Almost 20 years ago Missy Higgins released her trailblazing debut album, The Sound of White. Now she's gearing up to head out on the road to celebrate the album that started it all.
The Second Act Tour will see Higgins touring theatres nationally next autumn in a special two-act show.
The first set each evening will include some brand new songs, plus a few fan favourites from early in her career, all played in stripped-back, acoustic mode.
After an intermission, Higgins will then return with her full band to perform The Sound Of White in its entirety, plus some of her other hits.
"I wrote all those songs in my late teens when I never thought anyone would hear them, so they were very personal, like I was writing my secrets in a diary," Higgins said.
"I did less of that on later albums for lots of reasons but lately I realised I'd gone back to that confessional mode of songwriting. I guess it's been my way of dealing with the end of my marriage. So I feel like I've come full circle ... I was starting life from scratch at 20 and now, like lots of people, I'm figuring out how to start life all over again at 40.
"In that respect, this new album that I'm recording right now will be a kind of sequel to The Sound Of White. They're both looking forward nervously and wondering what comes next.
"They're both asking questions like, 'Who am I?' and, 'Who do I want to be?' so I liked the idea of previewing some of this new material in the first act of a live show, then going back to the start of the story in the second act."
This will be the first time that she has done a theatre tour since 2018, soon after playing stadiums across Australia as Ed Sheeran's special guest. It will see Higgins returning to many of the same venues she first played when The Sound Of White exploded back in 2004.
The Sound Of White is one of the biggest albums in Australian music history. The intensely introspective collection of songs yielded bona fide classics like "Scar", "Ten Days" and "The Special Two".
It has sold a million copies and received six ARIA Awards.
Higgins will bring The Second Act Tour to Canberra Theatre on April 10. Tickets go on sale at noon on December 13, from canberratheatrecentre.com.au.
