Crowe's hand on his heart

Russell Crowe is touring New Zealand at the end of the month with his band, The Ordinary Fear of God.

He's full of surprises, that Russell Crowe bloke. The first is that he's actually on the other end of the phone at the pre-arranged time - among his many other reputations is one for keeping interviewers waiting until he's good and ready.

Today, though, he's both, his rapid baritone rumble frequently veers into a rasping chuckle as we talk about ... well anything that occurs, really.

He may be talking because he's touring New Zealand at the end of the month with his band, The Ordinary Fear of God, which contains a few members of previous backing outfit Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts.

But he's happy to wander off the subject from the sideline musical career which predates his acting back to his late teens in Auckland.

He doesn't flinch when you mention his former moniker Rus Le Roq and laughs when he's asked what might be the response if at the shows any truly loyal fans call out for tunes from way back then, like his possibly prescient single I Want To Be Like Marlon Brando.

It's apparent you could put one of those today's-risk-of-forest-fire signs on the dryness of his humour - and as he mentions later during one of his expansive stories that he has 36,000 trees on his cattle farm near Coffs Harbour on the New South Wales coast.

Considering how many forests have been felled in honour of Crowe's tabloid stardom, you might think he's trying to redress the ecological balance.

The second surprise of this Crowe encounter is actually the first - it's listening to My Hand, My Heart, his first solo album.

He's released a few albums before - credited to him and his band Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts - which drew the usual disdain from anyone not a paid-up member of his fanclub.

But My Hand My Heart suggests he's made the leap from otherwise famous enthusiastic amateur to something that stands on its own in a solid Antipodean singer-songwriter kind of way.

Sure, many of his songs have a wide sentimental streak and aren't exactly spare in their narrative detail.

It can also take some adjusting to Crowe's burly singing voice, familiar as it is from his films, and occasionally earnest delivery.

But there are numbers that could light up many a bar while others are lyrically frank and/or funny about Crowe's lot.

There are far worse albums by actors who want to rock.

He has a song on it called Worst in The World. Clearly, so far as film stars with musical urges go, he's not.

If you want to go in search of What Russell Crowe Is Really Like then, as he says, the music isn't a bad place to start.

"I've been saying it for a long time - if you want to get past all the tabloid stuff and the way people couch you in terms of my day job ... trying to get past all the smoke and mirrors and rubbish of that, my songs are the way I really think and the way I really feel about things.

"And to me it's almost like a kind of therapy I need to get over my day job to actually come back to the centre, to come back to myself and not be talking through another character."

But it's one thing to write songs, quite another to want to go on stage and play them - to an audience that for the large part will be there out of celebrity curiosity.

'It's a huge challenge, mate. You're facing down a big thing every time you stand in front of an audience because you are such an easy target.

"It's so easy to take a potshot at me based on things real or made up. There are a lot of things in the public domain that everybody considers to be common knowledge. So that's the kind of thing that just keeps you on your edge and keeps you nicely sharpened.

"I treat it totally like it's theatre ... I go out to take those bullets or bouquets, whatever it happens to be on any particular night - just to keep my powers of observation keen and my feet on the ground. If you want go get a quick dose of reality, go on a rock'n'roll tour."

If you want a quick dose of how Crowe sees his own reality, then there are a couple of illuminating songs on the album.

The most pronounced is Worst in the World:

"I am only as I am/Not Satan, I'm not a Superman/Cut down like a fighter my face in the dirt/How'd I get to be the Worst in the World."

It's an early Elvis Costello-styled rocker on which he addresses - with quite some wit - the attention he seems to attract to himself off-screen. "It's meant to be sly and ironic. It's not supposed to be a whinge by any means," he says, adding that some who have asked about it see it as Crowe in woe-is-me mode "rather than give you the credit for having a sense of humour".

Then there's the woozy title track:

"I can never understand/Why when a drink is in my hand/Time accelerates and leaves me still/With one more drink right in my hand/Am I the last man here who'll stand."

Crowe quips that he's gained a better understanding of that particular phenomenon by writing the song.

"I actually said to the dear wife that it's time I contributed to the genre of drinking songs, and she said 'That's very mature of you'.

"When I played her the song she said, 'That's not about the evils of drink, you just want a whole bunch of pissed people in a theatre somewhere singing along with you'. "And, well, she wasn't wrong. But I said to her: 'Can't you hear the apology in it?' "

A more serious chapter in Crowe's family life is contemplated in Raewyn. It's a song named for his mother's younger sister, who took her own life when she was 25.

It also touches on the death of his father's then teenage younger brother in a scuba diving accident, and the motor-accident death of a young guy - an employee and a mate - who used to tend those many trees on his farm.

The three tragic episodes, he says, connected in his own mind and found their way into the song.

Crowe knew that airing his family's tragedies in song was fraught with risk.

"With Mum I had to take it really carefully, so I discussed it first and I sent her the words.

"It's a big big story, but what it really comes down to is that I really love my parents."

Crowe's parents were, for a time, caterers on Australian film sets, dragging the young Crowe along on the job.

Now Crowe's own young son, Charlie, is also getting a taste of the nomadic lifestyle, though he's racking up more air miles than Dad ever did.

He's lived parts of his life in Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, London.

And, for three months while Crowe acted in the Sir Ridley Scott adaptation of the best-seller A Year in Provence, the family lived in a gothic castle in the area where the film is set.

"My young life was at the back of the bus, top-and-tailing at the back of the station wagon as we drove from point to point."

Crowe, his son and wife Danielle Spencer will be heading to New Zealand for the three dates ("I really want Charlie to see New Zealand even at this young age.").

While in between films he's toured in Australia, the United States, Britain and parts of Europe, the fact that he's never done that in New Zealand makes him a little apprehensive.

"I'm nervous in one way.

"It is important to me that people understand that apart from anything else I may have done I haven't changed or been changed by my circumstances."

So having not spent a lot of time in his birth country since his career took him to three best-actor Oscar nominations, what's his sense of what we think about him?

"Um, yeah. When I read the New Zealand Herald and it's an article about me maybe taking dual citizenship in the future and the headline is 'Crowe closer to the dark side' ... heh heh heh"

"I still have lots of relatives there and lots of family and I haven't been back to New Zealand for quite a while so I get a sense that 'I don't know if I am right to say this.' But there is a quiet pride or something that I've stuck to my guns and done it my way."

"I had a certain level of observation and a certain energy level when I left and I still retain that.

"Hopefully it does come with wisdom and things that I have collected along the way, but I am really happy to stand in front of an audience of people who want to hear some stories because that is my thing.

"I have had my share of interesting times and they come out in my songs."

LOWDOWN

Who: Russell Crowe, our very own Meg Ryan-dating, telephone-throwing, guitar-strummin' star

Releases: Bastard Life of Clarity (2001) by Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts, My Hand, My Heart (2006) by Russell Crowe

Key films: Romper Stomper (1992), The Quick and the Dead (1995), Virtuosity (1995), LA Confidential (1997), The Insider (1999), Gladiator (2000), Proof of Life (2000), A Beautiful Mind (2001), Master and Commander (2003), Cinderella Man (2005)

Tour dates: Crowe and band The Ordinary Fear Of God play at the Leigh Sawmill Cafe on Thursday, March 30, and at SkyCity Theatre on March 31