Keith Urban is opening up about his new band members. Urban surprised fans when he announced that he had let some of his band members go, including his former band leader, Jerry Flowers.
“It’s mostly a pretty new band now,” Urban tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. Urban goes on to share how he got his new band members.
“It was people through people through people, recommend a couple of people,” Urban reveals. “I like people just sending videos, because then you can sit and watch it and get a pretty good idea of the way someone plays, and the way they are as a person.”
“All they gotta do is play along with one of my songs, one or two of them, and I get a full sense to what they do,” he adds.
Urban just kicked off his High and Alive World Tour, with his new band members, with “amazing” results, according to Urban.
“We did a few shows in Vegas with most of this new band, particularly the rhythm section,” Urban says. “But it really wasn’t until we got into full-on rehearsals, about a month ago, that I could feel, ‘Oh, here is the band.'”
Urban’s High and Alive World Tour is in support of his latest HIGH album. He is already working on his next record, which he reveals includes a duet with pop star Pink.
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“I’ve been working on a few things that are going to come out sometime this year, I think,” Urban shares. “I just did a track with Pink, a new duet with her. This will be the second one. We did ‘One Too Many.’ … I got to go to her house and do it, at her house, both of us on a microphone each at the same time. We wanted to do that with ‘One Too Many,’ but it was 2020, so we had to do it separate. So it was really nice to finally get to do it in the same room.”
HIGH is Urban’s 12th studio album. Success for Urban is now sweet, although no longer defined by the measure he once used.
“It’s a paradigm shift of realizing everything you want to do, you’re already doing,” the 57-year-old says. “You’re already heading towards it. You just have to get rid of everything that’s stopping you. You found it. You’re it. You’re doing it. You just have to get rid of everything that’s not it. You don’t have to find it. It’s already there.”
Urban’s biggest problem on tour is one he used to only dream about: having too many songs to fit into one concert.
“I’ve got more songs people know. That’s the greatest thing of all,” Urban reflects to Entertainment Tonight. “I came up playing in the clubs. I quit school at 15. I was playing four hours a night, five nights a week at 15. My mom and dad would drive me around. And I’m doing cover songs, and I remember even at that age thinking, ‘Oh man, I wish I could write one song that the audience knew and sang along with like they do with all these songs.’ And so to have that now is surreal.”
Find all of Urban’s music and upcoming shows at KeithUrban.com.