How do you like to start your weekend?
I’ve just moved to a place overlooking Carlton Gardens in Melbourne, so I just like to have a cuppa and take a walk. I’ve been working on some paintings too.

How do you like to unwind?
I actually love a swim. I like the ocean. Also I like the current fad of beer being sold on top of rooftops – that helps me unwind. Or just turning off my phone and getting lost somewhere … for 12 minutes until I get in trouble, anyway.

What are your essentials for a well-spent weekend?
Just staying creative and spending your time with the people you love.

What’s something you’ve been meaning to do on the weekend but haven’t got around to yet?
To go to the bottom of the ocean – I’ve thought about that for a while. I need to get outdoors. I need some more excuses to be outside and get amongst the healthy people, the land of living. They’re not my people. They seem so happy from a distance.

What’s your favourite thing to do on a Sunday evening?
You know I do like the traditional things in life. I come from a big Polish family, and so despite trying to make myself sound more romantic and rock ‘n’ roll like, I do like getting as many of the great people I know together and cooking a lot of food. I like a Sunday roast. It’s nice to touch base, share stories, feel part of the neighbourhood.

What are you reading at the moment?
I just started an Eric Clapton biography on the plane because I found the book on the plane and it turned out to be really good. I don’t own any of his records, but I’m intrigued now. And I just finished a book called Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck –it was great. I loved the previous book of his that I had read called Cannery Row – it’s about all of these down-and-out alcoholic guys with a very positive outlook on life, but they just spend their time looking for wine and stuff. And so when the next book turned out to be the same plot, just a different town, it was just as much fun. I was happy to go there again. I think the guy was on to a good thing. It was very tranquil. It was like The Wind in the Willows, but for hobos, you know.

Which local creative folk have you got your eye on?
I’ve been checking out these great paintings by Fraser Anderson, who creates big resin works, where he has to make the whole artwork in the time it takes to dry. There’s all this preparation and then it happens in like 30 seconds and it’s beautiful. I saw one of his exhibitions recently. Also there’s this girl I went to school with – do you know the Super Wild Horses, the band? She’s got this great cake store that she runs called Sticky Fingers Bakery. I’ve been admiring her work on Instagram and I think she’s worth a look.

What was your childhood dream?
There was this guy with long bleached white hair who wore a lot of make-up called C.C. DeVille – he was a guitarist in a band called Poison. My childhood dream was to somehow become that man. It didn’t work out. I loved guitar heroes as a kid. I loved metal.

What is success to you?
Well obviously people measure it in very different ways, but I tell you it’s about longevity. Success is to come up with something that’s timeless, that ages well, and creates a legacy for you. Something you’re proud of, something that adds to your body of work.

What are your words of wisdom?
If I had some parting words to my daughter, it would be to spend your time completely devoted to what you do, but also spend your time encouraging others. I always think that’s a big one – to look up from whatever you are obsessed with in a good or bad way, or whatever is eating you up, and just share the world with others.

Your lyrics and the stories you tell through your songs have a poetry to them – what do you turn to for inspiration in finding the right string of words?
Normally all of my best stuff comes from snippets of conversation I hear around the place. Or an interesting character will say something – which is usually something I’ve heard a million times before but maybe it just gets said by the right person – and then I can start to imagine stories around that person. It always helps to have a character for me, or to imagine someone else singing my songs.

The album draws on themes of hopefulness and dreaming – do you consider yourself a dreamer?
Yeah for sure. I wanted that hopeful thing to come through. I wanted to write about being full of hope and dreaming, but in the way that you’re dreaming while you’re at a desk of the next best thing, but you keep believing and trying to figure out new ways to overcome things that are slowing your progress. It’s all throughout society. We all have to deal with it. Unless we move to clay huts in the forest – which I often consider – but you’ve got to play the game a little bit. The important thing is to do whatever makes you buzz. You don’t have to be an artist to get inspired and be continually inspired and impressed by the world around us – that should be constant. It’s important to follow all of those instincts.

You brought this album together quite quickly – what was the process like in comparison to writing for The Panics?
With The Panics we generally start with an idea and if there are a whole lot of thumbs up regarding a direction and the sound of a song then that would probably get worked on over the next year along with a bunch of other ideas that we think fit as well. But for this album I just started with 12 or 15 little ideas in my head and then whatever I could finish in a burst would generally make the album. It was all about just documenting where my head was at the time and proving to myself that I could write quickly, record quickly and just treat it as a project, as a creative moment in my life. Like records used to be – just record that moment and move on. It was very off the cuff, but I knew once I got into an inspired head state that it was working, so doing it quickly meant that it was a cohesive project.

Will you continue to write and record solo albums?
Sporadically. This is quite a traditional album. It’s not a million miles from the sound of the band and it’s very traditional guitar/singer/songrwriter based stuff. So I think it’ll be the last time I do that. There’s no need to do it again. I just felt like doing it to spur on some other creative impulses. I love my band and it’s more fun with a team when it’s working, but it’s been nice to prove this to myself. It means that if I was in some strange country I could make an album with some locals – that doesn’t scare me anymore. I would like to do some more eccentric things.

What’s next for The Panics?
We’ve been working on a film soundtrack, where we’re working to some visual film footage. And we’re using these sessions to spur on what other ideas can come up through it for a Panics record. There’s really no pressure to create at the moment, but after the film we’ll collate all of our ideas and then go in strong for a record. We want to surprise people and start demoing soon and take it from there. We’ll make it up as we go, but it won’t sound anything like our last couple of records.

Only a local would know … in Carlton there’s an elderly couple who operates a lunch service in their house. You pay $20 and eat whatever it is that they are cooking that day and there’s room for about ten people. You have to be invited to attend by a longtime local. It’s like sitting in someone’s grandparents’ living room. It’s very, very cool.

FAVOURITE WEEKEND SPOT TO:
Perk up … The Rocks at North Bondi. They’re the best. It’s like my favourite place in the country, I reckon. Just dangling your legs off the little coral shelf there.
Relax … we go driving sometimes around the old goldfields. We’ll go for a daytrip around the tiny lost mining towns around Castlemaine and Bendigo and just park the car up and have a day in the country.
Dine … I like eating fish and chips inside the Datsun down by Halfmoon Bay in Melbourne. That’s a favourite spot.
Indulge … Backstage.
Shop … I like the South Melbourne Market because they’ll sell you one oyster at a time. That’s about all my budget can really take these days.
Catch-up … Percy’s in Carlton.
Be inspired … in a hot-air balloon.