BIOGRAPHY TIM FINN the Conversation
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BIOGRAPHY TIM FINN The Conversation “In a good conversation, everyone contributes equally” The Conversation is the brilliant new studio album from Tim Finn. Organic, intimate, introspective, celebratory – The Conversation sounds and feels like no other record the great singer/songwriter has ever produced. Economy and clarity – music and emotion stripped bare. Make it as real and honest as possible. Everyone involved contributing equally. That’s what Tim Finn was thinking long before work on The Conversation began. There’s a verse in the song “Straw To Gold”, which opens The Conversation, where Tim sings: “Lay down your heart/Break the world apart/Somewhere in the middle we could make a start.” That sort of sums up what Tim knew had to happen before The Conversation could progress. “Come down, come down from your imaginary kingdom,” Tim sings on another of The Conversation’s new tracks, “Imaginary Kingdom” [a song which, of course, takes its name from Tim’s last solo album, 2006’s rich and majestic Imaginary Kingdom.] Still, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how The Conversation finally got started. In a manner of speaking, it’s a song cycle that begins with a track called “More Fool Me” and ends with another entitled “Forever Thursday” – two of the most personal and honest songs that Tim Finn has ever committed to record. But that hardly tells the whole story – those two songs don’t even appear on the track-list in that order. Tim Finn had long ago thought about making an album of new songs using only the most intimate of instrumentation. No bass or drums. Just a small band of players in a room, playing real instruments, an unexpected line-up, all contributing equally. A recording that sounded like nothing else. Exactly what that sound was or how it might come to be, only time would tell. In the meanwhile, as always, there were so many other musical projects Tim was involved in, so much other music he was making and playing. Just in recent years, there’s been a new Finn Brothers’ record, Everyone Is Here [2004], which Tim and brother Neil supported with an extensive world tour. There’s been a sold-out reunion concert tour through Australia and New Zealand with Tim’s original outfit, the legendary Split Enz, the band he formed while still a student at Auckland University in the early 1970s. There’s also a new theatre work called ‘Poor Boy’, a play with songs written by Matt Cameron and based on Tim’s songs old and new, which will have its world premiere season with the Melbourne Theatre Company in early 2009, starring Australian actor Guy Pearce. The Sydney Theatre Company will also stage ‘Poor Boy’ in mid 2009. Then, of course, there was Tim’s most recent solo release, the widescreen Imaginary Kingdom [2006], recorded in Nashville with producer Bobby Huff. In this past year alone, a lot of Tim’s time and toil has been dedicated to constantly touring through towns and cities across the US, supporting Imaginary Kingdom’s belated North American release. It was on a trip through England early in 2007, at the start of the international touring cycle in support of Imaginary Kingdom, that Tim reconnected with an old mate, classical violinist Miles Golding – a member of the very first incarnation of Split Enz way back in 1972. Miles Golding holds the unique honour of being the first member asked to join Split Enz [or Split Ends, as they were originally called] by Tim and the group’s co- founder, Phil Judd. Miles also holds the less salubrious title of being the first member ever to leave Split Enz. While he was only in the group for a few months, Miles’ training in classical music had a profound effect in shaping Split Enz’s early sound and direction, heavily influencing the trajectory of Tim Finn’s own life and career. Miles left Split Enz early in 1973 and traveled to England to further his classical training. And that’s where he’s remained ever since, living life as a professional violinist. The old friends kept in touch over the years and early in 2007, Tim asked Miles if he’d like to join him onstage at a couple of his British shows. They were special performances, Miles accompanying Tim on the classic early Split Enz track, “Time For A Change”, written by Phil Judd but which Miles had helped arrange all those years ago. Tim gave Miles a demo of a new song he’d written called “More Fool Me”. It was essentially a song about Tim’s tempestuous relationship with that other old distant mate of theirs, Phil Judd, with whom Tim had also recently reconnected, catching up for the first time in years when Split Enz were inducted into the Australian music Hall of Fame in 2005. Who better to appreciate the sentiment of “More Fool Me” than Miles, who was there at the very start? Tim suggested that perhaps they could have a go at recording it together the next time Miles paid one of his regular visits back to New Zealand. It wouldn’t be long. Miles made plans to travel to Auckland in November 2007, so Tim organised for the pair to catch up at Neil’s Roundhead Studios. Tim also invited along his regular guitarist of the past five years, Brett Adams, his constant musical cohort during all the recent touring, as well as legendary Split Enz keyboardist and producer, Eddie Rayner. Aside from the recent Split Enz reunion tour, Tim and Eddie also hadn’t worked together in ages. They’d briefly come together for Eddie’s symphonic Enzo project in the mid-1990s, but otherwise hadn’t shared a studio since the final Split Enz albums in the early 1980s. As soon as this unusual quartet – violin, two guitars and organic keyboards – struck its first chord, Tim instantly knew he’d found the sound of his next album. All those loose ideas about a sparse, semi-acoustic album – a small, tight ensemble with everyone contributing equally – suddenly fell into stark focus. “I didn’t have any intention of making an album at that stage,” says Tim, “but it just came together so well that I just knew when I heard it back through the speakers, straight away, that’s what I want to do with my record. That was it. From that point on, I was still writing, but I knew that was the direction.” Plans were quickly made to reconvene in Roundhead Studios in April 2008 for a three-week recording session. Eddie Rayner would produce, alongside a young American engineer named Ethan Allen, an alumni of Daniel Lanois’s studios [and guitarist in Californian rock band , Gram Rabbit]. In the meantime, Tim set about completing a new body of songs for the project. A total of 18 would be written, 13 of which would make the final cut. Tim didn’t have to look far for inspiration for these new songs: Inspiration was all around him. “It’s a very personal record,” Tim explains. “It came from living at home.” Several songs came straight out of Tim’s life at home in Auckland. “Out Of This World”, the first single to be lifted from The Conversation, is an instantly classic, melodic Tim Finn love song. It’s a piece that was hanging around unfinished for ages, up to 15 years, but it finally edged towards completion when Tim needed a new song to feature in the Poor Boy musical. But the track’s other-worldliness came courtesy of the littlest love in Tim’s life, his five-year-old daughter Elliot. Tim bought her a tiny replica NASA astronaut suit, which is her favourite thing to wear while floating around the house. “She’s this completely gorgeous little astronaut,” laughs Tim. One of The Conversation’s more somber moments, the beautiful and pained “Invisible”, was a song Tim says he felt impelled to write about a young woman in his neighbourhood who was killed in a hit-and-run. “She worked in a cake shop and we just had this great connection with her and the next minute her life is gone. The whole area was in shock. It was just this great outpouring of grief. And I wrote this song for her, not because I thought I’ve got to write a song for her – it just happened.” The gorgeous “The Saw And The Tree” was inspired by a family trip to a forest area up north in New Zealand, standing among the giant trees. “It’s like being in a cathedral, there’s a sense of awe,” Tim says. The surrounding areas that had been stripped of their vegetation led to the idea of a saw apologising to a tree. The sweet, haunting lead instrument on the recording is actually, in fact, a saw, played by New Zealand’s leading bowed saw player, 75-year-old Alan Pitts. Other songs, naturally, were inspired by Tim’s recent travels through North America. “Snowbound” literally presented itself when Tim and guitarist Brett Adams found themselves snowbound in Milwaukee, driving in through a blizzard from Chicago to find their show had been cancelled. “Stuck in a hotel room, what else can you do? Write a song!” Tim laughs. “So this one is for the people of Milwaukee.” For all its light and shade, its space and rich, unique melodies, the most personal moment of all in The Conversation comes in the final song Tim wrote for the project – “Forever Thursday”.