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“I’m sort of weird breed and I get up really early,” says veteran musician Joe Camilleri when I ask him to talk about how busy he is these days.

Despite the fact that he has just passed his 60^th birthday, Camilleri shows no signs of slowing down. When we meet he has just returned from some gigs in South Australia and in the next month is hopping between dates in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. He has a new Bakelite Radio album out but decided to release a single and a new DVD under The Black Sorrows moniker.

So is his main band The Black Sorrows or Bakelite Radio?

“It’s the same thing really,” says Camilleri. “I keep thinking that’s the best thing to do. But Bakelite Radio has been going for a long time too. We’ve done three albums. It was a different thing when it started. The same players seemed to gravitate back to the fold. Bakelite Radio started with Wayne Burt and myself and Nick Heyward. Then it sort of moved away and it became a much bigger outfit.”

For the Bakelite Radio album Camilleri plays sax, guitar, harp, Hammond, piano, vibes, moog – and he is lead vocalist. (You get the feeling that he could make the whole album himself if he needed to!). Joe Creighton is on bass and vocals, Tony Floyd on drums, percussion and backing vocals, Claude Carranza is lead guitarist and also provides BVs and the Reverend James Black is on piano and Hammond.

Volume IV sees Camilleri’s group tackle some classic New Orleans songs such as Dr John’s ‘Right Place, Wrong Time’ and ‘Such A Night’ as well as Allen Toussaint’s ‘Yes We Can’ and ‘Viva La Money.’ There is also a cover of Daniel Lanois’ ‘Ice’ and JJ Cale’s ‘Lean On Me.’ Added to that are half a dozen powerful originals, mainly written by Camilleri and songwriting partner Nicki Smith. It is a classy album but its origin didn’t have a strong New Orleans influence.

“I made a country record in the style of volumes Two and Three – more country soul,” explains Camilleri. “Then Joe Creighton joined the band and he’s a funkster and I love that kind of music and Claude Carranza and Joe play that music incredibly well. We started doing other things live and he some King Floyd – ‘Baby Let Me Kiss You’ and ‘Groove Me’ – and he was bringing those things to the gigs and rehearsals. So Volume 4 started shifting. I ended up with thirty songs. It was kind of a wacky way of kind of getting what I thought was a reasonable record.”

“Then I started doing things like, I wanted to do ‘Yes We Can,’ he continues. “I wanted to get all these people to sing on ‘Yes We Can.’ I thought that would be a great charity song for the Children’s’ Hospital and got a few people interested in that but it never sort of got off the ground. Then I had all these little songs going everywhere and it ended up like that.”

Of course, the album is not really the fourth volume in the series at all, rather the third. It was just Camilleri‘s cheeky sense of humour that had him title the group’s debut as Volume 2!

“Well, I went into the studio to do Volume One because people keep calling out for it,” laughs Camilleri. “I do love it when people say, ‘I’ve got all your records. I’ve got Volume one and two and three. I don’t want to buy this one and I say, ‘That’s interesting because no-one else in the universe has a got a copy of Volume One can I have a copy so I can make a copy to sell it to someone else’.”

The musical goalposts keep shifting too as Camilleri explains how he is thinking of making an album of Everly Brothers’ songs.

”We keep talking about an Everly Brothers record because we love that thing,” he says of his discussions with bassist Creighton. “We loved the O’Kanes, that was a similar style – the next generation. We do Everly Brothers occasionally as a live performance and he loves singing.”

Camilleri is even thinking of recording a new album in Nashville later this year.

“Yes, I’m trying to do that,” he admits. “Me and Nick [Smith] have been writing a whole bunch of songs and I wanted to make a record in Nashville, purely because of some of the musicians there. I don’t want to make a standard country record. I want to make the record but use these people to bring something else to the project that I probably wouldn’t get here. I think you can get maybe two hundred banjo players and three hundred mandolin players and people that would be interested in a different way of helping you put it together.”

As you may have gathered, Camilleri is a man of exceptionally eclectic musical taste.

“Well, I started off as a music fan and I still am to some degree,” he recalls. “I don’t listen to music the way that you listen to music. You get new music all the time. I don’t chase it down as much as I used to as a younger man but I just love the things that I love and I dig that mine for material.

“I didn’t know anything about that Allen Toussaint song. I didn’t realise it was such a big hit. I just liked it. I didn’t even hear his version I heard someone else’s version and I didn’t realise how many versions of that song were recorded but it moved me and I just love the simplicity of it. It involves a great tale and I love that.”

“So I’m dealing with those things,” he explains. “I love my jazz records and I still have Head records and Jazzhead Records, documenting Australian jazz records and I enjoy that. I love the blues and I love country music and soul music – though I feel they’re all the same thing. I’m interested in those people, I’m interested in buying things that relate to those things that I like.”

Camilleri has also just financed the Four Days At Sing Sing DVD which is about to be released. He says that he stubbornly resisted the temptation to include older material.

“I got a bit peeved that they wanted me to make a DVD of just old songs,” he says, “and I just didn’t want to do that. So I thought, ‘I’ll go out and make a DVD that represents what I’ve been doing with the Bakelite Radio and The Black Sorrows over the last four or five years.’ I thought that was more interesting and more international than just putting out versions of ‘Harley & Rose’ – you can get that on YouTube.

“I’ve also got a rocking little band and we’ve still got a good heartbeat and we still love playing together and in my weird way I wanted to show them off.”

Of course, you can see Joe Camilleri with Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons at Narooma early next month.

“Yes, one more stand,” he laughs. “We’re going to do it one more time.”

“The last time we played together was the weekend Ray Charles died and something happened that night,” he recalls of their previous reunion. “We started off and it was great and then it just fell apart. Then I said to myself, ‘I never, ever, ever want to do this again.’ Then we did the Hall Of Fame and that turned me round and I said, ‘If they’re willing to do it and they want to rehearse - once – we can, I’ll do it again.’ As long as we can do some things that are outside….we do ‘The Shape I’m In’ and ‘Hit & Run’ – but there are other songs.”

“A different sort of Joe Liggins song or ‘Saturday Night Fish Fry’,” says Camilleri when I ask what other songs he would like the group to perform. “Those sort of songs, a few jump songs that would make it interesting. I don’t want to do exactly the same kind of set. I’ve emailed everybody and asked them to pick a few songs. Like a Louis Jordan song might be of some interest.”

Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons appear at The Great Southern Blues & Rockabilly Festival on Saturday October 4. Bakelite Radio Volume IV is on sale now.