Tim Finn plays the Great Northern Hotel in Byron Bay tonight, the Arena on Wednesday and the Twin Towns Services Club on Thursday.

Tim Finn has finally reclaimed his past. Slimmer, brighter, definitely more energised than he has seemed at times over the last decade, the founder of the legendary Split Enz, sometimes member of Crowded House, solo singer/songwriter of real note, the elder Finn exudes a confidence that harks back to the halcyon '70s daze of the Enz, one of the greatest bands to ever don make-up and rewrite rock'n'roll in its own image.

Tim Finn is back doing what he does best - rocking, rolling, singing spellbound songs, being a showman. Live with his new band, The Dirty Creatures, he's performing all the classic Finn-penned Enz tracks plus all those solo and House home runs, but even more importantly he's got an absolutely blistering new album, Feeding The Gods, that's as good a collection as he's recorded in a very long time.

"It is about going back, about owning that past, those songs, that history," he says, "and feeling that it belongs to me and I can use it as a kind of theme in itself. Songs about songs, songs about performing; it's all about relationships. There's a song on Feeding The Gods called Sawdust & Splinters which is almost like a love song between me and an audience because that's a relationship I know well. In the last few years I've been playing a lot more shows in New Zealand so it's all very fresh again for me. It's great. I sort of stopped playing live for a while except for the odd acoustic show.”

"It's been great to get rid of the acoustic and be a performer again. To jump around in front of a band again. Even with Split Enz at the height of our theatricality the good nights were when the audience was right inside with us in that place. I've missed that."

The spark is there for all to see on the DVD that accompanies Neil Finn’s all-star live knees up, Seven Worlds Collide. Tim's on stage with Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam and Betchadupa. They rock. In particular, a sonic, punky, take on the Enz classic spikeout, I See Red. You can see Tim's having fun, that largeness of spirit and character positively screaming out loud.

"I had to go through a 10-year period of not being a frontman and a performer," he says. "I don't know why but it's actually made it more precious to me now that I've rediscovered it. It's really just who I am. It's not like I had to reinvent the wheel but I want to really get into it now."

“When you get a bit older you start to see cycles and patterns in your life. You’re working on these endless things, these same torments and struggles but you do get through to clear ground eventually if you hang in there. And, you are right, my marriage and my child were a huge factor in getting me back to this point.”

"I was on my own for so many years or involved in some desperate struggle to get out of something. I seemed to create all these situations for myself that were not what I really needed but through  all that I guess I must have learned something. I finally got all that sorted really well. It's coincided, maybe it isn't a coincidence, with the fresh feeling for live music, the purity of that, how good I am at that, how I want to do that, it has all been reawakened. It's fantastic."

We spend some time talking about the Enz. The early years, the memories. Finn's found so many people have Enz moments in their life; experiences that are a thread that has kept them connected not only to the New Zealander and his various projects but to the big band itself.

"In our own way I think Split Enz has maintained its integrity over the years. I'm fascinated by how enduring people's memories are of gigs. You think it's about the records but in a way it's even more about the shows. If you didn't see Split Enz live you couldn't really get the Enz. We were partially about our records, our songwriting, but the true essence of the Enz was the live gig. I'm playing a lot of early stuff from 1973 and 1974 in the show and people are constantly coming up to me and telling me about a gig that virtually changed their life or had some real significance in their life.”

Tim has a small dream now. Not only for the new exciting future Feeding The Gods represents but for a future that might contain a reunion, one more very special Split Enz reunion:

"I'd like to play Mental Notes in its entirety with the original line-up."

Now wouldn't that be something.