The Baby Animals guitarist will hit the Red Hot Summer Tour stage at Dubbo’s Lazy River Estate on April 28, and the band has just released their first new music in five years.

The single Tonight is a tribute to lead singer Suze DeMarchi’s late father, and is a sign of the way the band, and their music, has evolved over the years.

“The songs we play, even though we’ve been playing them for 30 years, they’re always new and different every time we play them,” Leslie said of 1990s hits like One Word, Early Warning and Rush You which earned the band countless awards and fans around the world.

“We always keep it new and the songs evolve. I never get sick of playing them, there has never been anything where I look down the list and and think ‘I’m not looking forward to playing that’. They’ve all got their challenges.

“It’s the benefit of maturity. Some of my guitar solos and approaches have kind of changed … [some] have tempered down a bit and others have become more aggressive. But I’m definitely grateful for the opportunity of still being able to play them this far down the track. We’re definitely grateful for this band and we all feel like that – it’s such a great entity. It’s a great escape.”

Tonight was released on February 2 – coinciding with the band’s run of 22 Red Hot Summer shows.

The band are now preparing to head back to the studio to record an EP – working title: Love & Death – their first new material since the aptly titled 2013 album This Is Not The End.

“We’ve always been kind of writing,” Leslie said.

“It’s been a little while, family and life getting in the way, in a way but … with this Red Hot Summer run that we’ve been doing, it’s given the band a bit of momentum.

“It’s a good time to get in the studio and put some stuff down.”

The new songs are about coming to grips with their own mortality, and other people’s, Leslie said.

Tonight was written after DeMarchi​’s father passed away suddenly.

The band was in her hometown of Perth, and Leslie​ remembered a show in Fremantle the band had already committed to, just two days after he died.

“Suze explained the situation to the crowd; I don’t know how she kept it together, but the energy in the room was electrifying – everyone was right there with her. That was the catalyst for the new song,” he said.

“It was a bit of an emotional process to record that,” Leslie added.

“The band, we need to sort of have that outlet and it’s always a sense of ‘what would we do without this band’?

“It was therapeutic, actually. There was a few tears in the studio when it was going down … and to see it go from a seed of an idea and go through its various forms and different arrangements and different pieces and then played back to you on radio, it’s an amazing feeling. You never lose that.”

The Baby Animals will join the ICEHOUSE, Mark Seymour & The Undertow, The Black Sorrows (with Vika & Linda), Shannon Noll, Pseudo Echo and Boom Crash Opera at the Dubbo leg of the Red Hot Summer Tour on April 28.

Leslie said the tour was “taking to the people”, and was looking forward to exploring the area, and the “great camaraderie” back stage.

“The combination of sweat and sunscreen dripping into your eyes, it really lets you know you’re alive,” he laughed.

“You get to hang out with people who are not just your heroes, like The Angels and Suzi Quatro, you get to hang out with them, sit around the table having beers with them. It’s a great opportunity.

“We’re all fully-grown adults, not baby animals anymore. We do it for the fun … and it’s a pretty nice job to have.”