It's hard to believe that the seemingly ageless Ian Moss turns 70 next year.
Even harder to believe is that the man revered as one of Australia's greatest rock guitarists watches tutorials on YouTube to improve his musicianship.
"For me, there's still more to achieve. I still want to get better as a guitar player," he says ahead of a solo acoustic gig in Canberra next month.
"I want to get better as a singer and I keep working on those things.
"These days we're fortunate enough - and I wish we had it back when I started learning - to be able to jump on YouTube and ... get lessons in any style of guitar and just keep adding new stuff to your repertoire and that's something I do with great keenness."
Kind of incredible to hear when this is the same Ian Moss who Cold Chisel bandmate Don Walker once described as "the most gifted musician I've ever seen" and who others laud as the best rock guitarist in the nation.
But, yes, Moss still wants to improve after more than 50 years in the industry, starting with Cold Chisel back in 1973 when he answered an ad for a guitarist in a shop window in Adelaide.
"Well, yeah," he says, like the concept is no-brainer.
"Firstly, those things [the plaudits] aren't true. What is true is that I keep trying to be [the best].
"That helps me keep up the drive - keep moving, keep trying new things."
From country music capital to national capital
Moss is currently on his extended River Runs Dry tour.
This year's dates kicked off on Thursday night at the Country Music Festival in Tamworth, at the iconic Longyard Hotel, in a show accompanied by his band.
Next stop on the tour is Canberra on February 9, when Moss will be playing a very different kind of show, a solo acoustic gig in the intimate surrounds of The Playhouse.
The epic tour - which started in October last year and continues until June this year - has been a mix of big festival gigs and the solo acoustic gigs.
And that suits Moss just fine.
"I love doing them both - having my cake and eating it too," he says, with a laugh.
He has performed before at The Playhouse - "fantastic room," he reckons.
"The show will be solo acoustic and for me it's really important to make sure the show is well-rounded. Make every song count.
"Of course, [I'll be playing] Bow River, Tucker's Daughter, My Baby, Telephone Booth - songs like that will be in it.
"I do have a brand new album out called Rivers Run Dry so there will be a few songs from that going into the set. As well as a couple of good old blues standards, which I love doing. Songs like Georgia On My Mind and Cry Me a River."
In Canberra, he'll be supported by award winning singer-songwriter Raechel Whitchurch. (Also, no doubt, in the audience will be Moss's brother Andrew and sister Penny who live in Canberra.)
'Everything had to earn its place in a song'
So how does he go performing such a big, sing-it-out-loud anthem such as Tucker's Daughter in a solo acoustic show?
"It still resonates because you're starting off with great material," Moss says.
"It's still going to work no matter how you do it - with a band, an orchestra, solo, on a piano, on a mandolin."
That was something he learnt in the days of Cold Chisel, the Aussie band that started as an Adelaide pub rock act and ended up in the ARIA Hall of Fame, their songs part of the Australian consciousness and experience.
But there was a lot of hard work and grind to create a classic song such as Flame Trees or Khe Sanh and Cold Chisel's pianist and chief songwriter, Don Walker, was the master of that.
"Way back in the old days when Cold Chisel was just starting, it was Don Walker who was ever so pedantic about making sure not only every last word, but every last syllable counted," Moss says.
"Everything had to earn its place in that song if you wanted a song to work and be popular, for not just today and not just tomorrow, but for the next 50 years."
Those are lessons that can't be taught on YouTube.
Walker co-wrote Tucker's Daughter with Moss, his debut single released in November 1988.
It sat in the Top 10 for 11 weeks and hit No. 1 for two weeks, selling more than 73,000 copies.
Stepping in for Jimmy
Moss will also be performing in the Canberra region at the inaugural Stranded in the Snowys music festival at the Lake Crackenback resort from February 12 to 16.
He's stepped in for his Cold Chisel bandmate Jimmy Barnes, who had open heart surgery just before Christmas.
Stranded in the Snowys, which will also feature other big acts including Richard Clapton, Jon Stevens, The Black Sorrows and Barnes's daughter Mahalia Barnes, is the brainchild of the Music in Paradise group, which usually hosts music and surfing events in luxury destinations such as the Maldives, Bali and the Whitsundays.
Numbers are capped to give the event the atmosphere of a private party.
Barnes, meanwhile, is due to return to the stage in April with some rescheduled shows in the Hunter Valley, Tasmania and Bendigo as part of the Red Hot Summer Tour.
"He's going all right, it's all heading in the right direction," Moss says.
"I spoke to him a few days ago and he said, 'It's all going well but I've got a bit of a road ahead of me to come back fully'.
"But it sounds very positive and I look forward to seeing him back on stage in April."
River runs dry
River Runs Dry is Moss's eighth studio album. His first, Matchbook, released in 1989, was a massive hit, winning five ARIAs including Best Australian Album, Australian Song of the Year for Tucker's Daughter and Best Australian Album. Moss was also named Best Australian Male Artist.
Thirty-four years later, Moss is still producing music and says the word everyone keeps using to describe River Runs Dry is "eclectic".
"People are talking about how different it all is, how every song is different to the next, but they all fit on the one record," he says.
"It doesn't bother me [what people say]. I just want to make sure I'm happy with all the songs.
"For me, the stories, the lyrics are the most important.
"So, with this album, as with the last album, Ian Moss, which I released in March 2018, there is a very strong input from the writing point of view.
"But I have got some great co-writers, people like Troy Cassar-Daley and Lucy DeSoto, for example. There's some terrific stories.
"The title track, Rivers Run Dry, Lucy and I started writing that for a very special close childhood mate of mine from my hometown of Alice Springs who back in the beginning of COVID managed to overdo it on the cigarettes and wasn't looking after his health and had a massive stroke and at the commencement of the song, we weren't sure if he was going to pull through at all.
"It was pretty dark. So that's written for him."
Now, my rivers run dry, aren't you my friend
As the red dirt cloud comes screaming in
There'll be no more rendezvous
At the watering hole we knew so well
And all the stories that we tell
We were always raising hell
Now, we're a long, long way from then
My friend
The next generation
Earlier this month, The Rivers Run Dry - Deluxe Edition was released containing six previously unreleased live tracks recorded at Sydney's Enmore Theatre on the tour last August.
Among the musicians playing on some of those tracks was Moss's 20-year-old son Julian, who has a stirring, deep voice.
He and his dad do a duet on Rivers Run Dry of the Stevie Wonder song Blame it on the Sun.
Music is something Julian is pursing as a career in Sydney, where Moss has lived since 1976.
"Oh, absolutely," Moss says.
"Listen, I'm going to have to do something about soundproofing. He's in the next room and he gets stuck into writing and recording new material every day."
Moss isn't one to pooh-pooh new music - he loves and welcomes it and reckons it's "ever expanding and evolving".
"I get introduced to a lot of stuff through my son," he says.
"I'm a bit lazy going about looking for it but he's always playing new stuff and saying, 'Have your heard this? Have your heard this?' It's great to have children who can keep us in touch."
Not finished yet
So, as he looks to turn 69 in March and 70 next year, Moss says he is happy to still be performing.
"With this whole industry, even when we started, we had no idea whether we were going to make it or not," he says.
"So you just play it day by day and pray that it works because most of us never got a degree or a trade that we could always fall back on. It was either this was going to work or ... Sink or swim, boys.
"Funny industry in a lot of ways, you couldn't sign up for a job that offered you perks or superannuation. But that's what drove you and made us work hard and keep coming up with songs."
- Ian Moss performs his River Runs Dry acoustic solo show at The Playhouse in Canberra on Friday, February 9 at 8pm. Tickets from the venue or www.ianmoss.com.au/tour/
- The VIP ticket includes a meet and greet with Moss during the soundcheck.
