RIDGEFIELD — Singer/songwriter Colin Hay — the voice behind ’80s anthems “Down Under,” “Overkill,” and “Who Can It Be Now?”— is back on the road. Backed by a full band, Hay is making his only Connecticut stop at The Ridgefield Playhouse on Friday, August 13, at 8 pm.

Hay recently spoke with The Newtown Bee about his new album of beloved cover tunes, I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself, his band, and what he has planned for his playhouse audience.

"I've had this band for a number of years," he said. "They're all Los Angeles based. We've got three Cubans, one from Guatemala, and my wife, Cecilia, sings with us — she's from Peru. She did a record in Havana a few years ago and met this young musician who was brilliant. So when she went to find him for my band, we learned that he had defected to Tampa. Once we found him, she brought him here and he's been working with Cecilia and me ever since.

"His name is San Miguel Perez," Hay continued. "And he knew about a bass player who also came over from Cuba who started playing with me also. They're highly skilled musicians and they bring a lot of heart and spontaneity — a great bunch of people."

At home during quarantine in early 2021, Hay said he learned Gerry Marsden had died and found himself strumming the Gerry and the Pacemakers hit, “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying.” He decided to turn on the tape machines and share the stripped-down results with his frequent collaborator/producer, Chad Fischer, who asked for more of the same.

What came back after some exceptional production work by Fischer, Hay said, were the cuts that make up I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself, his latest studio album that is set to drop August 6. This new project features ten versions of some of Colin’s particular favorites — songs tied to memories and eras in his life.

These lushly arranged versions showcase Hay’s ability to interpret a song and remind one just how instantly recognizable his voice is. While most of the songs are from the ’60s, Hay does a moving version of the Scottish group Del Amitri’s heartbreaking “Driving With the Brakes On,” which he calls “simply one of the best songs ever written.”

In addition to I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself, Hay is at work on a collection of originals, which he said his Ridgefield audience might hear a sampling of on August 13.

Hay’s love for music was born in his native Scotland, where, working at his parents's record store, he heard all the hits of the day, from the Kinks’s “Waterloo Sunset” and Faces’s “Ooh La La” to Dusty Springfield’s “I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself,” all of which are interpreted for the new album.

"I'm doing those three songs on tour — plus 'Wichita Lineman' and 'Across The Universe,'" he said. "It's going to be a long set because I'm also playing some new and older solo material, and Men at Work stuff as well."

In the album liner notes, Hay writes, "The song choices were simple. “Waterloo Sunset” was playing through the sound system at Southampton Docks in June 1967, when I was boarding the Fairstar with my family, heading for the New World. What a sendoff."

Recalling the days of his youth working in his parents' record store in Saltcoats, Scotland, Hay writes, "it seemed Dusty Springfield always had a hit on the charts. “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself” was produced by Johnny Franz, whose team created the closest thing Britain had to the Phil Spector ”wall of sound”. Dusty Springfield’s voice is divine.

Hay said Fischer was the one who suggested “Ooh La La”, the Faces song, written by Ronnie Lane and Ronnie Woo and sung by Ronnie Wood.

"I loved Rod Stewart and the Faces, and was considering a few others. However, Brooke Fischer, Chad’s wife, fancied 'Ooh La La.' I’m a big fan of Brooke, so on it went."

Keying in on the properly plaintive and almost majestic take on "Wichita Lineman," popularized by Glen Campbell, Hay admitted he was more of a fan of the song's principal writer, Jimmy Webb. But he also recalled seeing Campbell performing the tune on his popular 1970s television show.

"I was mainly into Glen Campbell because of Jimmy Webb. I discovered Glen Campbell because he had all the hits, but he was at his best when he was singing Jimmy Webb's songs — because those songs were so great. It made for a great marriage," Hay pointed out.

Recognizing The Newtown Bee and its proximity to and coverage of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, Hay noted that despite the immense and horrific outcome of that mass shooting, gun violence continues to escalate across the nation.

"It's unbelievable that that happened, but more unbelievable that it seems to have fallen on deaf ears," he said. "It's criminal how people are so incredibly self obsessed that this kind of violence is still happening."

While completing originals for his new and soon-to-be-released solo album, Hay said it was hard to avoid being influenced by everything that was occurring across the US and around the world as political leadership changes, environmental crises, and a developing pandemic dominated public discourse.

"The news was so pervasive, you really couldn't help but have it influence the material," he said. "Whether you're talking about climate change, gun violence, or politics, the conversations were rising exponentially. Writing about all these problems wasn't really what I set out to do when I'm creating songs, but there is a song on the new [unreleased] record called 'Now In The Evermore' that was written during the start of the pandemic."

Hay said those early days of COVID-19 were punctuated by hysteria and a lot of misinformation, but at the same time, more and more people were dying.

"The song basically says if you've got something to do, or something to say, you should really do it or say it, or live it or feel it, or touch it — because you never know what's around the corner. Especially in those early days when facts were so sketchy, you really couldn't help thinking that maybe your number could be up," he said.

"So that's where that song came from — just trying to get across the fact what we all share, that we come into this world alone, and we leave it alone, and in between it's important what you do. And it's making less and less sense what humanity seems to think is important."

For more information or to purchase touchless print at home ticket ($65) go online at www.ridgefieldplayhouse.org or, you can visit or call the box office 203-438-5795. The Ridgefield Playhouse is a non-profit performing arts center located at 80 East Ridge.

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Editor John Voket can be reached at john@thebee.com

Check out Colin Hay performing "Down Under" at the 2021 G'Day USA AAA Arts Gala:

Colin Hay performs "Overkill" with special guest Trace Bundy, August 10, 2017, at Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder, Colorado: