It seems like there's no escaping The Feelers. The band is putting out an album, is on a two-month pub tour and is set to perform the official Rugby World Cup song many times over, founding member Hamish Gee tells Jule Scherer.
Although it's almost five years since The
Feelers released their top-charting album One World, the band members haven't just been twiddling their thumbs.
Along the way they put out a "best of" album that promptly won a music award for the highest-selling album of 2008, drummer Hamish Gee married, singer James Reid became a father, and they had to weather a storm in a teacup over the choice of the official Rugby World Cup song.
The decision to use the band's version of the Jesus Jones song Right Here, Right Now had stirred controversy.
Some fans would rather have seen an original song by a local band present the country musically to the rest of the world.
But Gee thinks The Feelers were at the right place at the right time to have saved the country from worse.
"Someone from the World Cup Organisation came to us, it was over a beer in a pub, and someone said, 'They're planning on using that Jesus Jones song in the original version'. And James and I just said in passing, 'We used to play that song in the Palladium Night Club when we were children'.
"And they said, 'Why don't you play it in a studio?'
"And we said, 'Yes, that's what we're doing for a job'.
"My point was that they were using that song anyway, so a much better result having a local band," the drummer said.
In the end, Gee said, all the guys were after was to score some free Cup tickets.
But before the games, they were keen to showcase their album Hope Nature Forgives at an 18-date pub tour which began last month and finishes in Auckland on August 20.
"We've been tucked away in the studio for about six months, so it is really good to get out and see if people actually like the songs," Gee said.
And there are two new faces to the line-up.
Founding members Reid and Gee, who have known each other for 20 years, welcomed guitarist Andy Lynch (formerly of Zed) and bass player Matt Short into the Feelers family.
"Over the course of the last 14 years we've gone through a few session musicians and these guys are really good friends of ours and it made sense because they are good players," Gee said.
"When Andy came on board he had a whole song-list of new material and he certainly had an influence on our songwriting as well."
The Feelers were a band that had pretty much achieved all a bunch of teenagers from Christchurch could have hoped for when starting out in 1993.
As well as having all five albums debut at No.1 in the New Zealand charts, the band has combined sales of more than 16-times platinum - approaching a quarter of a million album sales in New Zealand alone.
They have also bagged eight New Zealand music awards, including top group and album of the year, and are one of the bands most played on New Zealand radios.
But could success like this make them complacent? Gee hoped not, but said it encouraged them to do better.
For Hope Nature Forgives the band wrote about 50 songs and then whittled them down to their favourite 13.
Gee said that after so many years, band members were still pouring their heart and soul into their music.
"We're already working on the next one, we want to have another album out in about six months," he said.
"Yes, now we're on fire."