It looks like you’ve got quite a busy summer of touring planned. What do you usually do in your down time?

I go into the studio, downstairs where I live. I have a studio in my basement, so I spend a lot of time down there, or I go out with a couple of my friends and engage in childish activities [laughs].

I saw the announcement that you’re joining Ringo’s All-Star band for 2008. I know you’ve done this before – is that kind of an anticipation thing, to find out if you’ll be invited to join again? How does that work?

Well, I was very happy to have done it once. I did a television special with him, and that was cool. To be honest, I wasn’t really thinking about it one way or the other. I was just happy to have done one tour. I was probably thinking that was it, so I was very happy to be asked again. It’s a great tour, and it’s a chance to play with Ringo, and all those other people. There’s all those childhood things that come back to you, and there’s a kind of a dreamlike quality to it.

What’s it like touring with an all-star lineup versus doing your own thing with your solo shows?

Well, there are different kinds of pressures, because you have to do justice with all those other songs you’re playing. You have to learn those songs, as faithfully as you can, because that’s how they were written, and that’s how they were recorded and played. So that’s a challenge.

Do you do a lot of rehearsing together?

We do nine or ten days prior to the tour.

What about the last time you played with Ringo a few years back? When you played in that version of the band, did you find it inspiring in your own career and playing your own music?

Yes. There’s not really any other way to describe it other than that it feels good. It feels good to come off that tour and do your own music.

When you play in New Hampshire, will you have a backup band, or is it just you solo?

It’s just me. I’ve been doing this one-man show for the last fifteen years, and it developed over time. So it’s really just me and a few acoustic guitars. I play songs, and I tell stories, and entertain myself.

As a solo artist, I’m assuming you get demands for the old Men at Work stuff? Or do people respect you and your newer solo work?

Well, I don’t really differentiate it that much. If you take “Down Under” as an example – I wrote that song before Men at Work. A lot of songs started out that way, so I really don’t think of them as my song, or a Men at Work song. They’re all songs, and if you write them, they’re your songs. So I just play whatever I feel like playing. I played in New Jersey last night, and it was basically a night of requests. People just kept yelling out songs, but no one called out for “Down Under” – they were all new songs.

So your new album was recorded entirely in your home studio on your own. Do you think there are any drawbacks to being in control of your own destiny? Do you ever long for the direction of a producer or the technical expertise of an engineer, or do you prefer doing it on your own?

I know how to engineer pretty much, so that’s not really an issue. It’s fun – I love engineering. If I have more than two or three musicians in the room at one time, I’ll often have an engineer come up just to help me out. A lot of my friends help me out, and you kind of produce along the way. People come up whose opinions I trust, and they’ll get involved with mixing and engineering. So you’re kind of mixing as you’re recording. But, to answer your question, sometimes I would like to have a producer, but there’s a budget associated with that, and I’m an independent artist. Having a producer is like a luxury, so I just play with the cards that I have.

Do you ever find that spending a lot of time in the studio, and having an unlimited amount of time in the studio, can be counterproductive?

You have to be disciplined, and you have to try and achieve some things while you’re down there, instead of just messing around.

In the last few years, it seems like your songs have been discovered by a whole new generation of fans thanks to people like Zach Braff and others? What are some of the differences and similarities that you see in this new generation of fans versus the ones you had back in the 80s?

I see similarities more than anything else. A lot of young people come to see me play now, and they like a lot of the songs. And there are a lot of alternative types, or tending towards being a little green – hippies and whatnot – who tend to like what I do. That was the case back then, and that’s still kind of the case. I’m thankful for the fact that new people have discovered the songs, because it’s meant that I can keep going, and I still have an audience. There are people my age who typically don’t go out anymore because they’re at home with their kids.

Do you have any kids of your own?

No – it’s just me and my wife.

As someone who has survived rock stardom, and who has avoided a lot of the pitfalls that seem to plague ex-rockstars, what advice would you offer for someone who’s fresh out of high school and looking to have a career in music?

Advice is a tricky thing, but I think you have to work pretty hard. It depends on what you want to do. If you really want to make some kind of mark, you have to have talent and you have to work really hard. And you have to enjoy it. There’s no way around that, unless you just want to dip your toes in the water in a lot of ways and just play at it. There are a lot of people who try that, and maybe have a couple of hits. You have to just take care of the important things, which is to try and write good songs and work at that. None of these other things like just taking care of your own business and looking after yourself – they’re true, but not that difficult if you have a lot of common sense. A lot of people don’t want to know about that, and say they just want to be creative, but that’s just burying your head in the sand as well. You have to be responsible, and carry yourself, and that’s what growing up is, no matter what area you’re in. It’s not easy, but you have to tell the truth. You have to figure out if you’ve got talent or not, and then apply yourself. And if you haven’t, you also have to tell yourself the truth.

What about the changes that we’ve all witnessed in the music industry in the last five years or so? As an artist who has been around for a while, what kind of effect does the age of YouTube and MySpace have on you?

Mainly positive, in the sense that people can find you. Ten or fifteen years ago, if you didn’t have a record deal – like in my case – people thought you disappeared off the face of the earth. So if you can have a profile online, people can find you, and that’s very rewarding and empowering. You can actually make yourself available, whereas before, the record companies had a stranglehold on what you could listen to. There are different kinds of challenges now, because there’s so much material out there. You have to wade through thousands and thousands of titles to figure out what you like, but I still think it’s more positive than negative. Again, you just have to roll with the punches and figure out how you can interface with all that and survive. If you want to, you can, but it’s not for the fainthearted.

So, what’s coming up after your busy summer? Do you have any new songs you’re working on?

I’m back in the studio and trying to work on a new record. That’s about it, really – that’s what I love to do. What I do isn’t particularly complicated. I’ve been able to make a living for 25 years or so, so I just continue to do that. Whenever I got dropped from the major label, one of the things I did was I figured out that I had to keep making records, because that’s what I love to do. So instead of going to a label and trying to get people to give me permission to do that, I decided to build my own studio in my basement and record my own records, and try and find a bigger audience. I’m still trying to establish myself, in a way. You’re never standing still, and you never really arrive anywhere. You kind of arrive at one place and you move on from there. So it’s not that I’m necessarily trying to get anywhere – I’m just trying to enjoy myself as much as I can, and put as many songs as I can out there that people want to hear.