Like many artists who released music circa 2019, David Bridie didn't get a fair shake of his most recent solo album 'The Wisdom Line'.
Having only played a handful of shows in support of it, a second tour was ultimately canned in 2020 after it became increasingly clear that such things were not possible for the foreseeable future."It was really disappointing," the veteran singer-songwriter recalls. "There are still a lot of places I wanted to bring 'The Wisdom Line' show, so it's definitely going to get favoured-nation status when I do these next few shows.
"That said, the aim is to play at least one song off everything – so we'll see how that goes."
After an extended period away from the stage, Bridie will perform a complete career retrospective at the Brisbane Powerhouse in early April – which, as he testifies, is the first of its kind insofar as his own shows go.
Joined by multi-instrumentalist collaborator Rosie Excess, Bridie's new show 'Following The Geography' will endeavour to encompass as much of his career thus far as possible, including songs by both of his previous bands Not Drowning, Waving and My Friend The Chocolate Cake.
"I think this will be the first of doing a whole lot of shows of this nature," Bridie says.
"Delving back into all those records, and being able to give some attention to songs that hadn't been there on the set list much before. That's really fun to me.
"There's also the challenge of then stripping them back to piano and guitar, and maybe some visuals. That will shine a slightly different light on them again.
"I've never done something like this, with the idea of using at least one song off every record. There's a lot to reflect upon."
He's not wrong, of course – there are six Not Drowning albums (eight if you include their soundtrack work), seven Chocolate Cake albums, six solo albums and two collaborative albums with Not Drowning co-founder John Phillips in Bridie's back catalogue.
That's not even touching Bridie's award-winning film scoring and compositional work, ranging from Indigenous musical 'Bran Nue Dae' to the Billy Connolly vehicle 'The Man Who Sued God'.
It's put to Bridie whether he feels there is any sense of recurring themes or motifs throughout his musical output – a sense of creating something identifiably his with each new project.
"It's an interesting question," he replies. "Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.
"It sort of shifts, because I would write differently for all the different bands and different projects – not to mention the people you're collaborating with has a major effect on the sound.
"I would say there's a through-line of sorts when you look at something 'Tabaran', the record Not Drowning made in Papa New Guinea, which led to working with artists like George Telek on his own projects and songs I've written about my experience in PNG, Vanuatu and the Solomons.
"I suspect that, putting these shows together, I'll be able to find even more connections along the way."
David Bridie brings the 'Following The Geography' show to Brisbane Powerhouse 1 April. David also performs 'The Wisdom Line' in full at The Memo Music Hall (Melbourne) 19 March.
