James Bay reveals he gave up crunching tackles to shred guitar as he announces 2016 Australia tour

HOLD Back The River star, James Bay, confirms dates for a national tour and keeps Australian fans fires burning.

james Bay

SKATEBOARDING remains James Bay’s only guilty pleasure activity, with the English singer and guitarist giving up sport for music.

The Hold Back The River star, who tried to cure his jet lag with a sprint across the Sydney Harbour Bridge at dawn on Wednesday, said he quit rugby to save his fingers for guitar shredding.

“I love skateboarding, but I had to stop playing sports to save my fingers. Playing the guitar means too much to me and having broken fingers is not an attractive thing.

“Broken anything isn’t good,” he said.

The rock cat in the hat has been one of the breakout chart stars of this year, with Hold Back The River and Let It Go keeping him on the road throughout Europe and America.

He is back in town for his second visit in six months, a sold-out gig in Sydney and to announce the Chaos and the Calm national tour in will return to Australia in early 2016.

Like Ed Sheeran, Bay plans to keep the Australian fan fires stoked with face time here where Hold Back The River claimed triple platinum sales, and Let It Go recently reached the platinum mark of 70,000 copies sold.

His debut album Chaos and the Calm has sold more than one million copies since its March release, with Bay performing in front of 70,000 people at the Glastonbury festival in the UK in June, and in front of tens of thousands of American fans at Lollapalooza in Chicago last week.

It’s a long way from the London pub basement gigs he was playing in front of 100 people before he scored a record deal.

Festival prince ... Bay has been drawing crowds of tens of thousands of fans to sing along to Hold Back The River at his American and European festival sets. Picture: Rich Fury/Invision/AP

“It’s still just getting started for me, and I plan on making two or three more visits to all these places before I hide away to come back with new stuff,” he said.

One of Bay’s goals for world domination is to help orchestrate the return of the guitar solo.

With only a debut album’s worth of songs to play, he is relishing the opportunity to stretch out on the axe jams.

“Everyone was adamant the guitar solo had gone away and maybe people did bored of them,” Bay said.

“As long as it has a good melody, it will come around again. The sax and horns have come back and on a whole other level, the best thing about guitar solos is there are no rules.”

Tickets go on sale from August 20 for the national tour, which kicks off at Arts Centre, Fremantle on January 30 and heads to AEC Theatre, Adelaide on February 2, Festival Hall, Melbourne on February 3, Hordern Pavilion, Sydney on February 6 and Brisbane Convention Centre on February 7.

Originally published as James Bay reveals he gave up crunching tackles to shred guitar as he announces 2016 Australia tour