
Tickets are on sale now from jamesreyne.com.au