Jeff Lang is back playing solo shows after concentrating on his work with a band in recent years.
Heritage Hotel, Buli
Thursday
Tickets: oztix.com.au
Guitarist Jeff Lang is one of the country's most travelled musicians, regularly touring to all parts of Australia, as well as to some exotic corners of the world.
He's played a lot of stages but says Bulli's Heritage Hotel is one venue he always looks forward to coming back to.
"It's conducive to a good gig. It's almost like a mini ballroom vibe with that ceiling in there.
"It looks really nice when you walk out to play and it sounds good and people like going there too, which is crucial.
"There's a good audience for live music in the area definitely."
Lang is one of Australia's most accomplished guitarists, playing his own blend of folk, rock and blues. In almost 20 years in the music business he has released 14 studio albums and seven live albums, garnering six ARIA nominations and two ARIA awards.
His Bulli performance will be a solo show, something he says is a bit of a rarity these days.
"This is a chance to pull it back and play songs from the last four or five years that I've mostly played with a band.
"Playing them solo offers a new challenge, so I'm enjoying it."
Lang says solo shows provide the opportunity to do things a little differently.
"You don't have the conversational aspect you have when other people are playing, where their ideas feed in to the show, but there is a more direct connection with the song when it's a solo show - it feels like there is a direct connection between the song and the audience.
"Playing solo I won't have a set list worked out, it just comes down to picking which guitar you want to start on and which song you want to start with and then seeing where you feel like going from there."
While Lang's touring schedule seems to be as busy as ever - when his Australian tour winds up he'll be flying to Europe for a series of shows in France and the Netherlands - he says fatherhood has introduced a few challenges when it comes to songwriting.
"It's harder and harder to find time to write now that I've got a couple of young kids," Lang says.
"It becomes a process of setting aside time and almost treating it like an office job - but with odd hours.
"It will be, OK the kids are in bed, the wife has gone to bed, I'll go out to the shed and I'm not allowed to go to bed myself until I've written something - it doesn't have to be good, just write something.
"You get the synapses firing and you re-engage the muscles that are involved in the creative process and somehow it starts to flow.
"If you can organise two or three of those nights a week then you can get a bit done."