Watch: Dave Dobbyn performs live at RNZ

Over the last 50 years, Dave Dobbyn has written some of New Zealand’s most loved songs.

The key, he says, is to get out of the way and let it happen.

“You're opening yourself up to let the music happen so that you disappear, a lot of performers will tell you that, because if you disappear and the music speaks for itself, then you're doing the job," he told Jesse Mulligan on RNZ's Afternoons.

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Sir Dave played the second in a series of intimate acoustic concerts celebrating 20 years of RNZ's NZ Live music sessions in the Auckland studio this week.

After rising to prominence in the late ‘70s, Sir Dave has received a record number of music awards and Silver Scrolls for his work across nine studio albums.

His best-known songs as a solo performer or with groups Th’ Dudes and DD Smash include 'Whaling', 'Outlook for Thursday', 'Slice of Heaven' and 'Welcome Home'.

Songwriting remains an “exciting process,” he says.

“You get to that point, if you muck it around and you come up with a couple of lines or a lyric to hang it off, or a title to hang it off, and play your chords over and over on piano or guitar.

“And then it just insists itself, it gets insistent and pulls a performance out of you, or pulls melodies out of you didn't know were there. That's the really exciting part, that's the most exciting part about songwriting actually, just before it lands.”

Sir Dave, 68, shared his Parkinson's diagnosis with the public two years ago.

“I was kind of a relief. It was a relief to find out what what it was, because my family couldn't really recognise me. During Covid I went right down the rabbit hole somewhere, I got quite lost.

“And there can be a slight personality change, it can become quite pronounced in some people. Thankfully for me, it wasn't too bad I was rescued by my family, and I was able to tackle it head on.”

You’ve got to fight it, he says.

“Your enemy is standing right in front of you, you put up a fight.”

And he’s literally fighting it, taking to the boxing gym, he says.

“Literally with boxing gloves, punching like crazy. That sound is so cool. Whack! leather on leather.

“And twice a week I go and do my boxing with some other Parky people, that's what we call ourselves - the Parkies.”

Boxing helps in a myriad of therapeutic ways, Sir Dave says.

“It does wonders for your balance, because your balance is shot with Parkinson's, you get all these things that are taken away from you, your balance, the strength of your voice in terms of loudness things like that become difficult, but if you're fighting it and you're doing some exercises, it's the best way to deal with it.

“They always say that exercise is the best cure, and it sure is.”

At this stage he’s in good shape, he says.

“Eventually it takes your voice, so you sound like a slurring drunk.

“But I think I'm a few years away from that. I've already done the slurring drunk bit, and it didn't involve Parkinson's!”

In another 20-year anniversary, it’s two decades since he released his classic ‘Welcome Home’, a song inspired by a news item he saw at the time.

“New immigrants were on a march in Christchurch, an anti-racism march.

“It was just aching to be made into a song, the police were there, they were separating the neo Nazis from the immigrants.

“And it shocked me, I thought, Oh no, not in my country. This is terrible. And I was just moved to write a welcome song, because these people need to know that they're welcome.”

The melody echoed 'Pō Atarau', the Māori farewell song, he says.

“I wanted to write something that was as melodically heavy as 'Pō Atarau' ‘Now is the Hour’, because that melody is just so seductive and it's so memorable.

“I wanted to write something that had that kind of depth of scope and like a lot of songs, they just fall out at the right time.”

Sir Dave Dobbyn and his band will perform one off show at Auckland Town Hall on 4 June as part of the Auckland Winter Series of concerts.