I roll out of my death bed and make a coffee before getting on the phone with Ian Haug – guitarist for Aussie golden boys Powderfinger. He sounds a whole lot more alive than I do, and I confess I’m sounding a bit shit-house due to this bastard flu.

“Go back to bed!” he instructs. I sniff that I’ve been there for days and am contemplating following a mate’s unappealing advice and crushing a heap of garlic in a hot lemon drink.

“Yeah, that works,” agrees Ian helpfully. “A guy I know used to crush up a heap of garlic, drink a bottle of scotch and go sleep in a sleeping bag in the sun.”

“Sweat it out?!”

He laughs, “Sweat it out. It’s hideous.”

“I can’t stay off the cigarettes,” I admit sheepishly.

‘I’m one of them as well,” comes the empathetic reply.

I guess it’s supposed to be more about him than me. Can’t help but envy him though. I’m freezing at my place in Melbourne and he’s floating around at his joint in Bris Vegas. After the release of Dream Days At The Hotel Existence, the sold out Across The Great Divide tour with Silverchair and resultant DVD, the boys have been having a well-earned break ahead of their sold-out Upstairs At The Downstairs tour.

“Santa bought us the Across The Great Divide DVD and we’ve been watching it all summer,” I report to appreciative sounds from Ian. “I must admit I do lean toward the Silverchair one. I can’t help it. It’s like an obsession.”

“Aw, come on!” he exclaims in faux-outrage.

“It’s karma,” I concede. “Now I’ve got the interview with you I realise I should have been watching the Powderfinger one instead…”

Now he’s sheepish. “To tell the truth I’ve watched the Silverchair one more than our one as well.” Not just me then.

It’s the Behind The Great Divide DVD where I went for most of my research though, dear readers. Each of the band members had a moniker ascribed for the tour and I wonder if Ian’s is as obvious as it sounds. “What’s the Man Called Horse thing?”

Ian groans. “Oh, that’s a fucking long story. I’ll leave it up to your imagination. I’ll blame [Ben] Gillies [Silverchair drummer] for that one…” I daren’t speculate but am laughing, “Ah, Gillies and Coggsy [Jon Coghill]. Those crazy drummers!” I remark. “It must have been like going on tour with two ADHD children.”

“That’s exactly what they are,” Ian’s laughing as well now. “They are just so fucking… Ugh, they have no attention span.”

Much like myself really. I decide to tackle the big issues. “Bernard Fanning getting his hair cut,” I confess to Ian, “is all a bit adult contemporary for me.”

“Oh man, you should have seen him yesterday,” deadpans Ian. “It’s all gone.”

“What?! He’s shaved it off?” I am not getting a pretty picture, ladies.

“Shaved it off, he’s got a chrome dome… Nah, I’m kidding,” he laughs. My shudder must be audible. Ian peters out, “Nah, that wouldn’t look too good…”

Now that the still-hairy Bernard has just returned from a few months in his wife’s home country of Spain (where Mrs. Fanning had to undergo heart surgery), Ian informs me that the band reconvened yesterday to chat about how they wanted to tackle the upcoming, sold-out Upstairs at the Downstairs tour.

What’s with the name? “I actually came up with that,” says Ian. Excellent. Discuss. For him, “It’s sort of like light and shade…two different concepts. [But] I did a search to see if it’d been used and it’s actually the name of an old club in New York. I texted everyone and [they’re] like, you’re trippin. Luckily it grew on them…”

While the theatre tour was sold on the basic idea that the guys will perform an ‘acoustic’ set followed by an interval, and a ‘rock’ set, Ian is loathe to go near that dreaded word ‘unplugged’. “Unplugged is so nineties,” he moans.

A more accurate explanation of the way they are hoping to approach the gig is “like different arrangements including acoustic guitars.” He theorises about how things might roll before interrupting himself. “What am I talking about? Until we get in the band room and start doing it, we dunno if we’ll be doing On My Mind acoustically with a didgeridoo…”

In case you’ve been under a rock, the news is that Powderfinger decided to let their fans do the talking, posting a selection of forty songs for ticket holders to vote for. This way the boys won’t have arguments about a set list in the Tarago on the way to the venues. “We’ll find something to argue about,” Ian assures me.

If he was writing the set-list and wasn’t allowed to use any Powdies songs, what would he go for? “Oooh… from all time?” I hear his brain start ticking over. “I would definitely do something like Lust For Life by Iggy Pop, that’d be fun. I’d do…um, Yeah Blues by The Beatles.”

I remind him that he is a guitarist in a massive band nudging him with, ‘You need a big guitar solo in there…”

‘Yeah, yeah,’ he ponders slowly, ‘Something like Tumbling Dice by the Rolling Stones…oooh, I dunno.” I was going for five, but it’s looking like it’ll be too hard for him to narrow this one down in my allotted time so I abort the pop quiz.

Who writes Powderfinger’s songs?

‘We all write all the music and Bernard’s in charge of the lyrics. If he’s gonna sing it, he’s got to mean it. I will write some lyrics, Darren [Middleton – guitar] will write some lyrics which he [Bernard] draws from and interprets in his own way. That’s a starting point for some songs. Rarely it’s one person that writes a whole song.” If it’s too light on for Powderfinger, I suggest, they can always make Bernard release it on a solo album. “Or we just play over the top of him,” laughs Ian.

And you’ve got Whitley coming with you on tour? “Yeah… fucking great album actually. I dig his record, he’s gonna do good things I reckon.” What else is on high rotation in the Haug household? “Heaps of stuff – I really like the Howling Bells at the moment I think they’re fucking great. The Black Keys, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. The Concretes. Cold War Kids I really love…”

And so has Powderfinger started working on something new? As he points out, the last album’s only been out a year. “It’s been pretty weird, the cycle of albums. When we did the big tour our album had only been out for three months, where normally when you do a big tour it’s out for nine. We’ll do this tour, go overseas, do some festivals and then have a chat and see how inspired we are. I just don’t know. No one knows!”

Despite a lack of solid time frame for a new release, Ian can at least say, “We want to make another record sooner than later. The gap between the last two was four years or something. That was too long.”

For now, they’ve penciled in a rehearsal for next week and are looking forward to getting back in the band room together to mesh out their arrangements for the tour. Sounds like fun. “Yeah it will be. We’ve got a month of rehearsals then a gig in Darwin with Wolfmother, and then the tour begins!”

And he’s pretty keen to get back out there. “It’ll be fun. We’ve never done anything like this before.”

The Powderfinger Upstairs at the Downstairs tour visits the following cities in June, presented by FasterLouder.

Lake Kawana Centre, Sunshine Coast
Friday, 6 June – SOLD OUT

Tivoli, Brisbane
Saturday 7, June – SOLD OUT
Sunday, 8 June – SOLD OUT
Monday, 9 June – SOLD OUT

Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Wednesday, 11 June – SOLD OUT
Thursday 12, June – SOLD OUT

The Forum, Melbourne
Friday, 13 June – SOLD OUT
Saturday, 14 June – SOLD OUT
Monday 16, June – SOLD OUT

Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide
Tuesday, 17 June – SOLD OUT

Metro City, Perth
Thursday, 19 June – SOLD OUT
Friday 20 June – SOLD OUT