Peter Garrett and his band mates in Midnight Oil have made a career of helping out the underdog.

The band has taken on a wide range of causes – musically and politically – over nearly 25 years, 14 studio albums and countless trips around the globe. They are revered in their homeland of Australia for calling attention to the plight of the Aborigines and other oppressed groups. And through it all they have never forgotten the little people that gave them a stage for their music and politics: the radio stations and fans.

So here’s to you WERU.

Garrett and his mates will take the stage at the Maine Center for the Arts at the University of Maine in Orono at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 25, to help the East Orland-based community radio station celebrate its 14th birthday.

Speaking by phone from the coastal resort of Seal Rocks in Australia’s New South Wales state, Garrett is soft-spoken – his phone manner belies the elastic voice he has lent to hits such as “Beds Are Burning.” It’s 7 a.m. and he’s been gracious enough to fit in an interview, despite an 18-hour time difference, before he goes to check out the surf. It’s easy to tell right away that he is not a rock star as defined by the mainstream, but he definitely is a star in the music world.

“We like doing stuff that’s different,” he said of the upcoming Orono date, which serves as a kickoff for a North American tour to promote Midnight Oil’s latest album, “Capricornia.” “We’ve always liked doing stuff that takes us off the highway and onto the byway. We’d like to put a little back into the system.”

The system he speaks of has nothing to do with most pop music stations, and everything to do with community stations, such as WERU, and the fans.

“We’ve always been a fringe band,” he said, although the group’s 1987 album “Diesel and Dust” sold more than 1 million copies. “We’re not entertainment mainstream. For a while we only got played by college stations or independent stations. … They’re the lifeblood of music – the lifeblood of a community. It gives us a chance to hang in a different environment that makes sense to us.”

Maine might not make sense to the band right away (Garrett couldn’t remember if Midnight Oil has ever made it to the Pine Tree State before), but they’re much less interested in geography than in getting their word and music out to the world.

“At all times, we’ve just been interested in this idea that we can play music and think and occasionally act out on it,” Garrett said. “Midnight Oil is an idea that is constantly reshaping itself. We’re not a bunch of guys in capes. We’re a bunch of people with guitars that want to make a difference.”

Although Garrett wishes the band could do more to make a difference, Midnight Oil has seemingly done everything in its power to help where it can – flying in the face of political leaders and major corporations to get its point across. At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, the band staged a “guerilla” performance of “Beds Are Burning,” an anthem dedicated to bringing to light abuses against Australia’s indigenous peoples.

In 1990, the band held an impromptu performance on a flatbed trailer in front of Exxon’s corporate headquarters in Manhattan to speak out against the Valdez oil spill. It also has been outspoken about oppression of miners and violence in East Timor.

But not everything is about protest, and the band aims to prove that in Orono with what promises to be a blistering set featuring old and new material from a band that has been playing together since the late 1970s. Although Midnight Oil has set lists written, Garrett said the band never has been shy to stray off in different directions.

“You might head off in other directions [musically],” he said, “and startle yourself and the people. You’ve got to let the music find its own place. The satisfying thing is for people to come and be a part of the show, otherwise its just rock by numbers.”

Garrett said the band has no plans to change its tune in the future.

“Capricornia” carries on the band’s traditional straightforward rock ‘n’ roll sound and politically charged lyrics. The band may have sacrificed a degree of worldwide stardom in order to stay in charge of its own creative and political destiny, but Garrett is happy with what Midnight Oil has become and wouldn’t change things for all the Foster’s in Australia.

“There are too many people pretending they want to live in Hollywood,” said Garrett, clean-shaven from the neck up. “This is a very different outfit. This is about people who are wedded to the idea that they don’t want to live in skyscrapers. They’re not interested in Joe next door.

“We have a view that people are simply not just humans,” he continued. “They’re not simply a mouth or a credit card. They’re poets and dreamers and rebels. We want, in a sense, to be part of the human experience.”

Midnight Oil will play at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 25. All tickets are reserved seating and cost $25 on a first-come, first-served basis. Call 581-1755 or 1-800-MCA-TIXX or visit www.mainecenterforthearts.com to reserve seats. The MCA box office will be open at 6 p.m. the day of the show.