Writing this sentence gives me a jolt.

Maybe it's because Mr Williamson - the bearded, bespectacled bush bard who has sold five million albums - has somehow seemed eternally middle-aged throughout his 50-year career.

Not young, not old, just always somewhere in the middle.

Maybe it was the beard, worn long before being appropriated by hipsters; or the catchy, heartfelt, middle-of-the-road folk and hayseed tunes, a handful of which have become woven into the nation's fabric.

At any rate, John Williamson is 75, and when I call him at home to talk about life and his forthcoming Winding Back tour, he sounds a little slower and croakier than how I remember him in TV and radio interviews, but not so much.

Since COVID, his world has changed markedly.

After decades raising with his first wife a family in Epping in suburban northwestern Sydney, Mr Williamson had been living in an apartment on Clarence Street in the Sydney CBD with his second wife Meg.

"When COVID came Sydney became a place where you could get stuck," Mr Williamson said. "Sydney is a great city, we were in a beautiful old Heritage building, but I couldn't be stuck there in COVID, I would've gone mad."

After his final pre-pandemic gig, at Twin Towns Services Club on the NSW-Queensland border, Mr Williamson decided to stay put: "I built a cottage in South East Queensland in 1987, up in the mountains, and I'd been dying to spend more than 10 days up here. Now I've spent 10 months. I'm afraid I've fallen in love with it."

Those 10 months, following the live music industry's sudden shut down in March 2020, is by far the longest period he's been musically idle.

"I don't think I've ever been more than three weeks off the road, and that's usually around Christmas - I'm always doing something. I'm a bit nervous going back."

Surely it will be like getting back on the bike?

"I'm pretty sure it will be, but I don't take it for granted. I made a resolution in the new year that I'd pick up the guitar every day and go over the songs; it's more about the concentration.

"When you're 10 months off, I've had the luxury of not having to concentrate on anything much.

"Even if I haven't sung a song in three years, it'd probably take me five minutes to brush up, but you really need to do that to get the memory going again. At my age you've got to be careful you don't drift on stage."

A solid rhythm guitarist and versatile mouth organ player, he has also kept himself amused by noodling about on guitar on new song ideas, and turning his speech at the January 23 Golden Guitars into a ditty tentatively titled Lucky Man.

The enforced sabbatical has been enjoyable, but a little strange, as Mr Williamson has spent most of his adult life criss-crossing the continent in cars, vans and planes, always heading to another soundcheck, another motel, another interview, another roadside diner, another gig, another hour signing merchandise and posing for photos with fans.

"Everyone wants a photo these days," he says, perhaps pining for an era when fans mostly left their Polaroids at home lest they get smashed, lost or coated in Spumante.

The shows number in the thousands and the journeys he and his bands and crews have racked up since the early 1970s would make an almighty mess of a map. Truth be told, he can't remember most of them - how could you possibly? - as the towns, airports, highways, byways, radio stations, pubs, clubs, theatres, community halls, parks and stadiums blur as the decades pile up.

Mr Williamson says the only places that tend to stand out are where the show wasn't great, or there was an incident.

He gives the example of a who-knows-when gig in Dubbo, when he was given the rounds of the kitchen by an elderly woman, who had been driven 300km on gravel roads in a ute by her grandson to the show, only for Williamson not to perform the song she had come to hear, Cootamundra Wattle.

Mr Williamson plans to continue doing two-hour concerts. He ensures he arrives into a town by 1pm and then sleeps for two hours.

"If I get tired, that's when the concentration goes out the window. I really get annoyed with myself if I fumble something. I like to be a perfect performer, but I don't think I am."

A longstanding rule is that nobody "drinks or smokes" anything before or during a show. Mr Williamson says he enjoys a glass of wine with the band as they wind down in the dressing room afterwards.

As for naming the tour Winding Back, he says "winding back doesn't mean farewell; it means I'm slowing, and retiring slowly. I'm lucky, I still seem to have a fair bit of youth in me. I don't want to get bored, I want it to be fun and I want to go on stage with all the enthusiasm I've always had.

"When I start doing shows where I'm not happy with my performance, that's when I'll cut if off."

John Williamson plays Orange Civic Theatre on February 12. Bookings through Ticketek.

Send us a letter to the editor using the form below ...