The Year That Was..2016

With the Josh Pyke and Bob Evans tour coming to an end last week, we thought it was a fitting time to do our end of year wrap up post.
Lets rewind all the way back to January. The year kicked off with Josh (in conjunction with APRA AMCOS) opening applications for the 2016 Josh Pyke Partnership. Having announced an album tour late last year, promo was kicking off ahead of it beginning at the end of the month. Josh dropped into The Brag to perform ‘Be Your Boy’, and also gave Moshtix a tour of his studio.

In mid January, Josh Pyke finally launched his very own beer “The Summer” in collaboration with Young Henrys. They hosted a special tasting session with a live performance from the star himself.

But For All These Shrinking Hearts Album Tour began at the end of January. The rain stopped just in time for the first show at Twilight at Taronga in Sydney.

Josh and the band then headed to Canberra, Gold Coast, Brisbane, Lismore, Melbourne and Adelaide throughout January and February. We should add, Josh’s onstage banter was on point at the Melbourne Zoo show.

In February we were also treated to some more live videos, Josh performed ‘Be Your Boy’ on BalconyTV and The Between Shows . The official video for ‘Be Your Boy’ also dropped that month, watch it here if you haven’t seen it yet.

The start of March saw Josh Pyke head to Melbourne to film an episode of Rockwiz (and get a quick tattoo). In mid March he was amongst top musicians calling for more support for the music industry at Parliament House, and also joined the PPCA (Phonographic Performance Company of Australia Limited) Board. Josh released a live recording of ‘Be Your Boy’ from the Melbourne Zoo show (shout out to Josh’s sound engineer Dave Springer for the excellent recording). March ended with the release of the video for ‘Songlines’ and the announcement of a massive 32 date regional tour!

Early April saw Josh attend the APRA awards and catch up with Kav Temperley. Josh also spent some time writing a song with Deb Cheetham, Justine Clarke and kids from the Gawura School in Sydney for the The Indigenous Literacy Foundation. April came to a close with Josh performing ‘Songlines’ on The Morning Show.

In May, to celebrate the upcoming regional tour, Josh released two live videos with Jack Carty, one of ‘Songlines’ and the other ‘Old Souls’. Dustin Tebbutt also dropped by Josh’s studio.

In the middle of the month Josh finally announced he would be releasing the recordings of his performance with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Opera House.

On the 26th the regional tour kicked off in Darwin with Robbie Miller on support duties. That Rockwiz episode finally went to air, Josh covered The Beatles “In My Life” and David Bowie’s “Young Americans”.

June started with Alex Lahey being awarded the JP Partnership. Josh showed his support to #KeepCommunityRadio and Sounds Australia. Due to picking up the flu from his little kids, Josh sadly had to cancel two of the regional dates – Port Macquarie Panthers & Jetty Memorial Theatre, but the tour resumed a week later in Cairns. The first stint of the regional tour came to a close at the end of June, and Josh headed to New Zealand for a well deserved family holiday.

The day had finally arrived. After a hitch in production, the Live at the Sydney Opera House album was released on July 1st via ABC Music. The album debuted at #1 on the ARIA Classical Albums Chart & #27 on Albums Chart. A huge achievement!

In mid July, Josh caught up with Justine Clarke to film a video for their song, “Words Make The World Go Around”. The regional tour recommenced on July 21st in WA and then onto to Tasmania. It’s hard to go past one of the highlights of the tour – Josh Pyke’s parkour skills. (watch all the incredible videos here.)

As the regional tour moved into August, there were only 8 shows left. Your pal Jack Carty released his new album, as the tour worked its way through NSW and VIC. We caught up with Josh at the Ballarat show to work on a something top secret, which we got to announce a few days later. We launched a competition (with it’s own hashtag #fojpturns10) to celebrate 10 years of Friends of Josh Pyke. The massive regional tour came to an end in mid August. August 29th saw the release of the single (and video) “Words Make The World Go Around” with Justine Clarke and Deborah Cheetam. The single was created to celebrate and raise funds for The Indigenous Literacy Foundation.

August 30th was a HUGE day for us as we celebrated #fojpturns10 with an intimate show at Sony in Sydney. We had fans fly in from across Australia, and the best bit? We live streamed it to Facebook, resulting in a combined view of over +22K, +580 comments and an audience from all over the world. It was such an amazing night. You can read our re-cap here.

Early September saw Josh head into The Daily Edition on Channel 7 to chat about the ILF song, and he also spoke to the Sydney Morning Herald about “Books That Changed Me”.  September 4th officially marked 10 years of Friends of Josh Pyke!

For Indigenous Literacy Day on September 7th, Josh and Justine Clarke performed at the Sydney Opera House with the kids from the Garuda Choir. Mid September was soon here, and Josh joined Bob Evans as a guest on his podcast, Good Evans, it’s a Bobcast! (Listen here.) Josh was reunited with his band and they headed to QLD to play BeerInCider Festival on September 17th. The best news came a few days later, with the tour announcement of “Another Evening With Josh Pyke & Bob Evans” for November/December. In addition to a hilarious and well acted announcement video, the two treated fans to 2 free songs with the purchase of tickets – “What The Future Holds” and “Desperate”.

October kicked off with Josh Pyke and Sydney Symphony Orchestra receiving an ARIA award nomination for Best Original Soundtrack/Cast/Show Album, and “Be Your Boy” being shortlisted for the Vanda & Young Songwriting Competition. A few days after receiving their ARIA nomination, Josh & the SSO took home the award at a ceremony honouring the ARIA Fine Art & Artisan Awards in Sydney. (Watch his acceptance speech here). After years of teasing fans about his stoner rock project with an old mate called Dave, Josh finally introduced us to Bolterz with the release of a 5 track EP. (Buy it here.) Continuing on the path of treating fans with music, remember when Josh set up a Myspace for An Empty Flight? Well, this year he also added them to Spotify & iTunes! (buy it here.) October came to an end with Josh being nominated for “Live Voice of the Year” in the National Live Music Awards.

Tour rehearsals kicked off in mid November, although we wonder how much rehearsing actually took place. 😉  The two also recorded another episode of  Good Evans, it’s a Bobcast! Josh was a guest on MusicNSW’s Sound Advice panel with Isabella (The Preatures), and he dropped into Double J to chat to Myf  about the upcoming tour and the ARIAs. Josh and Kev also attended the ARIAs, and battled their hangovers for the first day of the tour at The Gov in Adelaide the following night. “Another Evening With Josh Pyke & Bob Evans” hit SA and WA before the month came to a close. Josh was also awarded “Live Voice of the Year” in the NLMAs. (Watch Josh’s thank you video.)

And now we’re in December – the tour continued to QLD with a sold out show at the Brisbane Powerhouse, before hitting Solbar and Soundlounge. We (finally) edited some footage from our 10th birthday show and released it on Facebook (watch it here.) NSW was next, with a sold out Newcastle show at 48 Watts and a Factory Theatre show in Sydney.

The tour then made it’s way to Victoria for the final three shows of the tour. We were lucky enough to hang around, and live streamed two videos. Check out our wrap up here. We also held a little giveaway competition, and also put together a short video of the 3 shows. Watch it on Facebook here. It was lovely to catch up with some familiar faces at those VIC shows.

You’d think Josh would’ve taken a rest after the tour, but this week saw him in the studio with Dustin Tebbutt. Yesterday Josh posted his yearly wrap-up post (read it on Facebook here), and gave FOJP a lovely mention. Here’s hoping JP is taking that well deserved break right now.

If you missed out on the Bob Evans & Josh Pyke tour, you’ve got another chance to see them live on Friday January 13th, Josh and Kev are playing Esk BeerFest in Launceston!

Thanks as always to everyone for their continued support of Josh, and also Friends of Josh Pyke! It’s been a big year for FOJP, and I’m still wondering how we managed to pull it all off.

Happy holidays friends!

-sabi