OVER the past two decades Tim Finn’s career has taken a quieter path, moving back to New Zealand after the birth of his first child in 2001, composing an opera and working in theatre.
He married television presenter Marie Azcona in 1997 and they have a son and daughter who are now musicians in their own right.
“It wasn’t like settling back because I’d just become a parent. It was more like going forward into a whole new life at the age of 45,” Finn said.
“I was kind of a late starter to be a dad but it came at a really perfect time for me when I was able to devote the time and be around, not be touring as much. And I won’t say got it all right, it is very challenging, but at least I was able to devote time to it and be there.
“And so it was a new chapter completely for me. I’d been away for 25 years, living in England, living in Australia, America some of the time.
“It was very creative, as well as that parenting side of it and family side of it, it was a very creative time for me to connect back. That is the connecting back part of it, I suppose as a songwriter, to feel myself back in my homeland, in the hills and the rivers and the sea and the beaches and the light; everything here that I remember from childhood was still there. It nourished me I think.
“New Zealand still has a bit more of that bohemian thing where no one expects to get rich or famous and they’re not really chasing that so much.
“There was something comforting about that and something narrative about that as well.”
After an absence from touring and a 10 year gap since the release of The View Is Worth The Climb in 2011, Finn started working with Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera and released two albums, worked with Split Enz bandmates Eddie Rayner, Noel Crombie and Phil Judd in the project Forenzics, releasing an album last year, and released a fourth album with Irish singer-songwriter Andy White.
“Phil Manzanera produced a Split Enz album in England in 1976. We reconnected over the internet and made a couple of albums and also made a couple of albums with Eddie Rainer from Split Enz,” Finn said.
“There’s been a lot of releases actually but they’ve probably been under the radar.
“Because of the internet now, you can communicate so easily with people.
“If you want to write a song with somebody who lives in England, it’s just so easy to do, just send files back and forth. In the old days, you would have to get on a plane to travel 12,000 miles, spend thousands of dollars on a recording studio. It’s just unbelievable how effortless it is now.”
Apart from one-off appearances at Woodford Folk Festival, Splendour In The Grass and with Neil Finn for the Falls Festival, Tim Finn has been absent from the live scene for the past decade.
It was an outdoor show at Manly in Sydney late last year that gave him the idea to take on a national tour.
“We did this show and we played songs from 1977 through … We did it chronologically so I only got up to about the early ’90s and stopped because it was going to be too long. But we did songs from Split Enz, from Crowded House Woodface album and solo albums and it was so enjoyable.
“The crowd was really mixed, a lot of different ages, younger people who had probably never seen me and older fans who knew every word. It just was a joyous afternoon show in Sydney and I thought I’ve got to do this again.
“I was given an offer by the promoters to come back and do this run that I’m doing in September and so one good thing led to another. It was a natural thing. I wasn’t expecting it. I thought I was kind of semi-retired apart from the odd one-off shows but here we are about to do a tour. It’s a short tour but it’s definitely a tour.”
The title of the tour, The Lives and Times of Tim Finn, suggests some sort of closure but Finn said it was in no way a farewell tour.
“It’s not a closure. I’ve never stopped. I’ll probably go until I drop but I don’t know about touring. If this one goes well I’ll probably do another one. It gets into your blood when you start doing this, and I’m talking way back when I was in my early 20s, and it never quite leaves; that joy of connection to the crowd, it feeds back into the writing.”
“I suppose in some ways it’s a greatest hits tour. I’m going with songs that people know, but having said that, quite a few of the songs were never singles. I’m doing this song from – the album was called Corroboree in Australia – there’s a song called Ghost Girl that I haven’t played for many years. I’m doing that and I’m doing Charley and songs that were album cuts but they were always live favourites, songs that will strike a chord with people who have followed my journey in music.
“There’s just no room to put everything in there. I could do another tour where I just play, you know, people do shows now where they’ll play a whole album. I could probably do a show where I play The Conversation or I play with Neil [Finn], we can do Everyone Is Here.
“There are different kinds of tours. But this tour is about connecting with the crowd and, I guess having a moment of memory, but also that will produce an experience for us right here right now. It’s not nostalgia but it’s something that will happen in that room on that night between us, one of communion and one of union and oneness, that’s what I’m going for.”
The Lives and Times of Tim Finn comes to Brisbane on September 14 at Fortitude Music Hall.