Josh Pyke has a new album Best of, B-side & Rarities but wants help to find his old boat SS Maton

RUSSELL Crowe doesn’t have it. Neither does Michael Gudinski. So where is the SS Maton? The singer-songwriter who made it famous would like to know.

Josh Pyke in his studio.

JOSH Pyke would like one more spin around Sydney Harbour on his famous guitar boat.

The SS Maton was built to co-star in his video for the 2008 single Make You Happy which featured Pyke sailing around Sydney Harbour.

As the beloved singer-songwriter celebrates the release of his Best of, B-side & Rarities album, he is putting the call out to find the guitar boat.

The SS Maton was sold for more than $7000 in an eBay silent auction in 2009 to raise money for the Indigenous Literary Foundation.

It was rumoured to have been bought by actor Russell Crowe for his Museum Of Interesting Things near Grafton but Pyke has since discovered it isn’t there.

He then suspected his former label boss Michael Gudinski might have forked out for the unique vessel but that also seems to have been a furphy.

Photos of Pyke and the floating guitar went viral and still pop up on memes, including one captioned Haters Gonna Hate.

RELATED: Josh Pyke’s battles with anxiety

Josh Pyke on SS Maton in 2008. He’s been trying to find it without success. Picture: News Corp Australia

“I’ve asked everybody but we don’t know who bought it. It could be sitting in a warehouse somewhere or it could be sitting on someone’s dam,” he says.

“If we could find it, I would happily take it out on the harbour again. It made its way around the world with stories about it from the UK to China.”

That video cost $25,000 to make. And that was the same amount Pyke lost on his first national tour despite his debut album Memories and Dust reaching the top 5 in Australia in 2007 and the artist scoring a lucrative international recording deal with Island Records in the UK.

While he has enjoyed a successful recording and touring career in Australia, he said it was initially a struggle to stay financially afloat.

Pyke worked in a record store and “other shitty jobs” as he had his crack at a life in music with punk band An Empty Flight and for the first four years as a solo artist.

“I lost so much more money than I had in those first years. I remember coming back from doing the support for a John Butler tour and he paid me really well, my debut album Memories and Dust had just gone gold and I was told I would lose $25,000 on that tour alone,” he recalls.

“I didn’t have any money, I was still living at home. And I remember the first time I played the Enmore Theatre, even though it was sold out, that show alone cost me $10,000 because of all the props and everything we made for it.

“Everything was going so well but I felt I was barely treading water. I had to hang in there and believe it was going to be all right.”

A couple of years later, Pyke got a taste of how the other half of successful musicians lived when he was signed to Island Records.

He got the rock star treatment, played at the legendary Glastonbury festival and realised every minute of his tours throughout the UK and Europe was a moment to savour.

“There were limos coming to pick me up and I was getting taken out to all these beautiful dinners and I knew it wouldn’t last forever so I decided to just ride the wave,” he says.

“The thing which was most surprising and appealing to me was the free booze. Every time I came home from touring or festivals, I would have a bag of all the leftover free booze which we would call the spoils of war.”

Fast forward a decade and Pyke is an artist who has carved a sustainable career, releasing five studio albums, one live record and now the Best Of.

His gigs, big and small, are sold out and he gets to write with all manner of up and coming artists or work on special projects, including the new television series for award-winning children’s entertainer and actor Justine Clarke.

Pyke is collaborating with Justine Clarke for her new TV series. Picture: Supplied

She is a bigger star in the eyes of his young sons Archer and Augie who “freaked out” when she would come over to his inner Sydney home to work in the studio in the backyard.

And clearly to the waitress at a local cafe who recognised Clarke but asked him if he had ever been told he looks like Josh Pyke.

“I feel like I had done a fair bit of stuff on my own and the only person who matters to them is Justine,” he says, laughing.

“I thought the waitress might have been joking until she said ‘Well, you really do look like Josh Pyke but obviously you’re not him’.

“So I pointed out I was sitting with the real Justine Clarke and she says ‘yeah, of course I recognised Justine, I was trying to keep it on the downlow. I met Josh Pyke once and he was a really nice guy.

“How can I ever go there any more? I can’t ever correct the situation, it was like a Larry David episode.”

HEAR: Best of, B-sides & Rarities, Josh Pyke (Wonderlick/Sony) out tomorrow.

SEE: The Best of Josh Pyke tour kicks off at the Enmore Theatre, Sydney on July 28, Corner Hotel, Melbourne, August 4, Triffid, Brisbane, August 11. For all dates, joshpyke.com