Tumbleweed frontman finds a home for his stray songs

So he recorded a solo album under the name of Richie Weed, with a name inspired by that collection of songs.

"I found that I was writing a lot of songs over the last few years," Lewis said.

"I felt that they didn't fit with in Tumbleweed, they didn't fit the style or the sound or what I wanted to do with them.

"So I had like all these sort of strays that didn't have a home. And so I decided to create a home for them and that's why I decided to call the record Strays because it's a home for all of them, all of the ones that didn't have a place to live."

Lewis said he was able to tell when he wrote a song whether it would be something the other members of Tumbleweed would dig - and even admitted some of his songs the band had recorded were "the odd ones out".

"If I look back at it and I think about, say Drop in the Ocean or songs like Glow In the Dark or Pachouli Girl, they're always the popular numbers or the ones that don't really sort of fit with that stoner rock aesthetic."

Also, the songs on Strays came to life in a different way to Tumbleweed tunes, which tended to be worked up in the jam room.

"The way that I've been writing these ones is they come from just noodling around on the guitar and the vocals then sort of drive where it's going to go.

"They sort of come into my head at the same time as I'm playing. I don't write them in the way that I want this to be an interesting guitar song to play."

Some of those songs had been hanging around for quite a while; first single Pure Evil was a song written for Richie and the Creeps - his band in the period between the Tumbleweed break-up and eventual reformation in 2009.

"I wrote that at the end of the Creeps period and we broke up before we had the opportunity to record it," Lewis said.

"It's been kicking around for all that time, nearly 15 years, maybe 20 years. But I've been playing it as an acoustic type of thing ever since at solo things, so I thought that would be a good way to kick [the album] off and put my toe in the water because there was that familiarity about it."

The album was recorded in Stanwell Park, at the studio owned by Jez Player of The Pinheads.

Lewis said he wanted to record there once he heard The Pinheads' single Rain Down.

"When I heard that record, I thought, 'yeah, that's the sound I like'," he said.

"The way that he captured the spirit of the song and this authenticity. It sounded classic because he records old school - lots of room ambient microphones, and old valve equipment, great old Australian amps like Golden Tone and really cool stuff.

"And then he records to half-inch tape, so it retains this classic sound.

"The other good thing was [the studio] was immersed in the bush of Stanwell Park, so we could really hide away in that place and just get lost in the creative process."

Strays by Richie Weed, released on Farmer and the Owl, is out on May 24.