Live While You Can

t's easy to imagine a songwriter and performer of such success and decorum as Tim Finn – he, of course, Split Enz, Crowded House (briefly) and an eminent solo career – being almost resentful of being asked to drag himself away from the sanctity of his beautiful waterside Auckland abode to entertain a bunch of potentially unruly Brisbane music pundits. Especially when each of these fans undoubtedly comes armed with their own take on Finn's storied career and laden with expectations about which songs best represent their own recollections and associations with pasts that will never be repeated. Fortunately for us, this hypothesis contains a fraction too much fiction, and the reality is that, like the consummate professional he is, he's stoked to be treading the boards for us once more.

“It's exciting, because like everybody these days I spend a lot of time in front of the computer, playing on GarageBand and answering emails, and it's nice to get out somewhere where it's not digital and it's real, and you're catching up with people – people who've seen you play for maybe decades on and off, and then you hook up again,” he smiles. “You can't hide – you're onstage and it's real – and I love that.

“There's something romantic about playing live. It's hard to put my finger on it, but I guess it's that old troubadour thing – it can be risky, it can go wrong, things can happen that you don't expect – and you put yourself out there and let the crowd enter the fray. Something can happen between you, and I suppose I use songs these days from the past that really connect with the crowd, so that we can all get into that zone, and then mix it up with some newer stuff or some more obscure stuff or whatever, but basically the spine of the show is going for that connection. I love it.”

And these days Finn is hardly short of material with which to forge this bond. “There's a few to pick from now, which is pretty amazing,” he chuckles. “When I do a big festival show or something I can literally play about eleven or twelve songs that most people will know – some of those songs they'll know really well – and it gives you this ability to take the audience on a ride. If you play a festival they're already on a wave, so you can just hopefully take them higher. I used to want to play new songs all the time – and I still do mix it up with the new – but I've realised that I don't get tired of certain songs like Poor Boy or Weather With You or even I See Red; I sort of still get into them still, and that surprised me when I discovered that. A lot of my songs are theatrical in a sense – they kind of theatricalise emotions – so I'm up there singing Dirty Creature and I'm sort of not doing that much, but just moving in a certain way that puts me in touch with that anxiety and that dread, but it's in a safe place where I can play it out. Because they come from real places, and you don't really want to go back to those places, but you can sort of play with it like an actor would play with a line or something. It's real but it's also heightened, and I enjoy that – it feels fresh every time.”

In a situation such as these forthcoming shows, which by necessity causes Finn to cast an eye back over his career, does taking stock of his many and varied achievements bring forth a sense of pride? “I guess so, yeah. There's definitely a sense of satisfaction with certain key moments, and those key songs that you've written that sort of span across the years; you can probably only hope for a few of those. For any kind of artist there's always those peak moments – peak songs or peak paintings – and you're grateful for those and you feel good about those, but also like any songwriter I suppose I'm most excited about the one that I wrote this morning, or yesterday. So it's an ongoing thing, and the new ones that come through are more viscerally engaging, or more exciting, than thinking back on things you've done, so they pull you forward.”

And what about his long-term relationship with Australia – is there a latent sense of Trans-Tasman rivalry or does he enjoy making his way across the ditch to play shows? “I love Australia,” he says unreservedly. “My wife's from Sydney and our first child – our eldest son – he was born in Sydney, so we have very strong roots there. And I lived in Melbourne for years and years, and in Sydney for years and years, plus I've just recently been in Brisbane workshopping a new musical with QPAC which is very exciting for me – it's a project that I originated.”