He has a tour booked with his band, The Family Dog, who have a new album, Thunk. At the same time, he is grieving the loss of his friend, Rob Hirst, who died on January 20.
Moginie describes it as "a brutal bisection, like losing a twin brother".
He and Hirst formed the beginnings of Midnight Oil on Sydney's north shore as 14-year-olds.
For five decades, they were the creative nucleus of the band, co-writing a staggering catalogue of songs that became embedded in the national fabric.
His final collaboration with his dying friend was an EP, A Hundred Years or More, which debuted at No. 1 nationally in November.
So for Moginie, to go out on tour at this moment feels disrespectful - except not doing so would be disrespecting Hirst's own advice.
"It's all booked, and he said 'go out and bloody play'," Moginie tells AAP (Hirst himself had dates booked with blues combo the Backsliders that he was unable to fulfil).
So, play The Family Dog will, with Moginie backed by Kent Steedman and Paul Larsen, formerly of fellow northern beaches band the Celibate Rifles, along with Youth Group's Tim Kevin.
Thunk is the second Family Dog album - the first, Bark Overtures, was released in 2018, overshadowed by the Oils' reformation - and, as Hirst told Moginie, it's "a big step up".
But it has taken a long time to see the light of day after being recorded in 2021 before the Oils roared back to life for what turned out to be their final tour the following year.
Moginie describes "the Dog" as "an ever-evolving collaboration because we don't do it all the time, we do it when we can".
He says the album came together in two days of recording and four years of editing. Asked how often the band rehearses, he laughs. "Oh, we've got a few days next week to cobble it together."
The Dog has a looser, more organic feel than Midnight Oil and for that matter the Celibate Rifles, who disbanded after the death of singer Damien Lovelock in 2019.
"A lot of it's quite open-ended," Moginie says. "We purposely make mistakes and throw weird things in there, curly things, and I think that's the glue of the record.
"Every moment on the record is based on a completely live situation and even if we didn't always know what the songs were, we were just enjoying the sound we were making.
"The Dog just is, and then we are, you know, so we just go forth and play - we let the music come along, then we grab the reins and see if we can hold on."
Moginie, who formed one of the great Australian guitar combinations with Martin Rotsey, says he's lucky to now be playing with Steedman, who keeps him on his toes.
"Playing with him is wonderful because he's very wild and he pushes me more. I can get a bit too comfortable and he's constantly throwing a spanner in the works."
The result is a record that relies more on groove and feel than structure - but the more spontaneous approach hasn't always been to the taste of older fans.
Moginie's memoir The Silver River opens with an anecdote about an early gig the band played in Wollongong, which was memorable for all the wrong reasons.
The gig, which was (perhaps mercifully) poorly attended, was heavily disrupted by an electrical storm and a heavily intoxicated fan baying for familiar Oils favourites.
Moginie has since made some concessions to that side of his audience, with The Family Dog throwing in a handful of both Oils and Rifles songs.
"We've done Say Your Prayers, we've done Shakers and Movers - songs I feel a certain ownership of and feel comfortable singing," he says.
He's not expecting trouble from Midnight Oil fans this time around, though. After Hirst's death, he's confident everyone will be present in the same spirit.
"I don't want to use that to sell tickets, that's cheap and tawdry, but there's something about rocking up to a bunch of people in a room where everyone's feeling the same thing," he says.
"I know a lot of people are going to be coming up and giving me hugs about Rob, and I'm fine with that. Let Dr Music have its way with us. Let people cry, let people laugh and remember."
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