The “heartland rocker” has built an esteemed reputation for his brutally honest, yet poetic characterisations of life in the traditionally working-class inner-city suburbs of Redfern and Waterloo.

On his new song Girl In The Crystal Cylinder Hoodie Keyes details bumping into two 14-year-olds shooting up heroin in a laundry mat.

“I’ve got a basket full of clothes,” Keyes says. “The girl looked up at me, I looked at them, we had that moment where I was about to say something – I don’t know what I was going to say - she looked up at me and said ‘don’t worry, we’ll clean our mess up when we’re finished’.”

Keyes isn’t at all concerned that people will think he’s just writing about single mums and drug addicts again. He remains a massive Martin Scorsese fan, who is famous for making gangster films.

“I don’t mind that he’s doing a different version of it each time, as long as you notice the differences and you notice the way a character has changed or the subtle shifts in their situation,” he says.

Fellow Sydney singer-songwriter Tim Freedman from The Whitlams will join Keyes on the co-headline tour to support Jim Salmon’s Lament.

Catch Perry Keyes and Tim Freedman at 48 Watt Street on December 7.