Pete Murray remembers sitting around as a teenager on a Sunday night listening to Barry Bissell's Top 40, his finger poised over the record button on the cassette player, hoping to hear a little Tears for Fears, some Stevie Wonder or, if he was lucky, the latest track from Huey Lewis and the News. Hoping to get the timing right, like every teenager growing up in the 1980s, so he'd avoid getting too much of Bissell's commentary at the end of the track.
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"I didn't get into music, into bands, until I was older," the veteran singer-songwriter says. "The music of my early years was whatever was playing on the radio."
Now he is watching his own sons, Charlie and Pedro, 13 and 10, begin their musical journey and he admits that it's influenced his latest album Camacho.
"The best thing you do in your life is become a parent," he said. "It's influenced me in such a positive way and that has made we want to write a lot more positive songs.
"Feeler was quite melancholy and I think that's why it connected to a lot of people but I found writing sad songs easy.
"I remember being in the car once and Always a Winner came on, and the boys were in the backseat, they were pretty young but they were singing it word for word and it hit me then that I have to write songs for them."
Camacho is Murray's first album for six years. As well as being busy raising the boys with their mother Amanda, Murray says the delay was also because he wanted to challenge himself musically.
"I didn't want to do the same thing, I didn't want to jump into the studio with a full band again," he says. "This album was about working with an engineer, with loops and beats, and getting it just right."
He set up his own studio in Byron Bay and worked at his own pace. Knowing what kind of sound he was after - "fat sounds, big sounds, cool drum sounds, loops and beats" - he pulled together several producers.
Hip-hop producers Trials (AB Original), Eric J Dubowsky, Tony Buchen (Montaigne, The Preatures, Bob Evans), Andrew Burford (Hilltop Hoods, Drapht, Allday) and ARIA winning producer Jon Hume (Matt Corby, Lisa Mitchell) have all worked on the album.
"I'd be lying if i said I wasn't feeling a little anxious about it," Murray says. "You spend six years putting it together, you kind of hope that you're going to get positive feedback.
"But at the same time I know I've written an album that doesn't have a weakness, an album where I can't wait to play every single song live."
The concept of a complete album is one Murray believes in.
"Music's changed quite a bit," he says. "There are bands out there that really focus on singles, getting one or two big singles out and they're happy. But albums have a strength, I want something that will connect with people and they'll love it, love all of it."
Getting the order of the songs on the album right is an important aspect of this.
"I created Camacho to take people on a journey," he says.
"It took about 12 months to get the order of this album right, it's not an easy thing to do, to get the flow right.
"But when you listen to it now, it's almost an album of two halves. Only One and Sold come out really punchy and confident and positive and then Heartbeats slips back into half beats, it's super moody, with Give Me Your Love and Take Me Down a little more laid back too.
"The second half kicks off with Camacho and Long Ride which are these great groove tracks, and then it's back down into Connected, with Thought I Was and Home was a really nice way to go out.
"Don't play it out of order and it will take you on this journey."
Murray, 47, has been on his own journey of sorts in the years the album's been coming together. He married Mira Eady, his partner of four years, in a secret cliff top ceremony at Lennox Head earlier in the year, with just the boys and some family and friends enjoying the celebrations.
"A lot of good things have happened over the past six years," Murray says. "Love does strange things to people, love works in different ways.
"I guess for me, it's come out in the uplifting and bright and happy album."
It would be easy to suggest Camacho is an album full of love songs, indeed Home, the final track could be read as an ode to love in middle-age.
Every day that we're together/We learn to love a little better
As long as we're together we'll know/We're home.
"Writing a love song is hard work," Murray said.
"They can be quite cheesy, but to write one that is interesting and lyrically great, one that has some depth to it, is not easy."
He's also opened a cafe in Byron Bay with some friends, a little place with a "cool, retro, New York-style feel" where people can sit and have a drink at the long bar, share a meal, listen to some original music. The boss might even occasionally pull out the guitar himself. Camacho was originally going to be the name of the cafe - it ended up being called Frankie Brown Cafe, after Murray's pet kelpie. (Would the album have been named after the dog, I wonder?)
"I was in a cafe, looking through an old Spanish magazine, and I saw the word Camacho. "Luckily there was a Spanish girl working there that day and I asked her what it meant.
"She said it means cool, it's also the name of several professional footballers too I found out, but I liked this idea of cool.
"So the whole album took on that theme, it just had to be cool, it didn't have to be alternate, too radio friendly, I didn't want to try too hard with the songs, they just had to be what they were going to be and sound cool."
"Every time I'd do a take I turn around to the guys and go did that sound camacho enough for you? The response had to be 'That's total camacho'."
Urban Dictionary also defines camacho as "Sexy man always on the go. Great friend, even better lover. Everyone wants one".
Well there you go.
Pete Murray's capital city shows include Enmore Theatre, Sydney on July 29; Her Majesty's Theatre, Adelaide on August 4; Canberra Theatre on August 19; Forum Theatre, Melbourne, August 25. For all dates, petemurray.com
