So many lockdown albums carry with them the echoes of confinement – but not Josh Pyke’s latest release, To Find Happiness. The songs are infused with the vibe of lying in a field on a summer’s day, being warmed by the sun. It’s sweet, expansive and lovely, about finding moments of happiness in everyday life.
After a long hiatus, Pyke is keen to get back on the road to play it for crowds: his struggles with anxiety saw him take a two-year break from touring before the pandemic. When he finally felt well enough, Covid hit and the lockdowns began. It is reminiscent of what happened to US performer Bo Burnham, who took five years off to deal with his severe panic attacks before preparing to tour in March 2020 – just as everything was shut down.
“I was having really bad anxiety issues,” says Pyke. “I was having severe anxiety attacks and I wanted to get my mental health under control, so I took a break. It was the spiral of thinking, I couldn’t just have negative thoughts and let them pass. It just spiralled and that manifested into panic attacks – and it would happen when I started performing.”
The other trigger was meet-and-greets with fans: “I’ve done so many and it’s not just not good for me … It’s just too much.”
So Pyke stepped away. “When you are touring, you have enormous highs on stage, then you get off stage and you start to come down – you don’t get to sleep until 3am and then have to be up at 7am,” he says. “The lifestyle of touring is not super healthy. But [anti-anxiety] medication helped. Medication, exercise and counselling were all part of the mix. Ultimately for me, it was medication that worked. I was very worried medication would affect my creativity, but that has not come to pass.”
Pyke spent lockdown in a whirr of creativity. In 2020, he released his first in album in five years, titled Rome. He also started a podcast about the music industry, It’s Raining Mentors (with Elana Stone). He wrote children’s books and TV scores.
“There was a bit of panic creativity, but there was also an opportunity to throw things to the wall and see what stuck,” he says. “I always wanted to do film and TV music, so I wrote songs for [ABC kids’ show] Mikki vs the World, about gender diversity and bullying. And I did the theme song for [ABC drama] Troppo. This type of work is more regimented, which I like. It’s like writing a kids’ book. But creativity is everywhere, it’s 24/7, like a tap I can’t turn off.”
To Find Happiness was recorded in his home studio in Sydney and mixed in the bucolic environment of the Music Farm Studios outside Byron Bay: “It’s in the hinterland – a big property with pigs and goats and an amazing studio. It was beautiful … it’s crazy to see what’s happening there a year later with the floods.”
After more than two years of struggle and patchy government support in the pandemic, musicians could feel less inclined to perform for free in charity fundraisers – but Pyke disagrees. “Everyone is super happy to support flood relief. It’s to do with being compassionate humans. Even if artists might say privately ‘We are always being asked to put our hands up’, it’s about helping people. I’ve never felt unsupported by people but I’ve felt unsupported by the government.”
During the pandemic, he received some grants “but Australia has been grossly underfunded in the arts forever, so the baseline was very, very low. I don’t think the financial support reflects the contribution we make. There was a lot of hypocrisy in the pandemic between the rules for hosting musical events versus the caps on sport events.”
Now that he’s gearing up to tour again, the anxiety is still there. But Pyke feels he can be open about it – and the response has been positive.
“The other day I was speaking in front of 2,000 people at a school event when I felt a panic attack coming on. It was a wave of cold that started in my feet and then went up my whole body to my head,” he says.
“The big thing for me is I feel very happy to speak about it openly and to tell people when it’s happening or could happen. No one is a prick about it. The sooner you kill the taboo, the better.
“Touring is what I’ve done for 20 years and I know I’m good at it. The muscle memory kicks back in. I love the physical feeling of singing – it stimulates the vagus nervous system. And it’s an incredible feeling to connect with the audience and seeing people singing the words back … it feeds my soul.”
To Find Happiness by Josh Pyke is out now (Sony). His album launch is in Brisbane on 24 March, then he tours nationally in June and July.
Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78; Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636
