"We've started doing the old songs."
When George D. Henderson, a person once reluctant to revisit material with the merest mote of dust, begins a conversation on such a note, you have to wonder what else has changed in the life of the founder and creative force behind Dunedin band The Puddle.
Plenty, as it happens.
For a start, Henderson no longer lives in Dunedin; a few years ago, lured by a "romantic interest", he headed to Auckland.
He still comes back to catch up with friends and family, including his drum-playing brother Ian, with whom he is hitting the road for a nine-concert national tour starting this weekend, but he doesn't miss the place.
Gone is the morning trek past the dog droppings of North Rd, Northeast Valley, to the corner chemist where Henderson used to collect his methadone prescription; now he is greeted by the bush and beaches of Huia, at the foot of the Waitakere Ranges.
He still requires his daily dose of medicine but, overall, he's a lot healthier; the hepatitis C he contracted some time in the 1980s (but for which he was only diagnosed in the early '90s) remains, but a regime of supplements and good food has significantly improved his health.
Why mention all this so early in the story? Isn't this meant to be about Henderson's music? Well, celebration of the present sometimes requires a look at the past.
There is a direct correlation between Henderson's health and state of mind and the strength of The Puddle's last two albums, 2007's No Love - No Hate and this year's The Shakespeare Monkey, which have generally received favourable reviews, both here and abroad, from mainstream media and other commentators whose musical inclination is perhaps more alternative.
After 25 years of chaotic gigs and some poorly recorded albums, the 51-year-old singer-songwriter recently described by one reviewer as "the tortoise who has won the race" has translated a desire to better look after himself into a desire to better realise the potential of his music.
Speaking from his brother's Waverley home earlier this week before he, Ian and bass player Gavin Shaw (Sferic Experiment, Children's Television Workshop) began yet another practice session in preparation for the national tour, Henderson was quick to agree with the suggestion the ebb and flow of his musical output has closely matched his lifestyle.
As for "shambling", an adjective that has so often preceded his name, well, that's not undeserved either, he says.
But just don't judge him on his past.
"It's not that easy, because it's all people want to talk about. That's because it is, of course, interesting. I'd be more interested in that.
"Yeah, the drugs one has taken . . . It's my claim to fame, you know . . . Most musicians who are any good, that you are going to hear about, are drug addicts. It's a cliché.
"In the wider artistic field, the self-destructive poet is a cliché; the depressive novelist . . . they are all clichés.
"Going to Auckland has definitely been good. My health has been steadily improving; my lifestyle is very relaxed. I get enough sunlight. Instead of distracting me from making music, it seems to have made it easier.
"I wandered down Blacks Rd [Northeast Valley, Dunedin] twice the other day and it was like a foreign country.
"I thought, `God, I could never come back here'. I used to come back every so often and it felt good, but now I feel like a foreigner and that's good.
"That's what happens, I guess.
"You don't know you are in a rut until you get out of it."
Auckland also offers Henderson an element of anonymity, a way to escape a history that includes a three-month jail term in Invercargill in 1991.
"In another interview, which I might as well copy here, I said it was like being in a witness protection programme.
"And it's not just me; it's the fact that most people in Auckland come from other places - they don't have pasts either . . . everybody has that liberation from the past. I don't stand out in that community."
That preference to move on used to manifest itself in other ways; Henderson would often refuse to play older material, sometimes to the frustration of audiences and/or band members who had only just learnt the previous batch of songs.
"I'm not so bad nowadays, but I guess I used to be running on enthusiasm and the minute something became work instead of fun, I didn't have the skills I needed to do it justice . . .
"Now I'm better at putting life back into a song in much the same way as when I wrote it.
"It's not technical. It's to do with ... a mood thing, managing your energy.
"In the past I would wake up and from one day to the next I wouldn't know if I felt like doing anything," Henderson says, referring to the decade between 1993 and 2003 when he was "too sore, too tired, not in the mood" to write or play music.
Unless he had a lot of drugs.
"Because I have a bit more stamina, I can do things that are a bit more challenging to play. There is always something to be discovered."
Henderson says he doesn't listen to a lot of music.
The last album he played at length (and this from someone who admits he's happy listening to the same work for six months) was by Bobby Darin, circa 1968.
"That really impressed me. But most stuff ... I don't listen to the radio."
Much of what he enjoys comes from within.
The very reason he writes pop songs - sometimes sonically skewed, sometimes direct, sometimes disjointed, but often honest and lyrically adept - is because it's the sort of music he would want to listen to.
"That was always my ambition, from reasonably early on in The Puddle. There were a few bands like Microdisney or The Smiths or Orange Juice ... I thought, `why aren't people doing this? It's great'.
"So I had to do it. No-one else was going to.
"I'm a late bloomer ... definitely. When I look at my own songs, it wasn't until I was in my late 40s that I had the confidence to say what I wanted to in a song - or the skills to say it in a variety of genres."
There are a variety of themes amid the 17 songs on The Shakespeare Monkey, The Puddle's latest effort.
Love, lust and friendship rub shoulders with self-reflection and regret.
Henderson says As It Was, an opening track driven by piano and the thud of tom-toms, is a satire on a certain kind of young, artistic intellectual; a description of how a life pans out if you spend a life "on the dole, reading books or whatever".
Hmm . . .
"This guy is boasting, but at the same time he's being lazy and he knows it and although he is self-taught and is individualistic and has achieved a lot for himself, a lot of it he has done for the wrong reasons."
The release of two albums in as many years has as much to do with brotherly love as it does a revitalised songwriter.
Not only is Ian the drummer for The Puddle; he is also manager, recording engineer, record label owner and tour financier.
"He does everything I don't do," George enthuses.
"It's a very productive partnership."
Ian established Fishrider Records in 2006 with the aim of releasing an album by his own band, The Dark Beaks.
Having set up a basic studio in his basement in Waverley, he then invited George to do some recording at his leisure.
On the evidence of The Puddle's last two albums, the benefits of space and time are obvious.
One of the key reasons Ian wanted to help was because of his frustration with previous recordings by The Puddle.
From debut 1986 EP Pop Lib to 1991 album Live at the Teddy Bear Club, 1992 studio effort Into The Moon and Songs for Emily Valentine, an album recorded in 1993 but only released in 2005, the aural picture of The Puddle has been, well, muddled.
"Listen to Pop Lib and the chaos there," Ian says.
"It was recorded with a couple of mikes and then they overdubbed it later. The other albums, too, like Into The Moon . . . it was just a disaster. In the past, perhaps there was no quality control, or the wrong person at the helm.
"George trusts me to do the production. A lot of the time we'd think, `let's just keep this as a demo', but it would turn out we couldn't do a better version.
"The demos always turn out better," explains Ian, who also praises the ability of Dunedin sound boffin Tom Bell, who mixed and mastered The Shakespeare Monkey and also tweaked No Love - No Hate.
George believes his music is in Ian's blood, too.
"Whatever enables me to do it enables him to do it. I'll play him a new song and he'll pick up a guitar and play the lead part to it before I've taught him it. He knows what notes I'll choose."
Certainly, there is a shared musical history.
Having moved from Scotland to Invercargill as boys, the pair grew into competitive record buyers while attending Southland Boys High School.
"We raced to have everything Uriah Heep put out back in 1973 or 1975."
George reflects.
"We had a band in Invercargill, Crazy Ole and The Panthers. It lasted two or three years."
George, two years older than Ian, left Invercargill in 1977.
He ended up in bands in Wellington then in Christchurch (these included The Amps, The Spies and The And Band) before arriving in Dunedin in 1982, having exhausted his desire to play music.
"I was over being in a band, wanting to be a rock star, battling in Christchurch . . . Then I heard The Chills' Satin Doll on the radio and I thought, `wow, this is the way to incorporate those ideas into something commercial'."
In the meantime, Ian headed overseas.
On his return, he would often get a phone call from George: "He'd say, `hey, we're in the Battle of the Bands; we're playing on Saturday and Shayne Carter doesn't want to play drums for us anymore; can you come up and play drums?'
"That must have been 25 years ago. Another time, drummer Leslie Paris, who played in Look Blue Go Purple, couldn't get off work on a Friday night so again I got the call. It didn't happen often ..."
Fast-forward a decade and Ian had "given up the struggle of trying to change George.
In the '90s, it wasn't that I didn't want to have much to do with George, but I got frustrated.
I'm still his brother so I'd still keep in touch with him. ...
I always believed in him, his talent.
"When I look back through the history of rock and roll, I'd struggle to find any recording artist who has taken 25 years to deliver on their potential. Nobody is that stubborn or stupid to stick around that long."
George puts it another way.
At 51, it's time to make good on promises to himself.
"Up to a certain point, you can get away with just watching the ageing process. You can say, `Oh well, I'll do that later.
"I know I should be doing a certain amount of exercise and a certain amount of Omega 3s and so forth, but I'll do that later. There is plenty of time for it'.
"But if you do these things before you get sick, it's a lot easier. It takes a lot less effort to keep yourself healthy than it does to regain your health once you've lost it.
"What is interesting is this momentum is sustained of itself . . . It's all from the album that came out in January and it is snowballing", George says.
As of this week, the number of dates on the band's national tour stands at nine, including a gig at Chick's Hotel, Port Chalmers, tomorrow night.
There are also a few radio promos and in-store appearances scheduled.
An interview with National Radio's Kim Hill looms, as does a new album.
Though a release date remains unconfirmed, subject to a distribution deal, recording has been completed.
Thanks to the generosity of Richard Steele, a former saxophonist in The Puddle, now a doctor, the band was able to record at Wellington's Writhe Studios, where Shihad has done plenty of its work.
"It's the best kind of momentum. The other kind is . . ."
George briefly pauses, searching for just the right word.
It arrives: "Inertia."
Catch them
• The Shakespeare Monkey is out now. The Puddle plays at Chick's Hotel, Port Chalmers, tomorrow night (note: it has an early start time of 8pm).
• For more information, visit:www.myspace.com/thepuddlenzwww.myspace.com/fishriderrecords
