In 2006, singer songwriter Damien Leith was the somewhat unlikely winner of Australian Idol. Fast forward to 2017, and Leith brings his tribute to his own idol Roy Orbison to Port Macquarie’s Glasshouse in The Hall of Fame Tour.
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There are a wealth of Orbison tribute artists, many who wear the distinctive dark glasses and bad wigs to resemble his shaggy hairstyle, and the suit and tie of his early career, or basic black of the latter part. But Leith says he goes out of his way to do the complete opposite. “These are our versions of these great songs.”
Leith’s vocals have a similar tremulous style to Orbison’s and he certainly has the range to reach some of the high notes in Crying. “We do about 20 songs, plus there’s me talking. You can’t shut me up. I provide the back story to the songs, especially Joe Melson’s viewpoint,” the 41-year-old says.
Melson, a member of the International Rockabilly Hall of Fame, co-wrote many of Orbison’s biggest hits, including Only the Lonely, Crying, Blue Bayou, Blue Angel, and Running Scared. “A lot of people might not have heard his story before.”
Leith has worked with Melson, releasing an EP with him in 2014. “He’s been incredible. I have learned so many lessons from an absolute legend. Not just musically, but general life things.” The pair will release an album this year. “It’s a quirky album, very different to anything I’ve done before. There are chord structures and new movements not typical for me. It’s been a labour of love and I’m quite excited as we’re down to the last three tracks,” he told me last month before heading of to Thailand for a family wedding.
Having had the privilege of also working with the late Barbara Orbison on his album Roy – A Tribute to Roy Orbison, which was in the ARIA Top 20 chart for 22 weeks, Leith says this show is his favourite thing to do. “It’s what I’m most proud of. I want as many people to see it as possible.”
He says when he did the first show he didn’t know what to expect, but now it is the show for which he gets the most requests. “In this Hall of Fame Tour, I focus on him [Orbison] as a writer. People forget he wrote the majority of his songs. He did stuff no one else was doing. His songs weren’t typical of the time.”
Leith promises people will love the show. “The Glasshouse is one of my favourite venues in the country. The staff are great and it’s always a pleasure to play there. It’s a very intimate show, even with a full audience and the acoustics are great.”
The versatile entertainer picked up a Golden Guitar in 2016 for Call Me Crazy which he co-wrote with Travis Collins. Since then he has also been writing with Australian songwriting legend Allan Caswell. Country and Celtic music are quite similar, he says, they tell a story.
