Paul Greene’s got trouble. Car trouble. “Are you able to help at all?” he asks. Alas, I cannot, and this hard-working blues man, who must have racked up more miles than just about any other Australian musician, must press on. He’s calling from outside Armidale, en route to Brisbane as part of his extensive tour in support of new record ‘Distance and Time’.

Typically for Greene, the tour extends far beyond the capital cities, taking in the likes of Wagga Wagga, Eumundi, Moree, Milton and Bateau Bay. Getting off the beaten track this way, he explains, is part of his “whole ethos…the way I started out was being a very sort of community-based project”. It’s also helped him build considerable support networks, and develop his fan-base in an organic way that has been more satisfying to him than selling records off the back of the press blitz a major label can provide.

While remaining remained a staunchly independent artist and largely existing under the radar of mainstream attention, Greene’s work, which spans blues, country, folk and pop with aplomb, has attracted some high-profile supporters. The Waifs and John Butler have sounded their approval, while Midnight Oil’s Rob Hirst collaborated with him under the Hirst & Greene moniker. Recently, Waterboys frontman Mike Scott got in touch to offer congratulations on Greene’s cover of his The Whole of The Moon.

‘The Whole of The Moon’, which Greene sees as “about adoration” is one of two covers to appear on ‘Distance and Time’, the other being Jeff Buckley’s ‘Last Goodbye’. He sees the covers as “a kind of tip of the hat…paying respect rather than trying to find filler for the record…a bit of a reference to what my music is about”. He explains he has always enjoyed his favourite artists covering others songs, and has discovered some of his beloved songwriters through others covering them. Tori Amos’ “spell-binding” version of Smells Like Teen Spirit and Patty Griffin’s take on Bruce Springsteen’s Stolen Car rank as particular favourites.

Greene would have had a chance to see Griffin covering the Boss first-hand earlier this year, having snagged the support slot for the critically adored veteran’s national tour. “I can’t tell you how much of a shot in the arm that was for me” he enthuses. “I had got to a point where I started to question myself a bit, wondering what I was doing…I really started to lose faith in the music, that it wasn’t going anywhere…When people are heckling me to play Khe Sanh or Brown Eyed Girl, it really does put a lot of chinks in your armour, and I’ve got a lot of armour…I can handle a lot of shit, but everyone’s got a breaking point I suppose.”

There was no heckling at the Griffin supports however: “the response I got was so warm and so welcoming.” Griffin herself proved “such a lovely person…very shy, but just very genuine”. The experience left Greene revitalised and he returned to the road with renewed confidence “I was doing these kind of frontier gigs and really loving them, like really relishing them”.

One of the highlights for those that make it to Greene’s frontier gigs this time round will undoubtedly be Pretty Girls, a song from the new album I suggest reminds one of the ‘70s AM sound. “Thank you, that’s a big compliment” he says, going on to explain how he wrote this “glam folk” song on a NZ camping trip, unusually for him, without a guitar. “I’m a big fan of Randy Newman, and there’s a lot of Randy Newman in that song”.

Another cut from the album Jervis Bay, sees him yearning for his beloved Culburra Beach region, and marvelling at the soothing isolation that part of the world offers. “That song just poured out a lot of homesick tears,” he concedes. “I might sound like a complete fucking hippie, but it really is my spiritual home,” he laughs.

While his passion for music is palpable, Greene is something of a renaissance man, his first musical venture being put on hold when he qualified for the Atlanta Olympics as a 400m runner. Now outside the heady world of professional athletics, Greene has mixed feelings on the sport he pursued as a hobby. “I’m really interested in the Olympics as a phenomenon” he says “If you wanted to get a cross-section of what humanity is about..it shows the best and worst of humanity, it’s one of the only truly global celebrations.” Athletics, in particular, he feels has a truly international feel, allowing countries to compete on an equal playing field despite their differing economic fortunes.

There was a dark side to the five rings, however, for Greene, who found himself thinking the whole event was becoming “a big corporate scam”. Noticing an unseemly resemblance between the Olympic torch and a McDonalds chip packet, Greene “vowed to myself right there and then, that I would wage war against globalisation and corporatisation.” He talks enthusiastically about a site he found on the website theoildrum.com, which apparently demonstrates how, for $50, you can convert your car so it runs on petrol.

The social conscience so apparent in his music has also seen him become interested in the One Laptop Per Child project (see laptop.org) which aims to provide low-cost laptops for children in isolated areas in developing countries. “It’s the brightest spark for the future I’ve seen in a long time” he says. Greene also thinks of music as a way to combat the forces of globalisation and corporate culture he hates so much. Rising petrol prices and an ailing car aside,“I feel like I’m actually getting somewhere,” he laughs.