Diesel By Request…

Following overwhelming demand and a string of sold-out performances, beloved singer-songwriter and guitar virtuoso, Diesel has announced a brand new spring edition of his acclaimed BY REQUEST tour, taking his uniquely audience-driven live experience to twenty two venues across New South Wales and Victoria this October and November. Returning to regional stages after the enormous success of the tour’s first chapters, BY REQUEST places the setlist firmly in the hands of the audience, with fans invited to submit the songs they want to hear before each performance – cover songs included. Also drawing from a catalogue that spans more than four decades, the result is an intimate, unpredictable and deeply personal evening where every show takes on a life of its own.

From fan favourites and chart-topping classics through to deep cuts and unexpected gems, BY REQUEST continues to offer audiences a rare opportunity to shape the soundtrack of the evening. The tour has also become known for its spontaneous moments, with Diesel often dipping into the music that inspired him along the way, creating a show that feels equally like a concert, a conversation and a celebration of live music. Diesel (aka Mark Lizotte) talks to Rob Lyon about By Request.

You’ve got to be excited with the by‑request shows picking up again in October?
I feel like it’s something that I could just really make a habit of. I’m really enjoying the difference that the request element makes to the show. It gives deeper level of connection, without a doubt.

Does it really keep you on your toes with rehearsing songs that may not normally make the set list?
There’s that, and I mean, I’ve been sort of free‑falling, I guess, with the solo show for quite a while. I can’t remember when I stopped using a setlist, but at some point I just thought it was pointless when I’m basically going up there on my own. There’s no one to answer to, so I stopped having setlists and I would just read the audience. So I guess this is a more accurate version of that, being that I’m actually literally reading the audience and seeing what they want. But yeah, the constricts of a setlist totally make sense with a band, because you’ve got other people that need to know what the hell’s going on. With the solo thing, I’ve been pretty free about it for a while.

Have there been any song choices that have really taken you by surprise?
Oh, look, yeah, things from musicals always are a funny. I wouldn’t say I’m not a fan of musicals, but it’s definitely a challenge for me. I’m musical‑challenged. But yeah, it’s funny how people get really excited about a song, or it’s a song that they just love so much, it’s almost like they don’t care who the artist is. It’s like, oh, here’s my chance to get someone to sing it for me, it’s like, okay.

After I did this thing for Triple M years ago, it was this thing they used to do in the morning where they would get artists to sing random songs,they threw me a song by Barry Manilow. Man, I’m not a Barry Manilow hater at all, I think he’s a very talented songwriter, and it was like I Write the Songs. Okay, wow, that’s a really… it’s almost like a camp, kind of over‑the‑top lyric, you know? “I write the songs that make the whole world sing, I write songs of love and special things,” or something. Anyway, I just thought, you know what, if I twist this to a bravado thing, like a Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf type blues kind of unconditional confidence, like a confident‑man type blues song, that’s what I did. I thought, I’m going to make a blues song out of this and it was an experiment that I wasn’t sure was going to work, but those lyrics really made sense in a blues kind of realm. They just kept playing that for years, actually. They made it into their playlist, and people would say, “Oh, I heard your Barry Manilow song again on the radio.” That was pretty funny. So that was a hallmark, a benchmark of… yeah, don’t ever get caught up about the clothes that the song is dressed in, because underneath there, there’s a song, and you can interpret it in so many different ways.

Have there been any cities that have surprised you, particularly with this type of format of show?
Yeah, I think Melbourne was… surprisingly, I thought they were going to go nutso with all their requests, and they were pretty subdued, actually. Great audience, great audience, but I’m finding more of the regional areas where people, I guess, have got more time. Understandably, they’ve got a little bit less clutter in their lives, maybe, and they’re getting really into writing letters to me almost about why they want the song and stuff. Because we have a little section where, after they’ve looked at the ideas that I give them, I give them three menus to look at, and it’s all very food‑themed. So I think it’s signature dishes, which are like my singles, and today’s specials, which is kind of other things that have become cult classics, I suppose. Then fusion cuisine, which is things that I’ve done with other people or for other people. So that’s kind of the collaborative word being changed to fusion.

Do you think you’ll take this tour even broader around the country again heading into summer?
I almost feel like every show should be by request, especially the solo shows. But I mean, I could see it working with the band too. Midnight Oil, they did this thing where they had a wheel on stage, where they just turned this big wheel, which I thought was really brave.

I was at one of those, that was fantastic.
You could see their brains ticking as the wheel landed on something, and then the two guitar players, Martin and Jim, would congregate, go “okay,” and boom, off they’d go. It was all muscle memory. You can’t say their songs are all, well, you know, Irish folk songs, but they’re pretty much the same with a few different twists in the lyrics or something. It’s so intricate and different, and there are a lot of parts to remember. They’re very much about parts, that band. I thought that was really brave, and it sets the bar very high. It’s exciting for the audience and for me as well, and it makes me scratch my head and think, yeah, why do we dictate in a way? It’s a harsh word, I know, but it’s like, “This is what you’re going to get tonight, and you will like it, and I’ve got it all on this piece of paper in front of me.” I get it for lighting cues and all that a show has to be mapped out, and I really appreciate those shows that are completely choreographed and synchronized.

But that’s a whole different art form. I think it’s a very pure thing to feed off the audience. Knowing I’m going to sing a song and there’s a bunch of names, or maybe just one name attached to it, gives me this feeling of… it excites me. It’s like turning up at someone’s house with a nice bottle of wine or a gift. There’s this anticipation of hoping they like it. It gives you a reason, instead of just playing the setlist and going, “I hope it goes down well.” Thankfully, I don’t feel like I’ve ever done a set where I’ve walked off and gone, wow, I really misjudged that one. But sometimes you write a set and think, I want to chill out here, I want to bring it up there, and then on the night you go, oh, I should’ve kept going, I shouldn’t have chilled it out there. The contour you made is just wrong for the vibe in the room that night. That’s why, for years, not having a setlist was great for me, I would just read the room. This is kind of a guided version of that, I suppose.

Given that no two shows are the same, how do you document that? Do you keep some sort of record you can go back and reflect on?
I’ve been taking pictures of my setlist, but all of the song request forms are archived. Actually, we went back and looked at one the other day because we wanted to do a post about this one particular woman who’s actually deaf, and it was just an incredible story. She requested a song and said that she’d learned how to interpret the song, every bit of it and that can be interpreted so many different ways, but it really opened up my mind. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t know that music can be felt and interpreted and enjoyed so many different ways, but it was a big, big reminder. It’s like, wow, this person is coming to the show, and what we regard as a normal way of hearing is not her norm, and she’s just so excited and so happy to be experiencing it.

She’s been holding onto this one song, I’m sure she likes other songs of mine, but she’s been holding onto this song for years and years, and she was finally getting to hear it, and that just brought me to my knees, you know? It’s incredible. So yeah, I think by asking people what they want, you get some really interesting things come out of the woodwork. Some funny stories, some really harrowing stories about someone on life support that listened to my album and thankfully made it through life support, but it was like, wow, really full‑on. I just don’t expect to hear things like that.

It must be really humbling to hear those stories and how much your music has such a profound impact?
I don’t think I’ve ever walked around thinking anything less, but when things like 9/11 happened, for instance, I’d just come back from New York, and it was so real, like it was to a lot of people, but especially for me, because I’d just come back to speed with my mum, who was on her last legs with pulmonary fibrosis. It was so close to home, I can’t even… it’s ineffable, really, trying to put it into words. Then I had to go to Canberra the next day, literally the next day and do a gig, and it just felt so, like, what? Why am I doing this? I felt like the biggest loser, to put it bluntly. I was like, what the hell am I… you know? And then someone came up after the show with a handwritten letter, and I met the person, and it was like, yeah, you know, incredible mishap health‑wise, I can’t remember exactly what it was but they were in hospital for a really, really long time.

My Soul Lost Companion album that I’d just made, well, recently in that time, I guess it had been out for about a year, year and a bit snapped me out of my malaise. It was like, yeah, get back on your horse. You might not be a relief worker or a rescue worker or whatever, but music is important, and it can help people, it can heal people. It’s the therapy we all need. I wish everyone thought like that. Unfortunately, we’re still fighting with government all the time to be more supportive of our industry. It’s an ongoing thing, and I can’t put my finger on why, in 2026, we’re still trying to justify and validate ourselves. It goes back to year dot, where noble people and hierarchy and monarchies brought jesters into their court and said, entertain us now, now get the fuck out or we’ll chop your head off. It’s still kind of like that. Someone like Vivaldi died with absolutely no cred, it wasn’t until two hundred years later that people went, oh wow, this man was really important, he wrote incredible music. But he died in a very plain grave, in a plain graveyard, without any fanfare. It’s crazy when you start unpicking it.

So it stands to reason that there are still a lot of people who don’t believe music is incredibly therapeutic. I’ve seen it with my own eyes at Nordoff Robbins in the western suburbs of Sydney, what it’s done for severely handicapped people, connecting them to their families where they can’t connect, whether they’re heavily autistic or have some sort of disability where they can’t communicate and are trapped inside their bodies. Music is the only way they’ve been able to break out and communicate with their parents, or with their family and that’s real. That’s not some frivolous balloons‑and‑confetti thing, it’s medicine.

Talking about governments, it must be frustrating, particularly at the moment with AI ripping off Australian artists and things like that. I’m surprised our government’s not really trying to do more about that and protecting what we have?
Well, again, it’s the blasé attitude of the same things, but it’s always the copyright thing. All the big platforms tried to do it. I went down to Canberra myself with APRA a few years back, and we knocked on everyone’s doors and said, hey, whoa, you can use the music, but you’ve got to pay something for it. Like, what are you thinking? And it’s just this ongoing… they keep trying to pull the rug from under our feet and make out that it’s nothing. Well, no, it’s something. It’s our intellectual content, and since when has it been nothing?

This whole kind of guise of, like, oh, AI, isn’t it incredible? Wow, look at that! And under that guise, they’re sort of coming in like silent assassins in the middle of the night, thinking they can just get away while it’s glittering. I feel like AI is, at the moment, the mobile hanging over the baby’s bed, the baby is totally beguiled by this thing, and then realises it’s just something hanging from the ceiling when it gets to a certain age. I hope that’ll be us, less enamoured by it, and using it for good. It’s such an obvious thing: let’s figure out all the problems on this planet, the diseases, and how we can climb our way out of climate change and everything else. But sadly, the capitalistic attitude humans have is just since year dot, since we evolved out of the cave and around the fire. This quest for more stuff always attaches to whatever it is. Whenever there’s a new technology, people just want to make money out of it, and it’s like, well, you can, but not out of our art. Sorry.

And people that want to listen to AI music? Okay, fine. Go for it, that’s all I can say. Muzak was a thing in the 70s, and it was a real threat to the music industry, but at least it employed people, because they actually did sessions to make that music. It filled up motels and hotels and elevators, and then that died. I feel like this is a robotic, way more sinister version of Muzak. It doesn’t employ anybody, and it has no soul whatsoever. At least an orchestral version of Girl from Ipanema had some people actually playing on it. I’d be happy to hear that in an elevator again, knowing that’s a human playing it. But the idea of AI making music, it’s laughable to me. It’s just like, whoop‑de‑ding, you know? So what?

They’re saying CDs are making a comeback, which is great. I still buy them and records and it’s like I say, it’s about buying real music in a real record store, played by real musicians.
Yeah, I mean, it’s a way of telling our stories. Regardless of what genre or whatever it is, we’re storytelling, and our stories are important, and that’s what makes us human. If you want to fabricate that, go ahead, but it can never replace us, so why are we even entertaining it? I understand that it’ll probably be what we hear in shopping malls and places where it’s just noise in the background, the Qantas Club or whatever, okay, AI music, whatever. But really? Do we really want to just debase it so it’s like we get wallpaper here and beautifully made tapestry over here? Like, when there’s the scope it’s not like that’s going to cost that, and that’s going to cost that. I believe… I know that, but why would you? That’s my question. Why?

Exactly. Does that make it harder to contemplate making a new album when you look at some of the constraints or barriers that are out there?
Yeah, like I said, people, if they want to get invested in AI and go, well, I like it, I like that song, well, go ahead. I think we have the ability to invest in just about anything, and it goes back to the baby looking at the mobile hanging above the bed. It’s fake, I don’t care, I’m going to just be interested in it. I know we can invest in anything, but at the moment it’s a novelty, and I just hope the novelty wears off because that’s what I’m feeling when people go, did you hear that AI song, that country song with the funny lyrics? And it’s like, yeah, it was kind of funny, I have to say. I did laugh when I heard it. But it’s like… someone punched those coordinates in and got that.

Are you thinking new music at the moment?
I’ve been working since I finished the last record. It’s something I tend to do as soon as I finish something, if I’m not flat out with absolutely no time at all, I start on something else. Mainly to feel that feeling of… remote… you know, it’s kind of like, oh, it’s over. The whole process, the whole cycle, there’s a sadness that comes over when I finish a record. It’s like a post‑album syndrome or something, like post‑natal almost. Can’t compare it to that, obviously, but yeah, the way I combat it is just to start another project. Thankfully, I’ve got the studio and all the tools and everything I need to do that. Years ago, when the doors closed on the studio, it really felt like, oh damn, time up. The budget’s done, and now you have to get out. That was the real model, the studio, the budget, your time, and then get out, then wait till your next cycle. But now I can make anything anytime I want, because I’ve been self‑sufficient for quite a long time.

Is it going to be more solo‑based, or are you looking at a band album?
I haven’t done a band album for a while, but this sounds like a band, because I play everything. I did get my drummer in to do a couple of bits and bobs on the drums here and there, but this one is… yeah, there’s a few collaborative things with a few people, but being the person that plays everything, it’s almost too easy for me to just rush into it. When I’m vibing on something, I’ll just grab a bunch of things and then boom, it’s done. That’s kind of how I operate most of the time.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Diesel on the following dates, tickets HERE…