Russell Crowe Breaks Down His New Indoor Garden Party Rock Album: 'This Is an Actual Band'

Before Russell Crowe became an Oscar-winning actor starring in films like this as Beautiful Mind, Gladiator and LA Confidential, he was a musician. Crowe picked up his first guitar at age six and has always made music alongside his more famous day job.

The Australian performer will release his new album, Prose and vs, with his band Indoor Garden Party on Friday (June 7). This is no vanity project, he says Advertising sign. “This is a real band of musicians. They play together,” he says. “We feel things out, work out what works best and then go and play them live and if another opportunity comes up, we discuss it at our next rehearsal and adjust accordingly.”

The album is rock-based, but strays into other genres with tunes like fiery revival.Let your light shine” or the traditional-tinged anthem, “Time & Kindness”.

The set was compiled over a period of several years. “It's been like a five-year process since we started playing with the songs,” he says. “Probably out of the original 11 or 12 songs I thought I was going to record, there's maybe one or two that survived and the rest are songs that came in.”

Crowe conducted the interview from his home studio in Australia, in front of a wall of classic guitars spanning the 1950s to the 1970s that he's acquired over the years, including an apple red Fender Stratocaster “played on some Billboard Top 10 single in its day,” he said.

In addition to pulling on one of these guitars when he's feeling inspired, Crowe met a luthier who now builds custom guitars for him and his friends. “We're doing some crazy stuff, man. One of the guitars we made is made entirely of Australian woods,” he says. “We made it for Ed Sheeran and gave it to him. He just turned around, grabbed it and sang a song that I have in the video. And this song, which had not been released, two months later was at the top of the charts all over the world.”

Crowe and the band will embark on their first US tour in over a dozen years in August, and featured stops will include Los Angeles' acclaimed Whisky-A-Go-Go. Before Crowe arrives in the US, the band will embark on a short European tour that includes the famous Glastonbury festival in England alongside headliners SZA, Coldplay and Dua Lipa. The festival will take place June 26-30.