Toogood's on home straight

Jon Toogood is looking forward to touring on home territory.

On stage in Gisborne in 2008.

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Jon Toogood is coming home.

Since forming Shihad in Wellington 21 years ago, the musician has flirted with the idea of settling in Australia, continually darting across the ditch and moving to Melbourne 18 months ago.

But he has ultimately decided to return to his native city. "I will be a happier person living in Wellington," he explains. "I just love the place, I really like that village feel it has. I can still make music there and everything is just as good there."

Toogood is speaking to Sunday News from his pad in the trendy South Yarra area of Melbourne, which he will leave in November.

While he and wife Ronise have enjoyed Australia, where bandmates Tom Larkin, Karl Kippenberger and Phil Knight are based, they are anxious to return to the capital and their 18-year-old daughter Anaya, who has been living with her grandparents.

"It was the toughest thing leaving her but we didn't want to tear her away from her school and her friends," Toogood says.

Anaya and he have a lot in common. "She's as passionate about music as I am and I always ask her opinion on my stuff, she's brutally honest. My wife's opinion makes me more nervous but just when I'm thinking she's not into my band I'll see a Shihad song on her iPod playlist," he says.

Shihad have established themselves as one of the country's most enduring and best-loved bands, notching up 10 Tuis at the New Zealand Music Awards and three chart-topping albums. They've also made the NZ Singles Chart 24 times a record for a local act. While trying to make it in the US in 2002 they changed their name, due to negative connotations following the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks, and were known as Pacifier for two years.

Toogood, a self-confessed control freak, admits it was a low point for the band.

"Lesser bands would have split and there were periods where it was hard to live with," he says. "There were moments when I was walking down Cuba Street in Wellington and some kid would go: `You fu*king sellout' and because that was how I felt myself it was, like: `Ouch.' I was living with this 24 hours a day and it hurt."

On the one hand, he is the extrovert rocker, a man in his element performing in front of 45,000 people, who is known for his exuberance and energy on stage.

But the other side is the performer who as a kid once wore two pairs of jeans because he was embarrassed about his skinny legs. And he confides that, in the past, he found The Mint Chicks and Shayne Carter "intimidating".

"I have a relatively small comfort zone, that's the contradiction in what I do," he says. "I'm quite a homebody when I'm away from being `Mr Rock 'n' Roll'."

The singer likes good books, art and cuisine "we're not a drugs band, we're a food band" and is not a big fan of the media interest and exposure that comes with being a musician.

"I have a hard enough time looking in the fu*king mirror when I get out of the shower, let alone having photos taken," he says.

While preferring to make music rather than talk about it, Toogood is a relaxed interviewee. Charming, eloquent, and undeniably passionate about his craft, he peppers comments with expletives and often bursts into laughter.

Ronise has helped keep him grounded. While being total opposites "she's the complete pragmatist while I'm the arty airhead" the pair have been together for most of his career and finally married in 2003. The 38-year-old admits it has been tough maintaining a relationship while spending up to eight months at a time touring.

"You'd be hard pressed to find anyone in the industry who finds it an easy road," he says.

"You're constantly putting coping mechanisms in place to be able to deal with it. It's a tough thing to do and it's caused a lot of grief in the past." While acknowledging the life of a rock star isn't all it's cracked up to be, Toogood appears to be on top of the world right now.

He is currently working on Shihad's eighth studio record and is planning its release in March to coincide with seven intimate gigs in Wellington, each featuring a past album in its entirety.

The musician has also been working on a solo project in collaboration with a who's who of New Zealand music including Julia Deans, Ladi 6 and Shapeshifter drummer Redford Grenell, a projects he hopes will climax in a live tour as well as an album.

But his immediate focus is headlining the Legal Tender tour with The Living End, Airbourne and Luger Boa to mark The Rock radio station's 18th birthday.

"It'll be good, we're going to play a couple of the new songs we've been writing and maybe some different songs off the old records those we haven't played for a while."

Legal Tender kicks off on October 1 in Dunedin then goes to Christchurch, Wellington, Napier, Auckland, Hamilton and New Plymouth. For full details go to www.therock.net.nz

- © Fairfax NZ News