David McCormack (Custard) : Interview

Musical virtuosso, all-round nice guy and self-confessed pub-meal critic, David McCormack has a talent for many things.

After his initial foray into the music industry with Who’s Gerald towards the end of the 80’s, McCormack really found his feat with Custard who opened their music catalogue in 1991. Now in 2009, McCormack is considered by many as a household name after a long and fruitful career. Such is his endearingly warm personality, he jokes that after his lengthy career, he’s finally earnt the right to cover his own music. But he doesn’t see himself stopping any time soon.

Behind this bright demeanour is an honest and disciplined (some might say wacky!) musical troubadour. When I spoke to Dave he was about to head to Melbourne to promote his album Little Murders, playing the Thornbury Theatre as well as a sneaky spot at St Kilda’s hidden Pure Pop records. But it took a while to get to discuss his musical career, as the unpredictable Melbourne weather was seemingly at the forefront of McCormack’s concerns…

Is it cold down there? Do I need to bring a jacket?

Well we’ve been through a seasonal out-of-character heat wave. It’s currently sitting on 30 degrees.

The thing with Melbourne is it could get cold at anytime. You’d say bring a jacket, but nothing too serious?

I’d bring a jacket even if it was thirty-five.

That’s good local advice.

Having played at Melbourne’s revered spiritual headqarters the Northcote Social Club a handfull of times already, Dave was observably enthusiastic to be getting back to Melbourne and playing at the Thornbury theatre.

Maybe we’ll get some young people people there. Whoever booked the venue has done a good job would you say?

Yeah definitely. You’re going to look very trendy.

You’ve made my afternoon. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but now I’m really excited!

All talk of jackets and weather aside, Dave was keen to discuss the new album Little Murders, which, although being 5years in the making, is an absolute masterpiece.

I imagine it’s been quite a hectic time with the release of Little Murders. What have you been up to?

A lot of interviews. I’ve done some video clips too. Well, I haven’t done anything. Friends of mine have.

Custard are doing reformation gig in December . We’re doing rehearsals for that. So at the moment life’s pretty good.click here for more info

Being a long time admirer of Custard, I was quick to pounce on this piece of information…

So what brought about the Custard reformation?

Well our last gig was in 1999. And very occasionally someone will ring up and ask if we want to do a Custard gig, and we’re usually quite hesitant because we don’t really mingle, all four of us socially.

But this one is Queensland’s 150^th proclamation day – 150 years of Queensland being a state. Powderfinger rang up and said would we consider it. Initially I thought it wouldn’t work out. But then I reflected and I spoke to the other members of the band and everyone thought that maybe this is a good one-off thing to do. There’ll be 8,000 Powderfinger fans there. If they come with their parents then their parents might know who we are. Most of the audience will be too young. It’ll be a bit of fun. I like going up to Brisbane because my family are up there. So we get to fly up there and play this big show. Maybe there’ll be a gig later on down the track.

But as far as new material is concerned, Dave didn’t waste too many words in setting the rumours straight.

Will there be any new material that will eventuate from this?

No!

But he then briefly elaborated on what fans could expect from a Custard performance.

Everything will be played as it is on the CD’s, maybe a little bit faster because we’ll be excited. It’ll just be the four of us, very simple. All the old songs, which I imagine the vast majority of the audience will never have heard of.

There’s no big master plan for anything else after this. We’ve all been doing our own things anyway rpetty much. Everyone has there music bits here and there. Looking forward to it!

Whilst still on the topic of Custard, I felt a certain sense of obligation to ask him about something that had been plaguing my mind for some years now…

I’ve always wondered about the meaning behind the Custard song Music Is Crap. Is it simply about hard to please aliens or is it something deeper?

Well I didn’t write that song.Glenn Thompson (drummer) wrote it. He sang and I played drums on it. All I can say is that it is quite catchy. But I don’t really know where the idea came from. I guess it’s our biggest hit, and I didn’t really have much to do with it.

Dave Laughs, ‘Maybe that’s why it was such a hit!’

You did have Lavinia Nixon introducing you on Hey Hey It’s Saturday when you played it.

Oh really? I don’t really remember it too well.

I seem to remember she warned everyone about the ’swearing’ in it.

Crap is a swear word? What?

I remember when we were recording that in Memphis a lot of people were saying that if we changed the word ‘crap’ we could have a hit. Glenn and the rest of us were trying to think of things we could change it to. Music is not-so-good anymore? Some music is bad?

Music is shithouse?

Another time (on Hey Hey It’s Saturday) we got to meet Julio Iglesius.

Was he flattered about the mention in Girls Like That?

I don’t think so. He wasn’t really engaging in conversation. He smelt of alcohol, and he was very leathery. And I don’t think he really knew where he was. He was still kicking on, but his mind was on other things. We only met him for like 30 seconds, but in that time he just seemed like a very brown, leathery charming, but discsonnected man.

You’ve had a few incarnations, Who’s Gerald, Custard, The Polaroids, and the Titanics as well as your solo moniker. Do you see any difference between those?

I suppose there is different personel. And different groups of people play differently. But still it’s basically me singing songs that i’ve made up. When I play as just David McCormack, I just tend to pick the songs that I enjoy and the ones that the band knows. I don’t really see any great dividing lines. It’s not like ‘that song’s a Titanics song. I’m not going to touch that’. It’s more like ‘That one sounds great. I might play that one’.

So to the uninformed listener you can get away with playing a bunch of old songs and passing them off as new ones?

Thats’ a good point. They might hear a Custard song and rush out and buy the album and it wont be one there. Maybe I should put a disclaimer on the door that says ‘NOT ALL SONGS PERFORMED TONIGHT WILL BE ON THE ALBUM’.

At this point Dave became extremely reflective, looking back on his career as the ringmaster of his various musical projects.

Custard’s first album came out in 91. So that’s been, what, 18 years. Holy Shit. That’s half a lifetime of playing music. That’s pretty good! I’m having a pretty good day. A lot of good news.

Especially with the jacket news too!

Yeah that’s great news.

I think I’ll bring a light jacket. Nothing too heavy.

Maybe a parker then?

I don’t know, really. What is a Parker exactly?

I think it’s more of a light rain/wind jacket.

OK. That’s a good idea because there could be rain, but be warm as well. There’s that whole four seasons in one day thing in Melbourne. It could be anything.

I wouldn’t really know because I’ve never really lived anywhere else for long enough to understand the complexties of their weather patterns. To me it’s just ‘the weather’.

That’s a good way of putting it. It’s just weather!

You’ve done a few covers over the years. Livin’ la vida loca, Eagle Rock with Sitar’s on John Saffran’s Music Jamboree. Any other covers that you hoping to do?

I’ve always wanted to do that Eurythmics song –

(Sings) ‘Who’s that girl running around with you?’ But I’ve never gotten around to it.

And I’ve always wanted to do Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’. It is one of the greatest songs I’ve heard. If you listen to it, it’s incredible. The song is incredible. The production is incredible. I know it’s all auto-tuned and cut-up and perfect, but the first time I heard it I thought ‘This song’s incredible’. Same with Outkast’s ‘Hey Ya’ and Ricky Martin’s ‘Livin La Vida Loca’ –

(both of which McCormack has covered).

You just put them on and go ‘Wow – This is just 3minutes of pop-candy!’ And I love that stuff –

when you hear a song for the first time like that.

Still on the whole ‘covers’ topic, I then decided to bombard Dave with a list of coverable material, then asking him to indicate with weather he would or would not cover them.

Happiness Is A Warm Gun by The Beatles.

Ooooh yeah. I’d love to, but I think The Breeders did a cover of it already, so I’ll say no.

Fashion by David Bowie.

Great song! I’d probably pick Golden Years if I had to do one. So I’ll say no. I’d do Let’s Dance. I played that at Adam Spencers wedding a few years back. Or i’d even do one called Loving The Alien. But I think I’d say yes to a Bowie cover.

That Ain’t Bad by Rat Cat.

Yeah sure. Why not?

Voodoo Lady by Ween?

Yeah definitely. Great choice. Or I might even do ‘I Can’t Put My Finger On it’.

Have you got that album, Chocolate and Cheese?

Yeah, I’ve pretty much got every Ween thing ever released.

Or I would do What Deaner Was Talking About. That is a great song.

Devil Woman by Cliff Richard?

Nah.

Leader Of The Pack by The Shangri Las?

Nah.

Ok. Last one. Undone (The Sweater Song) by Weezer

That’s not my favourite one. I love Say It Ain’t So, or something off Pinkerton would be good.

Actually, come to think of it, I use to do a cover of Tired Of Sex.

After that joyous moment of spontanaiety, it was time to hit the serious stuff and ask the hard questions.

You’ve been going for a while it’s fair to say. Do you think you’ll keep going for as long as you can?

Albums and gigs are getting further and further apart. Everything has slowed down a bit. It’s been four or five years since my last album so what I want to do is try and put an album out every year. Just not sweat on it as much. People don’t even listen to albums anymore. This is probably the last CD I’ll do. In a couple of years it’s just going to be i-tunes and that kind of thing. Do people buy CD’s anymore?

I think people are moving towards snippets here and there and being more sporadic?

See that sounds good to me. You put something up on your social network site saying that you’ve got a few new songs on i-tunes or something like that.

Apparently you have a thorough knowledge of counter meals.

David laughs, ‘From years of touring with Custard. Whenever you’re in a small town, go to a place called ‘The Royal’ and have the ‘Roast Of The Day’. Always going to be good. And it’ll only be $6 or so.

Or if they’re doing a corn-beef/silverside with white sauce, that’s hard to go by as well. Always stick to one of those.

Just say you’re in Tamworth at ‘The Royal’ and people are getting the fish, and you’ll say ‘What are you getting the fish for? You’re meant to get the Roast of the day’.

Even on the coast I like to stick to red meat.

You mentioned the Silverside with the white sauce. Is there any cauliflower with that?

Yep, love that. And the white sauce has got to have a little bit of chopped parsly in it too. Maybe broccoli, boiled potatoes –

they’ll do a roast potato if it’s a roast of the day.

This is making me hungry.

The time had come to wrap things up, so I felt we should discuss the new album, Little Murders a little further, and the outlook for Dave McCormack.

Well there’s the Custard gig for the Proclamation Day, then there’s the final part of the launch on Boxing day.

But after that I’d like to come back to Melbourne to play at the Toff In Town. And just trying to get people to listen to the record and come to the gigs.

I want to put another record out next year so I’ll put aside some time to come up with some songs. And then I’m thinking about doing a best-of type thing with the Polaroids albums and the solo albums and putting out a little compilation. Maybe that’s a better way of doing things. Just compiling a few songs and adding one or two new ones. That way you don’t have to do as much work.

Or you could threaten an Australian Idol contestent into covering one of your songs?

Well stranger things have happened. That’d be nice though, wouldn’t it? I could sit back and releax.

I don’t think anyone’s covered any song of mine. Maybe it’s about time.

Is there anyone you’d love to cover one of your songs?

I’d love someone like Kylie or Danni Minogue to do one. It’s completely out of the rehlm of possibility.

Shannon Noll maybe? He’d love it. He’d sing the fuckin’ arse out of it

It’ll never happen. I’ve got to cover my own songs. That’s how desperate the situation is…[Laughs]

Sort out a deal with dancing with the stars. Imagine David Campbell dancing a Paso Doble to Nice Bird or something like that.

Well next week I’m going to start writing letters.

As a final piece to the interview, I like to finish off with a hypothetical in order to come across as profound and interesting. What song in history do you wish you had of written?

I really love Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkal. I think I like it so much because it came out when I was young. I know it’s a bit daggy, but I do love that song. It is an old persons song, but there is a magic quality about it.

David McCormack – “Little Murders”
DOWNLOAD NOW :