The songwriter, poet and storyteller will be on safer ground when he performs at the Crown Hotel tonight. He talks to Matthew Littlewood about life and his upcoming show.
The life of a sailor and the life of an artist are filled with ebbs and flows, and you have to navigate some tricky passages along the way. Andrew Fagan has lived both lives.
He wants to share his experiences in a new tour that mixes poetry reading, solo versions of his songs and his sailing tales. It’s part of a 20-date tour the former lead singer of the Mockers believes is his most ambitious yet.
‘‘The tour’s called Passage of Time ... it sort of celebrates the old-fashioned way we used to do things in the music business, which was you put out a single and then toured it. So there’s that aspect to it.
‘‘I’m also talking about the pleasures of solo sailing - how wonderful it is, but also how it can go wrong, which it obviously did for me a couple of years ago.’’
On January 19, 2022, Fagan set sail from Auckland, New Zealand in his tiny 5.1m sloop-rigged plywood yacht Swirly World in Perpetuity, in an attempt to set the world record for ‘‘The smallest boat to sail solo around the world via the Great Capes’’.
He lived to tell the tale, but his boat did not.
‘‘I got halfway across the Pacific towards Cape Horn, but unfortunately, the boat got damaged and I ended up having to abandon it.’’
His recollections of the often torrid couple of months at sea were recounted in his 2024 book Swirly World.
‘‘The trip was everything that I sort of expected and anticipated and was looking forward to, because I’ve had the boat since 1986.
‘‘I regret having to abandon the boat, because I’ve had it for the best part of 37 years and done a lot of miles in.
‘‘I ended up getting on to a 300m container ship in the middle of the night and leaving the boat.
‘‘But I don’t regret having a go - it was an experience that I’d planned for many years.’’
He is enjoying being on firmer ground as part of the tour.
‘‘I’ve done a lot of years and a lot of tours and just the idea of going from place to place and performing is, you know, it’s something that I’ve always enjoyed.’’
Does touring get any easier?
‘‘Yeah, it depends - this is a very different tour for me because it’s spoken word and songs that are stripped down.
I’m by myself essentially with my friend Kurt Shanks, who’s also playing acoustic guitar on some songs.
‘‘So it’s a very different tour to say touring with the Mockers, you know, with a full band where you’re really just the lead singer and you’ve got the sonic security blanket of all the music.’’
He expects to play a mixture of his hit songs from his time with the Mockers and a lot of his solo material.
Writing songs could be a drawn-out process, he said.
‘‘Basically, I come up with an idea and then it’s more not the writing, it’s the producing of the song that takes the time. For example, Passage of Time - I actually wrote it when I was on a small freighter going from Tauranga to Pitcairn Island.
‘‘Sometimes they just pop out instantly. Sometimes you have to leave it.’’
Some of his earlier material, such as Forever Tuesday Morning is now more than 40 years old.
Does it surprise him that it still stands up?
‘‘I know that the Mockers material has, but I’m singing a lot of songs on this tour that never really got that much traction, but they’re songs that I’ve always believed in.’’
He also believes in his poetry.
‘‘My poems were written using the syllabic count method like Dylan Thomas used to do ... But in terms of content, it’s very varied; I’d say it’s about chasing words out of self-conscious corners.’’
With our interview almost over, I ask him for any advice on sailing and life. The sailing advice was practical.
‘‘See, my sailing is predominantly solo sailing, so I would say sail your feet, just start off small, and get to know your boat.
‘‘The big thing is to do your preparation and, you know, so that you don’t get caught out.’’
And for life?
‘‘I think it’s each to their own, you know, I really can’t, I wouldn’t want to give any advice on that.
‘‘We live in fairly grumpy times at the moment, so I’m doing my bit to make sure that we have some entertainment.’’
The gig
• Andrew Fagan brings his Passage of Time tour to The Crown Hotel, Dunedin, tonight.
