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He’s a man of many nations, but as far as any faithful watcher of 1980s MTV remembers, Colin Hay comes from the land Down Under. Hay is the former singer of the band Men at Work, whose 1981 tune “Down Under” was a worldwide hit. These days, the Scottish-born singer is in the midst of a comeback as a solo artist. From his home in Los Angeles, Hay discussed life in and out of Men at Work during an interview that—though we were tempted—failed to include a single question about vegemite sandwiches.

Was your Scottish accent ever a point of contention with Australians when they realized one of their biggest musical ambassadors didn’t talk like them? I used to have an Australian accent. When I was younger living in Australia as a teenager when I arrived there I would start speaking like an Australian bloke just to avoid getting into fights. I remember going through customs and I had a British passport because I wasn’t a citizen. And a guy got annoyed with me that I was singing “Down Under” and I was a Scottish guy. He threw down the passport and was kind of disgusted with me.

Men at Work was a neck-and-neck competitor with The Police there for a moment in history, and both bands had that Anglo-pseudo-reggae thing that went over well in the U.S. When you see Sting on television, do you ever say, “That should be me?” Well, he’s got a great career, and he’s a great songwriter, great singer, great musician, but most of all I think he’s got fantastic shoulders. I think that accounts for most of his success, his beautiful shoulders, which he spent many years [developing] doing yoga. Hats off to him for that.

I’m not familiar with your shoulders. My shoulders are pretty good, but I don’t think they’re as good as Sting’s. He’s pretty up there as far as shoulders go.

When Men at Work first came out, I thought there was a bit of an edge to the lyrics. But now the band is remembered as something of a relic of an era. Do critics unfairly dismiss Men at Work as a video novelty band? I think a lot of critics are idiots, for one thing. If critics like you, they get it wrong, and if they hate you they get it wrong as well. I don’t really care what critics think of my old band particularly.

Do you care what they think of your solo material? Not really. The people that really matter are the ones that come to the shows. But to get back to your original question, I think that you’re correct in the sense that if you care to look at the lyrics there was some depth there. But we were one of those odd phenomenon, where we were immensely commercially popular. We were seen as being a pop act, and I think some of the videos and the way we presented ourselves would give the appearance of novelty with a song like “Down Under,” which was actually darker than people realized.

What’s been going on with you since the mid-’80s, when MTV stopped showing your videos? I’ve just been trying to have a career. It’s been very erratic. There’s a few punctuation marks. I was dropped by MCA Records in 1991. I didn’t have a record deal and no one came near me. I started making records by myself, rather inefficiently because I was the record label. I always had fans, but it was hard to get to people. It has only been since the turn of the century that things started to look up in terms of people recognizing my work.

Getting your songs played on Scrubs has helped. Zach Braff used to come and see me play at this place called Largo at the Coronet in Hollywood. One night I saw him at a party and he said, “I got this gig in this TV show, and I’m going to be the star. I’m gonna take your CDs in there and see if I can get them played.” The creator of the show, Bill Lawrence, came down to see me play and said, “Why aren’t these songs on the radio? I’m gonna license a few of your songs on my television show.” So that’s what he did.

You have said you didn’t enjoy having to tour when you were in Men at Work. Do you still hate touring? It was the personnel. The band was OK for a while, but it got pretty ugly pretty quickly. It wasn’t a particularly happy bunch of people. When we should have been riding high, it was fraught with pettiness and small-mindedness which was distressing to say the least.

It seems pettiness turned to violence recently, if that story from a few months ago is true about your former Men at Work bandmate making death threats against you. Ron [Strykert] has been calling me for many years. He’s not very pleased with what’s going on. Who knows? You’d have to ask him. It didn’t turn violent, but it’s unfortunate. I feel for him, because he’s a beautiful guitar player and a great musician and very inspiring to work with. That’s how I’ve chosen to think of him.

Appearing July 15 at 8 pm. Southgate House, Newport, (859) 431-2201