You Am I celebrate 25 years together with tour and album

You Am I celebrates its anniversary with a new album and tour.

Tim Rogers, David Lane, Andy Kent and Rusty Hopkinson from Aussie band You am I.

Tim Rogers really knows how to live in the moment, or so someone told him recently. “I love that,” says the You Am I frontman, “because fear has ruled my life so much that I was always too fearful to live in the moment. I was too wary of the future and too chained to the past.”

The singer’s new code for living is reflected in the songs from You Am I’s latest album, Porridge and Hotsauce, which is released next week. As the band embarks on its 25th anniversary tour, Rogers, 46, long considered one of rock’s most colourful and provocative stage presences, is taking a more considered and mature approach, at least off stage. The new song Bon ­Vivants, somewhat ironically, addresses that issue head-on.

“I think bon vivant has often been mistaken for someone living with mild riches, living it up beyond their means,” says Rogers. “Here it means more that what you do have is your carapace and very little else.” Thus the national You Am I jaunt, which continues in Hallam, Victoria, this evening, is being billed as the Bargain Basement Bon Vivants Tour.

You Am I has had a passionate following since becoming a household name in the 1990s with albums such as Hourly, Daily and Hi Fi Way. Through thick and thin and several career diversions the four members — Rogers, guitarist Davey Lane, drummer Rusty Hopkinson and bassist Andy Kent — have stuck together, a close unit reuniting for the occasional tour. When they hit the stage this evening the bond will be as close as it ever was, Rogers says.

“The funniest part for me is how a minute before we go on stage the feeling is still the same — panic, excitement, doubt — and desperately trying to conjure up something new because it can’t just be the songs as they are. I don’t have that much faith in the songs as they are written in words and music, so you have to have a lot of trust and belief — as I do have — in my brothers and in myself.”

Certainly it’s as a live attraction that Rogers and his colleagues have earned their reputation as one of Australia’s most committed acts, not least in the way their singer and chief songwriter can engage an audience — and, without much warning, become a part of it if the mood takes him.

After performing about 2800 shows in those 25 years, Rogers is well aware of his responsibility front and centre, but he’s not always comfortable with it. How the audience is responding can decide whether it has been a good night at the office.

“Too often I’ve been distracted by that,” says Rogers. “What I like to see now, more than anything, is that people are moving, particularly dancing. To play when people are dancing feels really participatory.

“If people aren’t moving that’s when I start getting nervous. I do shows where people sit down and listen, but with a rock band like us, if I don’t see people moving I feel like I haven’t done my job.

“Rock ’n’ roll music is essentially for dancing or f..king. I’m not very voyeuristic with sex; I prefer to be involved. I’d rather see ­dancing. And for god’s sake, you can’t hear anything I’m singing about when You Am I are playing. We’re so loud. It’s more about a primal reaction. People actually listening? Ha.”

Hopefully punters will listen to the recorded versions of You Am I’s new songs. Porridge and Hotsauce was recorded in New York at the studio of Daptone Records, home to acts such as Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings and Charles Bradley, among others. The seven days recording there came about because Hopkinson distributes the label in Australia through his own Reverberation Records label.

As with all You Am I albums the songs are s a mix of rock ’n’ roll swagger with traces of blues, soul, pop and more within the grooves. Rogers says his colleagues are more responsible than he is for the wealth of influences abundant in the music, particularly on this album, where he wanted the others to be more involved in the songwriting process.

“The others in the band are smarter than I am and their music knowledge is greater than mine,” he says. “I just have a bit of chutzpah and some ignorance that helps me push ideas through.”

The recording session for their 10th studio album was arranged hastily, so although Rogers had 50 songs “kind of half-written”, they didn’t have time to construct many of them before they went to New York. That, says the singer, worked in their favour.

“By the time we hit Daptone in New York there was still a lot that hadn’t been worked out. So in a great way, like the way we made our first three records, we went in underprepared, but something just happened.”

The album was completed across four days in Melbourne with ­producer John Castle.

The result matches the band’s familiar bluster with a slightly more refined sheen, but with a simple and direct approach to the delivery.

“I know everyone in a band these days wants to lightly brush everything with a thin veneer of psychedelia,” says Rogers. “I deal with psychedelia enough just getting through the day, so I wanted this to be very direct and like a quick bar-room brawl, but the two brawlers drink Pernod afterwards.”

Lurking on the drinking analogy, Rogers says You Am I’s well-earned reputation as a hard-living rock act is not one that he tries to maintain, particularly when it means going out on stage every night for a few months.

“I’ve worked out 20 years too late that you have to start at the bottom each night,” he says. “There are days when I think, f..k it, I’ll just start drinking now and do whatever and hope that the great wandering spirit of rock ’n’ roll is going to grab us in its teeth and drag us through. It’s not going to happen.”

Porridge and Hotsauce is released through You Am I’s YAI Records on November 6. The band’s Bargain Bin Bon Vivants tour ends in Melbourne on December 4.