In recent years, Sir Dave Dobbyn has done a good line in turning up when people need him most.
In the event, and contrary to his well-known lyric, he’s had precisely the language for such moments.
That’s included the free concerts for residents of Matatā after the floods there, time spent helping out in Christchurch following the earthquakes and his support for Pike River families. He wrote This Love in honour of the 29 men who lost their lives in the mine and sang it at a memorial concert. Not a dry eye in the house.
So, given he’s now touring the provinces again, is there something we should know? Is he coming to Dunedin to cheer us up?
"Yes, well, that’s always the case — I think everyone will cheer up," he says down the phone line from Auckland, making no effort to mask the familiar Dobbyn mischief.
In truth, the tour was organised off the back of an Auckland Town Hall gig that went gangbusters, he explains, a big room full of people who knew all the words. So, he was persuaded to keep on rolling.
But he is happy for people to come for whatever they need.
"Yeah, bring your sense of fun and, sure, if you want to have a weep, go ahead."
Dobbyn has peppered his career with songs and performances that the country has seemed to need, a talent that’s helped him remain relevant in the fickle business of popular music across the decades.
It has not been a matter of artifice — rather, he gets moved by events, he says.
A case in point is Welcome Home, later re-recorded in te reo Māori as Nau mai rā.
He’s been thinking about it lately, he says, given it ticked over 20 years old this year.
"And the reason I wrote that was after seeing a protest march in Christchurch."
People, new immigrants, were out on the street, promoting an anti-racism message.
"And alongside them were the neo-Nazis cheering and booing. And in between them were the police. And it struck me, you know, ‘not in my country. I’m not going to have that. There’s going to be no having that’. So the song was a response to that outrage in a way."
Being able to hang ideas on that kind of response is a real joy, he says.
"When you’re in the moment and in the pocket and understand the mood of the place, then you can kind of attach the metaphors of land and song and people. You can attach that to a good hook or a great phrase. I just love that process."
Welcome Home wasn’t a radical departure for the singer-songwriter, who has long been a keen observer of people and events.
That its lyrical content remains so current, so urgent, is perhaps less a cause for celebration — including that repeated phrase "don’t hold your breath". But it’s a testament to the songwriter nevertheless.
"It hasn’t really dated," he confirms.
The song, which includes a long wishlist for a kinder world, including in Palestine, was influenced by Randy Newman, Dobbyn explains, specifically the American singer-songwriter’s earlier more political material.
"I’m thinking of Short People and Rednecks. He’s sort of telling it like it is. I enjoyed that."
There’s never any shortage of events or moods to infuse the work of a songwriter, he says.
And with that, after very little prompting, Dobbyn tells it like he sees it.
"That’s the way I look at it anyway. We live in complicated times," he says.
"And there are people, there are powers that would have us divided. And it’s too easy to be divided these days. Consensus is a rare thing.
"And discourse, proper discourse is even rarer. There’s a lot of people shouting slogans from one side to the other. And so it just creates division."
We are clearly in territory Sir Dave has been thinking about, observing.
The division is like an infection, he says.
"It just keeps on growing the more you fuel it, with vitriol or the fire of your deluded mind, you know, which is often the case.
"There’s so much propaganda out there from all sorts of sides that we can be derailed quite easily. And I think that’s a dangerous thing. And we live in dangerous times in that regard.
"You know, things become heated and political. And the political far right and the far left are at loggerheads more now so than ever. And a lot of it’s just there to divide us.
"It’s purely there to divide us. And people are forgetting to look at all the things that unite us, you know, the things we have in common. And that’s the area that I’m most focused on because that kind of togetherness is a rare thing.
"And it needs to be fostered. And through the arts you can foster it. You know, we have the privilege of being able to foster it in songwriting or any art form.
"It kind of shows the health of the society when you mull over things and try and make a concise statement about something or a song that has resonance. I work towards that, I won’t run away from it."
For Dobbyn, the aim is that those concise statements will reflect the geography of where you come from, the heart of the people. A focus that has become clearer in recent years.
"I’ve been lucky enough to really enjoy and savour the provincial life in New Zealand. Going from province to province, playing and stuff. You get a feel for the mood of the people. If you’re paying attention, you get to see details.
"So, being able to travel around and really make up for lost time on noticing things, and taking them to heart. Writing little things in my notebook. Stuff that might become a song or a poem or whatever.
"If you’ve got your heart in the right place, it’ll transfer and it’ll make itself known. That’s the way I think about it anyway."
For all Dobbyn’s slightly jaundiced recall of those earlier pool room days, he counts himself as fortunate to have rocked his way out of the ’70s and ’80s, sharing the limelight with the long list of Kiwi talent from those years.
"It was a very rich time. I mean, times were tough, especially back in the ’80s, early ’80s and around there. Times were really tough. You know, Muldoon was still around and all that. But there were so many bands on the road travelling around New Zealand.
"It was a really fertile ground because, you know, people spent their days or their nights at the pub enjoying each other’s company and spreading some good cheer."
It was a fertile time for genre-breaking acts, he says. A period during which New Zealand music matured, as audiences turned on to it and demanded more.
But he’s not about to make an argument that we won’t see the likes of those years again.
Today’s music scene is in good shape, he says, really healthy.
"I was just talking to somebody recently about how there are so many really good players around. In fact, I was talking with Neil Finn about it ... And we both remarked about how good the musicianship has become in the last few years."
He puts it down to hard work, a new generation coming out of the nation’s jazz schools and putting in the time to play.
Dobbyn recently played with some of them, at Finn’s midwinter "pick me up" Infinity Sessions — a live stream from his Roundhead Studios, to which Dobbyn contributed a heartfelt version of Beside You. The video’s still up online.
It was another small demonstration of the art of remaining relevant.
He’s moved with the times, Dobbyn says, through various iterations, decade to decade. Compiling a songbook that he thinks can stand alongside anyone else’s output from his generation.
"I think you just carve a path and then people tell you what that path is after a while. Because you’re so busy doing it you forget where you’re going."
Of course, Dobbyn’s path is well signposted, with awards and chart success, gold and platinum records, Silver Scrolls and serial inductions into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame — that knighthood.
The pace is a little different these days, as befits a man striding through his 60s. But it’s still full of music.
Dobbyn has a place in Mangawhai, north of Auckland.
"I think you call them cribs down there," he says.
"It’s quite close to the ocean. I love going up there. I’ve got a piano up there, it’s a great place to focus on writing.
As a result, there’s plenty of new music brewing, much of it sitting awaiting more focused attention.
"I keep making demos and stuff and saving them into folders on my computer.
"There’s screeds and screeds of them now. I’m actually getting the time to sit down and go through them and pick out the good ideas. I mean, it could be a full-time job. It kind of is, really."
Dobbyn’s tour is called "Selected Songs" and he explains it involves deeper cuts of some album tracks that he hasn’t played live, digging into the catalogue to deliver some surprises.
"I was interested in sticking to what I thought were my favourites and then giving them an air ... It’s a bit of a journey through the gig, but I think everyone will be pleased with it."
The tour maps the format of that Auckland gig by sticking to town halls and opera house-type venues. Which also ticks boxes for Dobbyn.
"I’m kind of in my element in theatres," he says.
When you’re on tour doing a show day, all roads lead to the show, and a town hall is made to measure.
"I think it’s almost something autistic in artists. If you have a place to go and you know the drill and there’s a backstage and there’s a side of stage — it’s a sort of fixed space in which you can kind of just revel in the music."
And after all these years, it hasn’t got old.
"I love that excitement. It sort of masquerades as nervousness, but it’s excitement after all."
Dobbyn will be filling the halls with sound, courtesy of an eight-piece backing band — complete with horn section.
"My son is playing percussion. His name’s Elias and he’s playing percussion with me. And I’ve got a keyboard player and then Victoria Girling-Butcher on guitar and vocals. She’s sung with me for the last 18 years. Joe Barus, the bass player from Christchurch, he’s been with me for as many years."
He’s enjoying that the audiences too involve generations.
"It’s usually four generations thick, which is fantastic.
"You know, you get the young ones picking up their parents’ records or their uncle’s record collection. I’m always in here somewhere.
"It’s great to have such a spread of people. It’s an old fashioned thought, but it really is a place of togetherness ... the unity in that is great.
"As I say, it’s a rare thing."
The gig
• Sir Dave Dobbyn Selected Songs, Dunedin Town Hall, Friday November 7. Supported by Anthonie Tonnon.
