Formed from the ashes of Split Enz, Crowded House may well have been the best pure pop-rock group of their era. Twenty-two years after their beginnings in Melbourne, Australia, Neil Finn and Nick Seymour have brought back Crowded House's classic songwriting and effortless melodies via a new album and tour. The group disbanded in 1996 and has weathered the shocking suicide of founding member Paul Hester, the disconnect of distance (Finn lives in Auckland, while Seymour is in Dublin), and multiple solo projects from both members. In 2006, Seymour flew to England to play bass on a few tracks for an upcoming Neil Finn solo album. The two connected creatively, and eventually Finn realized that the Neil Finn album was no more - Crowded House were active again. The duo called in former tour guitarist Mark Hart (ex-Supertramp) and hired Beck drummer Matt Sherrod to round out the group, then added new tracks to the album with producer Steve Lillywhite (U2, Peter Gabriel).

After a strange debut at the Coachella festival (where the band were cruelly slotted just before Rage Against The Machine), the Crowdies have spent most of the summer on the road. The reaction to their reformation has been stellar, as the band have arena tours on tap in Europe and Australia and also headlined at both London's Hyde Park and Sydney's Live Earth concert. A longtime favorite on Austin radio, Crowded House will return to Austin next week to perform on the Friday ACL bill. They will also tape an episode of Austin City Limits the night before their appearance. Back in July, we spoke to bassist, artist, and producer Nick Seymour about his time away from the band, living in Ireland, and his favorite American cities.

Let's start with your time since Crowded House originally disbanded - you've relocated to Dublin, yes? How did that come about?

Between American and European tours, I would purposefully go to Dublin just to hang out there for 10 days, rather than head all the way back to Australia. Because aside from the travel, you have to re-adjust to the time zone, then suddenly you have to get back on a plane and fly to the Northern Hemisphere. So I'd go and stay in a Dublin B&B, and I had started to know people there...from carousing in pubs or whatever. And for 18 months, we were exponentially popular in Ireland and seemed to be going there again and again, and I realized that it was a great place. I ended up buying property there; I purchased one floor of a building in the tourist precinct for around 50,000 pounds in the early 90's. This was before Ireland has gone through their economic boom. So I picked up this property really cheap, and when the band split up, I thought 'I might as well go and turn this into an apartment and sell it.' Instead, as I was fixing it up and turning it into a residence, I fell in love with Dublin, and have stayed there ever since.

You're become a fixture in Dublin as a producer and session musician. We loved the recent charity album The Cake Sale that you collaborated on. Was the project enjoyable, and were you surprised at the huge response? (The album went double platinum and raised 250,000 euros for Oxfam.)

Ah, right! It was the culmination of myself and Brian Crosby from Bell X1 working together. I produced their first album, and they're probably the biggest Irish rock band at the moment other than U2, of course. They're a stadium band here in Ireland. (Author's note: Bell X1 were originally called Juniper and featured Damien Rice on vocals.) So he and I had done a good bit of production work on various local projects, and we'd started to define this acoustic, dry combination sound in my studio - which is actually underneath my apartment. Brian wanted to get his teeth into a project that he was actually a producer on, and no label would give him a project, so he had to go out and find it. It was his idea to do the record for Oxfam, but as far as the sound of it - it was me on bass, him on keyboards, and Graham Hopkins from Therapy? on drums. The three of us were the core of that record. It's actually really the sound of my Dublin studio - an acoustic-driven tone from a room on Exchequer Street. Doing it was an absolute pleasure - I got to meet all those people (The Frames, Snow Patrol, Lisa Hannigan), and it's a very social and interconnected scene. It doesn't have a specific style or sound, but there's definitely a very strong core group of musicians there that seems to have their hearts in the right places.

You've produced a number of albums for Irish rock bands in recent years. Did this lead to new approaches to recording or collaboration on the new CH album?

Let's put it this way - I probably surprised Neil. When he rang me originally to play bass on his new recording, which was the start of Time On Earth, I possibly surprised him as to my newfound skills in the studio. It empowered me to subtly collaborate with him and laid the foundations for what has become the fifth Crowded House studio album. If perhaps I had been at the same level where we left off when the band broke up, it may not have moved forward into a album of collaboration between he and I. I would've just been a hired gun. Having said that, I was never paid for those original bass sessions! (Laughs) By the time we decided to re-form the band, we went straight past that onto royalty splits and such, so we'll see!

Time On Earth sounds of a piece with other CH albums rather than like "Neil's 3rd solo record." Was there a point during recording when you and Neil realized that you were actually re-starting CH instead of simply recording a new solo project?

We had pretty much completed both tracking and overdubbing on all of the songs that Ethan Johns had produced on the record. We probably had about 12 songs, and as far as Neil and Ethan were concerned, it was a completed record. So the sense that it was sounding like a Crowded House record was convincing enough to Neil that he called me up and suggested it. It was at that point that I felt that we needed an injection of a certain type of energy that came from a combo that was real - where we had a drummer, and a fourth member in Mark Hart. When Neil rang me, he in earnest thought he had a finished album but was struggling with the idea of what the identity of that album was. He knew it was a strong collaboration between myself, Ethan, and himself, and it was at that point that we asked ourselves: "Is this a band? Do we want to promote it as a band? And is this what Crowded House was when we left off?" Paul (Hester) had left the band 18 months before we decided to call it a day, so it was kind of where we left things off. Then I believe I steered him toward the idea of going back to the studio to record a few more songs in a much more upbeat manner with a core group of drums, bass, guitars, and keyboards. So we put the call through to Mark Hart, then auditioned for drummers and found Matt Sherrod, and then decided to go into the studio for another couple of songs. We thought we only needed two songs, but when we went in with Matt and Steve Lillywhite, we cut four in two days. We realized then that there was an open-ended energy which is now what you come and see live. And it was definitive that we were happy to be called Crowded House.

This leads me to ask - is this reunion more about celebrating a great catalog of work, or about trying to create something new with old friends? It sounds like you're telling me it is really about the new work.

Yeah. We are hopefully recording again in January. Neil has - well, spent a lot of money down in Auckland, New Zealand, building a new recording studio to house all of his fantastic analog instruments and we should be recording a lot of new songs next year as soon as we finish all of these current touring commitments for this record. And we're confident enough both in age and experience to know that the band is at a certain level, in terms of popularity globally. We don't have to struggle any more with the idea of having these open-ended tours that can go for two years before we record again. Back in the old days, we didn't realize where our strengths lay. And often we would just promote, and tour, and keep treading the boards around the world. We thought he had to get it to the next level. I think now we realize what the level is for Crowded House, and it's going to stay (there). So we can keep on making records and doing tours for the rest of our lives, it seems, at a good, confident level.

You have done all of the band's album art over the years - is it fun or is it difficult to portray a collection of music visually?

This one (Time On Earth) was the easiest one to do. Actually, I had led Neil to believe that I had the cover in the bag when we were recording the album. (Laughs) Truth be known, it took me about a week to come up with that cityscape and the sea creature and lost maverick that are on the cover. It came together in about a week, and I really didn't put that much thought into it. It just seemed to go from head to hand, and was really simple. I think that echoes the nature of the entire record. We didn't really struggle that much over this one. It just seemed to fall out of us, which was perhaps because we hadn't been together for 10 years. So there were just so many ideas in the nether regions of the brain that fell onto the page, you know, and the hard drive.

Crowded House and Neil as a solo artist are quite beloved in the Austin area due to consistent radio play on KGSR over the years. Can the band see the difference in certain markets when the audience really knows the material?

I certainly notice it! We've always had this very familiar sense when we've played in Austin, and also in the Pacific Northwest, like Seattle and Vancouver. I can't explain why it is, but it must be due to key radio stations that jumped on it in the early 90's and then have consistently maintained a relationship with their public. Austin is renowned for being a musically progressive city in the US, and for being very communal in that consciousness. I've always been delighted that Crowded House have somehow been included in that potpourri of music culture. And Neil has told me stories when we've looked at the tour itinerary and I mention the things I remember like 6th Street and La Zona Rosa and such. I said then that I hoped the booking agents have left us a day off in Austin, and Neil responded: "Oh, Austin's been very good to me!" So I'm anticipating that we'll recognize that when we get there.

You've played everywhere from Hyde Park and football stadiums to tiny bars so far this year. Do you have a favorite atmosphere to gig in?

I tend to get fairly nervous in the extremes, like say the Live Earth stadium level or the small bar gigs. Overall, I actually prefer playing smaller venues. But I've eventually figured out that if you take that mentality onto the big stage, and let the technology do all the work for you, you'll actually be as entertaining as a small-venue show. In reality, I enjoy the smaller places - you feel like you have so much more control, and an intuitive response to people in front of you. They are looking into the whites of your eyes, and tasting your fear! (Laughs)

Finally, any tips for other artists on how to make a living as a bassist/artist/producer for upwards of 25 years?

You know, it's really a difficult one to answer. You've gotta do favors for people. And make sure you're always recognized as a true benevolent spirit. Because it'll come back to you. If you're really just looking out for getting paid for the gig, your entrepreneurial side will take down your creative side, and vice versa. It's hard to pass on anything other than making sure you have a state of charity to you. There is a benevolent spirit out there in the creative world that seems to shine when it needs to.

Crowded House will perform at the Austin City Limits Festival on Friday, September 14th at 4:30pm.

[Crowded House Official Site]
[Crowded House MySpace]
[See "The Cake Sale" video feat. Nick Seymour on bass]

Image via Crowded House's MySpace page. Photographer uncredited.