When The Fixx [ tickets ] frontman Cy Curnin [ tickets ] founded his circa-1980s band, he had fantasies of changing the world. But it wasn't until this year that he realized he just may be able to do that.

Curnin, along with The Alarm's Mike Peters, Squeeze's Glen Tillbrook, the Stray Cats' Slim Jim Phantom and others, climbed 18,600 feet up Mt. Everest to play a concert to raise money for a Nepalese cancer center. The October trip was inspired by Peters, a two-time leukemia survivor, and his Love Hope Strength Foundation. Next year, it will go down in the Guinness Book of World Records as the highest concert.

"It reminded me of why I got into music," Curnin said via telephone with LiveDaily from his French bed and breakfast. "I just enjoyed having a microphone and trying to make a difference. First, I realized you can't change the world, but you can change your own world. Then this thing came around and I realized you can change, in small ways, the world. One small step here. One small step there. For those reasons, it was an awakening."

Now that he has returned from his trip to Mt. Everest, Curnin is preparing a February-March tour in support of his solo album, "The Returning Sun," which is available at his website. Dates for the tour will be announced soon.

"Rather than doing the traditional big-bang-buck release that record companies used to do, I'm releasing this on my own, testing the system to see how we can get things going with The Fixx, as well," Curnin said.

The singer recorded a solo CD because the songs he wrote soon after a divorce a couple years ago did not fit in with the mission of The Fixx, best known for its hits "Saved by Zero" and "One Thing Leads to Another."

"Sometimes when you write songs for a band, it's a boys club, in a way. You don't want to bore them with your pillow chat, or your own vulnerability. But, as a writer, I'm finding, as I get older, vulnerability is one of the things that you really want to write about. You feel more comfortable exposing it, I think, and you celebrate your limitations."

Before he starts his coffeehouse-circuit tour in support of "The Returning Sun," he is going to play three shows with The Fixx: one at Anderson's Fifth Estate in Scottsdale, AZ, and two at Ovation at Green Valley Resorts in Henderson, NV. The set lists will include new material that has yet to be recorded in a studio. Based on his experience with his solo album, he is considering releasing The Fixx's next CD on his own.

"We've been hesitant about going in the studio to make the definitive studio album," Curnin said. "But nightly, when we're playing shows, we record the shows live and people can buy them as they leave the show. They get a tiny USB stick with the whole show on it."

He said, however, he is planning on entering the studio with The Fixx in January.