"Halfway through the loudest part of our set - and it was real bloody loud back then because we were much younger, a lot heavier and more raucous - an elderly lady in a mobility scooter rolled right up to the stage, smiled at us and nodded her head like we were playing a show tune. Then she rolled off again.
"So that was our first gig in Masterton and this will be our second and I expect this weekend will be a lot better than last time.
"I hear King Street is a very good venue and (co-owner) Warren (Maxwell) and the rest have put the right vibe and ideas in place. They've managed to get a good culture built up around the venue and whatever they've done, it's the right stuff.
"King Street Live is becoming part of the regular touring circuit and, for us, it makes sense that we do Masterton on a Friday and Napier on Saturday. It's a good weekend away, you know."
Buda said the band, which also holds soundtrack credits for Kiwi feature films Boy and Eagle Vs Shark, were keen to "play as many gigs as we can" outside the main cities.
"We're always saying we want to play more gigs on our tours but, basically, the second we get away from the main centres we all make less money. But slowly and surely, we're playing more towns and that's what we want to be doing, because we love playing gigs.
"That's the thing, every tour these days we want to include the provincial centres. We've played Timaru a couple of times and now Masterton, and these are bigger towns, so we should be playing them."
The band, named after the organisation in the 1980s television show Macgyver, has released five studio albums that culminated with Fandango, which took 15 months to record and two months to edit, mix and perfect.
The latest EP by contrast took about three weeks to record and represented "the flip side" of the precisely manicured soundscape epitomised in Fandango.
"I love all sorts of music whether it be a rough and ready recording of an old blues musician that sounds really terrible but has that kind of magic soul, or really expensively recorded studio fantasy, you know.
"But we've got a really good energy live that we've never really recorded or captured. On Tom's Lunch, especially the first two tracks, that's basically the sound of the band rocking.
"It's time for a change and we're already working on the next album and I feel that Tom's Lunch is a step in a new direction. And after five full length studio albums, it's time for something that's different, just to keep our own interest and the public's interest.
"There's only so far you can go down that road and Fandago was that. It was like creating, dare I use the metaphor, a sculpture. A chip here, a chip there, chip, chip, chipping away.
"But Tom's Lunch, that was recorded in a week and finished in a month. We came together, we pressed record, we counted it in and slammed it out - and I feel really good about that."
Tickets to The Phoenix Foundation show at King Street Live tomorrow cost $25 each and are available at www.undertheradar.co.nz
