Tina Arena’s just announced that her Australian tour will be kicking off in Perth on Friday August 15th. When the singer calls the OUTinPerth office for a quick catch up we joke that she has a great ‘poker face’.
Just over a week ago we saw Arena on the red carpet at the Mardi Gras VIP party.
When a radio reporter asked if a tour was in the near future Arena smoothly described the possibility that a tour may occur as “sometime in the future”. Little did we know that the tour announcement was so imminent.
“Better than Gaga”, retorts Arena to our suggestion that she has a good poker face, “Everybody wants an answer yesterday.” Arena comments highlighting the media’s insatiable need to know.
Fans of the singer have been holding out for a tour announcement, which is not surprising given the success of Arena’s recent album ‘Reset’.
The album has gone gold in Australia, delivering the popular songs ‘You Set Fire to My Life’, ‘Reset All’ and the latest single ‘Love You Less’.
Plus the track ‘Only Lonely’ climbed up the charts after it was featured in ‘Home & Away’, plus ‘Don’t Hide’ was the official theme for the 2014 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
What is a surprise is that Arena is going out on her own, producing her own tour without the aid of an established promoter. “I’m producing it myself with my little team,” Arena said. “I feel it’s a pretty natural thing to do now.”
Arena says by putting together her own show she’s freeing herself from a lot of the constraints she encountered over the years;
“Touring has lots of constraints, and sometimes you have ideas and you’re told ‘well that’s not possible’ and eventually there comes a time when you think, ‘maybe we should just do it ourselves, we know we want to do and we know how we want to do it, it’s just time to move forward’.
Arena said she’ll be drawing on experiences of establishing herself as an artist in her adopted home of France, where she played lots of smaller gigs. “I’d never trade that experience, what I learned in three years of playing shows in regional France has been invaluable, now it’s time to apply all that learning.”
“I’m excited, I’m really excited about it!” Arena said, “Being able to creatively not having to answer to anyone but myself. I’ve got some extraordinary people I’m going to be working with.”
Arena’s most recent performance was her appearance at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras after party. Her appearance included a troupe of very hot men dressed in leather and flames that shot up from the stage as she sang ‘You Set Fire to My Life’.
“The hot men in leather, they were good!” proclaims Arena, “it was very hot though, I’ve never worked in an environment that is that hot, it was mental.” Arena says she had lots of fun performing at Mardi Gras, but the show’s technical aspects were demanding.
Arena acknowledges that some people were disappointed that she only performed one number at the party. “I know, there are people that were disappointed about that and a couple people have asked ‘Why didn’t you do ‘Don’t Hide’, it’s the theme song’.
“Well I don’t run Mardi Gras,” Arena explains, “I don’t make the rules for Mardi Gras. I was asked to perform one song, I go in and I do my best and I go out, that’s just the way it works. People need to know that – and they don’t know that – they think that I rule the roost, and I don’t rule the roost.
“Mardi Gras is an organism that’s been around for a long time and they know what they’re doing, and we just do what they’d like us to do,” Arena said rising above the criticism. “It was fun, we had a good time, it was brief but it was good!”
Tina Arena will be playing the Crown Theatre on Friday April 15th. Tickets are available from her website.
Graeme Watson
