Rider Essentials: Adam Harvey

With a career spanning over twenty years, half a million album sales, gold and platinum albums, and eight Golden Guitar awards, Adam Harvey is one of Australia’s most popular and enduring recording artists. He is currently on tour, taking his latest album, Songs From Highway One, which hit #1 on the ARIA Top 40 Country Albums and #10 on the ARIA Albums (all genres), across New South Wales, Tasmania, Canberra, Queensland and Victoria until May. See tour information here.

Adam will co-host the 50th CMAA Golden Guitar awards alongside Beccy Cole on April 20, of which he is also up for three nominations. Although thrilled to be nominated for both ‘Album of the Year’ and ‘Traditional Album of the Year’, he says his ‘Song of the Year’ nomination for Lindeman Again, the fourth single from his Songs From Highway One album is the most special as the song is a beautiful tribute to his late father – Les Harvey – who died of cancer in 2015.

The Fred Hollows and McGrath Foundation Ambassador is also currently writing a book titled Tales from the Road, which is a collection of stories from Adam and his country music mates chronicling some of the funny, inspiring and downright scary things that have happened on tour over the years.

We caught up with Adam to find out the things he always takes on the road with him for this week’s Rider Essentials.

1. Gig Bag

The band used to laugh when I would turn up at the gig carrying nothing but a plastic shopping bag. Now I always bring a proper gig bag which contains guitar strings, headphones, batteries of all different sizes, hand sanitizer, guitar leads, adapters, chargers, etc. I just hate it when you're at a gig, and you need to fix or replace something but don't have the right tool or item to do the job.

2. Medical kit

My toiletry bag doubles as a medical kit with band aids, bandages, disinfectant, antibiotics, aspirin, gastro tablets, betadine, etc. There is nothing worse than getting sick on the road when you have to perform a show every night. I spend most of my time touring regional Australia and finding a doctor in a country town can be almost impossible.

3. My guitar

I prefer to carry my guitar with me rather than leave it with the production crew. Travelling across the country can be very inspiring and you never know when a song idea might strike. Although sometimes I look back at a song idea and think... What the hell was I drinking when I thought that was a good idea?!

4. Too many clothes

There is nothing worse than running out of clean clothes on tour, especially socks and undies. I always pack my own case too. On one trip a few years ago, my wife packed my suitcase for me and when I arrived in Nashville and opened my case, she had packed all of her lacy undies instead of mine!

5. My wife

Now that our kids don't like us anymore (yes, they are teenagers), my wife Kathy always comes on tour with me. It’s so nice to be able to show her all the places I go to. I used to come home from tour and tell Kathy about these places while she was at home raising our babies.

Keep up to date with Adam Harvey on his Facebook page here.

For more of our Rider Essentials series, go here.

Image: Supplied