Four-time Grammy Award winning artist Gary Clark Jr. has announced three exclusive headline shows in Australia for April 2025. The Austin-native blues maestro will kick off the tour on Monday April 14 at Melbourne’s Palais Theatre, before heading to Hindley Street Music Hall Adelaide on Tuesday April 15 and concludes at Enmore Theatre in Sydney on Thursday April 17.
The tour marks Gary Clark Jr’s first shows in Australia in 6 years and coincides with his highly anticipated Friday headline set at the final Bluesfest in Byron Bay. Tickets on sale now
It’s been six years since Gary Clark Jr has been in Australia and he’ll be celebrating the release of his latest album JPEG RAW, playing tracks from the new record as well as material we’re more familiar with. As he tells Australian Musician editor Greg Phillips, “I think we’re going to mix it up a little bit. It’s been a while since we’ve been over there, so I got to give a little taste, a little reminder, and then into the present and maybe a little near the future.”
Listen to our interview here or read the interview transcript below it.
Photos by Jason Rosewarne
Greg Phillips here from Australia Musician. How are you?
I’m good, Greg. And yourself?
Yeah, really well. So whereabouts in the world are you at the moment?
I’m at home in Texas.
You’re coming back to Australia in April playing some shows and also playing Bluesfest. Will the shows mainly focus on your new album, JPEG Raw?
I think we’re going to mix it up a little bit. It’s been a while since we’ve been over there, so I got to give a little taste, a little reminder, and then into the present and maybe a little near the future. We’ll see.
Has the JPEG Raw album given you a new sense of freedom? Do you feel like that the boundaries have now disappeared and you can do whatever you stylistically into the future? Or have you always felt like that?
Oh yeah. I’ve always kind of felt like there aren’t any rules to this thing. That’s why I like it so much. You could pick up a guitar and do anything with it. So yeah, I think JPEG Raw is definitely given me a sense of freedom, And I’m excited to see what comes in the future.
I see the album as Gary Clark Jr. the musician and producer, as opposed to just the guitar guy. Is that how you feel?
Yeah, I’ve always seen myself as kind of a producer. I got into music over dubbing cassette tapes on a and b tape player karaoke machine. So I would plug in and my dad’s keyboard and make drum parts and play key bass lines and then play my guitar over it and just keep swapping the tapes back and forth and over dubbing. I mean, the sound quality was terrible, but I had fun figuring it out. I’ve always just kind of worked like that, but the guitar has definitely been a highlight and it’s definitely my strong point, I think.
Are you curious with technology, are you sort of always looking for what’s out there, what’s new? What can help you?
I’ve always been looking at gear and recording myself. I had so many ideas and I was like, how do I capture these moments? So I’ve always, I remember skipping high school and going to the music store and just looking around and being like, man, one day I’ll grab this and my vocals will sound better, or if I’ll get this guitar pedal and I can sound like Steve Ray Von Texas Flood or whatever. So yeah, I’ve always been into gear drum machines. Yeah, all kinds of stuff. Anything that makes noise, I’m into that.
Was there a particular new piece of gear that you used on this album that you were happy to explore?
Yeah, I’ve been into this Universal Audio reverb and delay pedals. Those have been really fun for me to get an authentic, not too digital sounding room sound, flat back sound, but it mainly depends on the amps. It’s the amps and the guitars really for me.
Did you use many guitars on this album?
I used my Gibson 3 55. I used my signature SG Gibson. What else did I use? That’s pretty much it for the most part. SG humbuckers. I pretty much stayed in the Gibson world.
What do you travel with these days? How many guitars?
I travel with way too many, but you can’t be too careful. I’m mainly travelling with my Gibson 355, Ibanez Blazers since I’ve had, since I was like 13. Custom Shop Stratocaster, ‘68 Casino, and I think that’s about it.
So your band, will it be King, Elijah, JJ, and Dane for the Australian tour?
That’ll be it. I think maybe a couple of my sisters might tag along for some vocals.
And how have you approached playing this new material live? Have some of the songs been tricky to reproduce on stage?
Some of the songs have been tricky and we’ve been messing with playing with the triggers and tracks and samples and just to try and fill that out, but that’s a frustrating mess. It’s a little bit distracting at times, so listening to inner ears and all that kind of stuff, I’m like, maybe we’re just making it too complicated. So it might just be a more stripped down version of just keep it live and authentic. I’ve come to the conclusion … just because you can, doesn’t mean you should!
Quite a few collaborations on the album. At what point do you decide it would be nice to have someone else perform on a song with you?
I was thinking about that a lot. Collaborations have been something that people have talked about. I’ve always felt that I didn’t know exactly how to go about collaborating for my records, but I think it was just having the right folks. It just happened to work out for these songs when for Don’t Start, I heard Valerie June’s voice right away. It was just automatic funk with you. I mean, it’s inspired by Parliament Funkadelic, so it’s like, let’s call up George Clinton and see if we can get his blessing on it. So that’s incredible. Naala happened by accident. I had this song, This Is Who We Are, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I had the music and I was kind of losing the passion for it, so it was getting a little dusty on the shelf and Jacob Skiba let her hear it and she’s like, Hey, I got some things I don’t want to overstep, but I think I got an idea. So she read off some lyrics and I was like, oh, okay. Alright. So we dusted that one off, and then of course Stevie Wonder, it was just incredible. He actually reached out to me for a collab, which is absolutely incredible. You know what I mean? Stevie wanted to call you and says, Hey man, you want to work on a song? What am I going to tell him? No?
The track To The End of the Earth is a beautiful short ballad with some tasteful jazz guitar. Who were the guitar players who inspired that kind of playing?
Ooh, that kind of playing. I guess I would have to say Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, Charlie Christian, Lonnie Johnson, T-Bone Walker. Yeah. Those are kind of those jazzy sound. The tones is really it. Not necessarily the phrasing of the notes, but just that warm, big tone has always been pleasing to me.
Was the track ever going to be extended into a longer thing, or you were just happy with the one minute take?
Well, I always thought of it as the prequel to Alone Together. To me, it’s like the dreamy honeymoon phase, the dream sequence in a movie where everything’s flower meadows, rainbows, unicorns, and then cut to Alone Together. To me, it was just like, all right, here we are years down the road, we’ve hit a rough patch and then Alone Together comes along. So it was just kind of, they were kind of one was the intro to the Other.
I was just listening to the Habits single. You’ve released a version from the Crossroads Festival from last year. Why did you decide to end the album with Habits?
I decided to end the album with that track because it was just long. It was long. It had multiple parts, and I didn’t want to depress everybody at the beginning of the album. I figured it was a sad tale, which turns into a triumphant musical presentation, which I thought was a good way to end the record. I think it’s a nice spirit lifter, and it’s got a nice resolve after hearing the whole record.
What about your photography? Are you still an old school guy? Are you a dark room guy, or have you moved into the digital world?
I’ve moved into the digital world now. In high school, I was a Cannon AE1 one guy, so I learned on that, and I was in the dark room. In the digital world early on, I picked up a Cannon Rebel, like a T1i, and I was like, oh, I can get instant gratification, put it right on my computer. Cool. But I still go back and forth. Everywhere I travel, I have at least one film camera on me.
I’ve heard that agencies are not using stock photographers anymore. They’re using AI. They tell a program what kind of photo they want, and the program produces it for them. How do you feel about AI in the arts?
Well, that’s not photography at that point, and I think it’s, I’m not sure if you could, I don’t know what to call that. You know what I mean? In a creative space to use artificial intelligence. I’m not sure if you’d call that. I don’t know what you call that. My son came home from school and read me this elaborate story that he came up with at school, and I was like, man, I didn’t know that your mind was that … I didn’t know that was going on in your little 8-year-old head dude.
And he smiled real big, got quiet, and he’s like, it was AI. I just told it three words and they wrote this whole story, and I was so impressed, and then all of a sudden I was disappointed. So I’m not into it. I’m not into it. I mean, it’s just a short and sweet. I’m not into it. For me, I don’t see any need for it in my creative space, but some of it is cool. I think it’s amazing what technology can do, but like I said earlier, just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
How do you feel about it?
I don’t like it at all. I spend my time writing articles that come from my heart and my soul and my brain and another magazine comes along and just types something into a computer (to produce content). It’s just not right.
I agree. I agree. I kind of think it discredits folks who really are passionate for it and do the work.
What are you forward to most about the Australian tour?
Oh, about the Australian tour. I mean, it’s always fun to get over there. The people are fun, people are funny. I like how they call me Gaza. That’s cool. But I’m looking forward to walking around with this camera. I’m going to go have a pub meal, go find a nice sandwich, and yeah, I’m just looking forward to these shows. It’s been a while, so I’m excited to get reacquainted.
We certainly look forward to seeing you down here. Gary, it’s been a pleasure to chat to you, and hopefully we’ll catch up again one day.
Sounds good. Thanks, Greg.
MORE ABOUT GARY CLARK JR & AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES
Clark achieved global impact following his first Grammy Award® in 2014, winning Best Traditional R&B Performance for the track “Please Come Home” from his Warner Records debut album Blak And Blu, and seemingly never left the road. 2015’s The Story Of Sonny Boy Slim wrought hard-won international acclaim as a critical force to be reckoned with.
Throughout 2019, Clark ascended to greater heights with the release of This Land – his third full-length studio album which bowed at #6 on the Billboard 200 chart, marking his third consecutive Top 10 debut. The album and single of the same name attracted acclaim from the likes of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and more. He has performed on Saturday Night Live, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The Late Late Show with James Corden, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Good Morning America, CBS News Sunday, CBS This Morning, The Today Show, Late Night with Seth Meyers, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, The Howard Stern Show, WTF with Marc Maron, and more.
Clark’s domestic tours became instant sell-outs and his international profile found him topping bills at legendary festivals around the world and venues including the Hollywood Bowl, along with multiple appearances in stadiums supporting and sharing the stage with The Rolling Stones.
Most recently, Clark won three more Grammy Awards, including Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song for “This Land,” and Best Contemporary Blues Album for This Land. Clark also performed his award-winning single “This Land” backed by The Roots at the 2020 Grammy Award ceremony and released their version of the track.
Countless collaborations have been recorded with Stevie Wonder, Andra Day, John Legend, Alicia Keys, Foo Fighters, Nas, Sheryl Crow, Brandi Carlile, Eric Clapton, Gustavo Santaolalla, Booker T. Jones, and many more. To date, Clark has been nominated for six Grammy Awards and won four.
Clark has just completed his fourth and most compelling body of work to date, titled JPEG RAW, out now via Warner Records.
For complete tour & ticket information, visit: livenation.com.au
GARY CLARK JR. AUSTRALIA TOUR 2025
PALAIS THEATRE MELBOURNE
MONDAY APRIL 14
HINDLEY STREET MUSIC HALL, ADELAIDE
TUESDAY APRIL 15
ENMORE THEATRE, SYDNEY
THURSDAY APRIL 17
livenation.com.au
GARY ALSO PLAYS BLUESFEST BYRON BAY