After ascending to fame with 90s Oz Rock stalwarts, Custard, and having spent much of the last decade with his solo project The Polaroids, Dave McCormack has had two decades to accumulate a legion of fans. One such fan, Nils Hay, caught up with him, to discuss his two most famous bands, and where he sees them, the music scene and the album format heading in the future.

Nils Hay: Hi Dave, how are you?
Dave McCormack: Very well thank you. How are you?

NH: I’m really good. Thanks for taking the time for a chat today.
Besides the upcoming Float On flood benefit gig, and Meredith Music Festival last year, Custard played the Q150 gig the year before. While this is hardly prolific gigging, there’s obviously still some desire in the band to perform together. As sick as you must be of the question, as a fan I can’t help but ask, do you think we’re likely to hear more from Custard in the future?
DM: Look, I don’t know Nils. That’s a very open question.The Q150 gig, we hadn’t played for ten years before that. For Powderfinger to invite us personally, and knowing that they were going to be wrapping it up soon after that, and it’s a great venue at the Riverstage... It felt like the right thing to do.

Meredith, they just made us an offer we couldn’t refuse, and as soon as I heard about the floods I though “We’ve gotta do something for this.” All the four members of Custard, myself, Glenn, Matthew & Paul, we’re all born and bred in Brisbane. Obviously we were based in Brisbane for ten years, it’s so close to our hearts, we have to play, we have to do something.

As for more gigs, I don’t know. I just really don’t know. We just take every gig on its own merit and value, and if something comes along and it feels right, then we’ll just do it.

All four of us are playing music separately anyway, but there is something kind of special and magical when we get together. I can’t put my finger on it; I don’t know what it is. When we had a rehearsal for the first time in ten years, from the very beginning of rehearsal it seemed to sound pretty cool - even though it was a bit wonky and wrong it just sounded good. So, I don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s wide open at the moment. Nothing’s planned though.

NH: Coming to The Polaroids then - your current band, you guys are playing Between The Bays in late February. I’ve not been...
DM:  Me neither...

NH: ...but by all accounts it’s a fairly laid back and very family-friendly event. It’s more about sitting on the lawn and having a glass of wine, as opposed to a Big Day Out where you have to get your shirt off and drink some rum...
DM: I think it’s definitely the former, and I think The Polaroids will be playing appropriately; it’ll be seven o’clock in the evening on a Saturday down in Frankston and I think it’s going to be wonderful.

NH: As your fans, and obviously the band, mature, do you find yourself gravitating more towards events like this and more the club scene, rather than playing the big venue shows full of young people rocking out?
DM: Yeah, yeah definitely. (Laughs) Definitely with The Polaroids I just pick and choose the gigs very carefully. There are a couple of people who own places that I feel very relaxed in and the right sort of people come.  At my age, I’ve been doing this for so long, I don’t want to kind of hit anyone over the head with it, I’d rather people who are familiar with the music to come along - a couple of new songs, a couple of old songs.

Whereas, in the early days with Custard, it was kind of us against the rest of the world “We’re going to go out and we’re going to play everywhere! We’re going to play Shepparton and we’re going to play Lismore and we’re going to play Rockhampton and we’re going to play Bunbury in Western Australia! Come on, we’ve gotta really sell it!”

After a while you get a bit older and bit more relaxed and it’s like “Let the people come to me now.”  I’ll play a couple of gigs and hopefully some cool people will show up and enjoy it.
The kids have got all their own new music now, they don’t want to come and see old people, we’re playing music from a different century!

NH: You released Little Murders in late 2009 - to critical acclaim, it’s fair to say...
DM: It was, I was very happy with the result of that, because that was five years of me recording and thinking of putting an album out and doing more recording. By the end of it, I had about 50 or 60 recordings to pick from. In the end I chose about 20 songs to go on the album, which I thought was a lot, but I though “I haven’t put an album out for a long time, so I may as well get what I can on there.” Since then, it’s just the same old story - I’m always writing songs and recording, I don’t know when the next album will come out.

I’m sort of thinking that from here on in, it’s more iTunes sort of stuff - instead of an album per se, you release half a dozen songs on iTunes here, and half a dozen songs there... I sort of feel like the album format is a bit of a dead horse now. Because I haven’t gone out and bought an album in years, I can’t remember the last time I went out and bought an album.

NH: I have to admit that I can’t either, although I do get sent them quite regularly...
DM: You would, being a music critic... Personally, I sort of think iTunes is the way to go. I’m always a huge one for file-sharing anyway. If someone emails me and says “I can’t find this album.” I’ll ask them which songs they want off it and email them the MP3s. You make music for people to hear it, and hopefully they’ll hear it and if they really like they’ll come to a gig or search some other stuff out.

If they want the actual CD they can maybe find it on eBay or something. I’ve always been about as many people as can have access to the music the better.

NH: You’ve been putting out music for about 22 years now - in your eyes how has the Australian music landscape changed in that time?
DM: That’s another good question. JJJ did an Oz Music Month thing up at the Hi-Fi in Brisbane last November, and there were some bands playing - Ball Park Music, Hungry Kids of Hungary - there were these young bands playing and they asked me to sing Apartment with them, which was great... But the thing that struck me was that the young bands these days are so good at their instruments, they’re very good musicians...

NH: Better than musician were back when you were starting out?
DM: Yeah, we were hopeless, we were completely hopeless! All the bands that were around in the early 90s we were crap, we could hardly tune a guitar. The bands that are around these days, they’re really good singers, they’re really good musicians, they’ve got really good gear... I think the bar has been raised. I’d hate to be in a band right now starting off; you have to be so good!

NH: Coming back, touching on iTunes again, things like iTunes, MySpace etc. have come to the fore in the industry in the last few years, do you feel like you did it the hard way when you started out?
DM: No, look, we had a ball. I think we were just really lucky. Custard came about just when JJJ was going national, so I think it would’ve been really hard before that, but we had a national broadcaster who could get our songs out there.

I don’t know if it’s harder or easier out there, I think it’s just different.  Every generation is going to be a bit different. I don’t have any idea what’s going on anymore, and I’m happy that way Nils.

NH: Thanks for taking the time out for a chat, Dave. All the best with Float On and obviously Between The Bays and the following shows.
DM: Thanks Nils, bye.

Dave McCormack is playing with Custard at the Float On flood relief benefit show at the Hi-Fi in Brisbane on February 6, then with The Polaroids at the Between The Bays Festival on February 26, followed by a show at The Toff in Melbourne on February 27.

For more information on Dave McCormack, visit his site here