“We’re gonna play songs that everybody knows and then I have a new album coming,” Gray said last week.
“I'm going to premiere some of the songs live and just see what people think before it comes out, you know.”
The American singer-slash-actress said it would be “cool” to get people’s feedback on her new work ahead of its release, citing that while her voice a quarter of a century ago had an unrecoverable hint of freedom within it, it was now more mature and refined.
“I’m a much better singer, you know, I trained quite a bit,” she said.
Gray has never performed in Shepparton, but has an affinity with Australia, after her 1999 hit I Try jumped straight to the top of Australian and New Zealand music charts.
The album from which it came, On How Life Is, also topped Aussie charts and remained in Kiwi charts for 44 weeks.
She said audiences ‘Down Under’ always came ready to party.
“Everybody in the band just loves it out there,” Gray said.
“You feel good, you know, like you feel comfortable.
“We just always have a good time and there’s lots to do; good people, good foods.”
Apart from kangaroo meat, perhaps, which Gray says is the weirdest Australian delicacy she’s come across in her travels.
Gray, who is as much a fan of other artists’ music as she is of making her own, loves going to concerts to “get away from everything”.
“It’s just like freedom,” she said.
“In your regular life, you have a lot of constraints and boundaries and rules and things that you have to do, and I think when you go to a concert, it should just be ‘leave all that’.
“Get up and down and scream and holler.”
Her pre-show ritualistic playlist to calm the nerves she still gets before stepping on stage includes works by Britney Spears, Lil Jon, Angie Stone, Aretha Franklin and Justin Timberlake.
“I have to hear those or I feel weird,” Gray said.
Summing herself up in three words — creative, curious and, of all things, tall — Gray is also a giant of show business whose art will arrive larger than life on a little Goulburn Valley stage this weekend.
Macy Gray will perform at Riverlinks Eastbank from 8pm on Sunday, September 13.
Tickets are $69.
To book, visit riverlinksvenues.com.au
Listen to our podcast with Macy Gray here:
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