One performance was in the wild surrounds of Melbourne Zoo.

“It was amazing, it was the best round of touring I’ve ever done,” Pyke says.

“There were 11 shows and 10 were sold out, including 3500 people in Melbourne which I was never anticipating, especially for a solo show. The whole thing was awesome.”

Pyke is now on the road again for the second leg of his Lone Wolf solo tour which will see him travel to remote regions, many of which he is visiting for the first time.

Amongst his new horizons is Cessnock.

“I’d say 50 per cent of the places I have never been to,” Pyke says.

“I’m going to small regional centres that I’d never even heard of, let alone played.”

Cessnock, though, was familiar to Pyke.

He had heard about the town as a child.

“My dad was an architect and project manager for the public works department, and he built the jail down there,” Pyke explains.

“He was there a lot for a period of time, so I heard a lot about Cessnock.”

And the songwriter stresses that the small towns will get a live experience on par with the major cities.

“Something I’ve worked on really hard as a performer is making sure the show will be consistent wherever I’m playing,” Pyke says.

“I’ve got my own mixing desk that I tour with so I can make sure that whatever venue I’m in, it will be a great show.

“So the only variable is the crowds.”

Pyke is touring in support of his fourth album, The Beginning and The End of Everything.

As his catalogue expands, the songwriter finds it harder to create a setlist to please every fan.

“The more material you get, you’re always going to disappoint somebody,” Pyke says.

“But I put a post on Facebook, before I started the solo tour, with about 20 songs and said, ‘I’m going to definitely play 10 of these songs.’

“Then I had a poll, so hopefully people will like at least 10 songs that I’m going to play.”

And while it is easier for Pyke to take an audience request during a solo set, he admits that he probably won’t remember how to play it. 

“I have limited brain capacity,” Pyke laughs.

“I’ll rehearse the 20-odd songs in the set [before the tour], but I find it hard to remember other songs off the cuff.

“There are some songs that I’ve never played live either, that have been purely studio songs, like Horse’s Head, Break Shatter Make Matter, and Covers Are Thrown off the first record.

“So if those songs were requested, I would not be able to begin to tell you how to play them.”

Although he has been busy touring throughout the first half of 2014, new music is never far from his mind.

“I’ve been off the road between the legs of these tours and here in my studio in Sydney,” Pyke says. “I’ve been writing a fair bit.

“I don’t have a plan about when I’ll make the next record, but the songs I’ve been writing have been a little less acoustic guitar-orientated and more synth-based stuff.

“I’ll see how it pans out, I’m not committing to any particular direction just yet.”

Alongside his own music Pyke has rejoined three of his contemporaries – Tim Rogers, Chris Cheney and Phil Jamieson – for another run of their successful tributes to The Beatles’ White Album.

Given that the quartet perform the record in its entirety, it is only the tracks for their encores that are up for debate.

“We do [the White Album] then the encore is whatever songs we want,” Pyke says.

“Chris is thinking Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds would be a good encore.

“Phil is really set on The Ballad of John and Yoko, which I think would be great as well.”

Between touring commitments Pyke has also been working with a friend on a heavier psychedelic record.

However, the project has experienced a few hiccups.

“We were called Slumber Jack, and we’d had that name on the boil since we were about 20, but we realised there’s an electro act from WA that is doing quite well on Triple J Unearthed that is called Slumber Jack,” Pyke says.

“I guess we have to let that dream go.

“We’ve probably got about 10 songs, so now we’re just recording them.

“Last Friday we had to recreate a whole song that we’d recorded, because I accidentally deleted it when I was drunk.

“So we had to start from scratch from just listening to this rough mix that I had done, which was a really interesting experience in itself.”

Pyke struggles to describe the diverse sound of his now nameless new project. 

“Parts of it are mellow and Sparklehorse-y and then some of it has a lot looped drums and weird echoed vocals,” he says. “It’s a lot of fun.

“Lyrically, we’re both obsessed with The Fortean Times [paranormal magazine] – it’s about ghosts, cryptozoology, crop circles, that sort of thing.

“So thematically [the album] is about weird, paranormal stuff.

“I’d like to have it out by the end of the year.”

The heavier aspects of his new project echo of the louder bands Pyke played in as a young musician, before the folk direction that would make him a household name.

“My first band was a cross between the Foo Fighters and At The Drive-In,” Pyke recalls.

“I probably listen to that sort of music more than mellow stuff anyway.

“The music I really love listening to is bands like Arcade Fire and The National, where it’s a mix of excellent vocals and great story-telling but heavier and interesting in its production.”

When Pyke spoke to the Maitland Mercury last year he mentioned that he was also writing music with his good friend Lior.

But that project has slowed.

“That’s been put on the backburner at the moment, because he’s on tour with his record and I’m on tour with mine,” Pyke says.

“We’re trying to set aside a bit of time in August and September for that.”

As for the rest of the year, Pyke hopes to find time for one other special record.

“I’ve been working on a kid’s album for ages, since I’ve had kids, so I’d like to do something with that, as a fun moment-in-time project,” he says.

“It’s something else I’ve been working on - I’ve always got something on the boil.”

Josh Pyke plays Cessnock Performing Arts Centre on Saturday, June 28.

Tickets are available from the venue on www.cessnock.nsw.gov.au or 4990 7134.

Alive has a double pass to give away to the show.

For your chance to win simply fill out the coupon in today's Maitland Mercury and return it to our office by noon on Wednesday.

The White Album concerts are at the Sydney Opera House on July 18, 19 and 20.