An Interview With.. Mac Demarco

Towards the end of last year I was lucky enough to find myself travelling through South East Asia.. Whilst I was constantly being shuffled from one place to another I found it almost impossible to listen to any form of new music.. Whilst stuck on a 7 hour bus ride between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap in Cambodia I was fortunate enough to stumble across Mac Demarco’s 2.. An album that features some striking guitar work paired with both breezy and cheesy vocals that had me hooked from the get-go.. And since that moment I haven’t been able to put the album down.. Thankfully Mac was kind enough to lend some of his time to taken by sound for a short interview.. Enjoy..!

For those out there who haven’t heard of yourself or your music before… Who is Mac DeMarco, and what does he do?

I’m a 22 year old guy. I live in Montreal in Canada. I’ve been making records for 5 years or so now, and have been playing shows and travelling all over a lot lately.

As a young musician, who were your main influences… And who do you find are your main influences now that you’ve become an established artist?

When I was learning to play I was really into classic rock, back in junior high school. I wasn’t really interested in writing songs or anything at the time, or even singing, just wanted to shred. Eventually I got more into bands like the Beatles and Beach Boys, started forgetting about Van Halen and AC/DC. That sort of put me on the direction to where I am today. Nowadays I still love the Beatles, and the Beach Boys. I’m really into Harry Nilsson, Jonathan Richman, Arthur Russell, Emitt Rhodes, songwriter kind of guys, but not too songwritery.

I’ve heard through a few places that you’ve worked some fairly crazy jobs over the years… What are a few of the more interesting/bad ones?

The worst job I’ve ever had was working as a road construction labourer in Edmonton. I was 18 at the time, fresh out of high school, and was a little shrimp. I couldn’t really cut it as far as doing the labour work, there were nasty looking beefy gremlin girls on my crew, who were way more useful workers. I basically busted my balls outside in the freezing cold and got called little bitch all day long by the foreman. It sucked.

Can you tell us what you’re working on at the moment?

I’m trying to get some kind of EP together, don’t really have much right now, trying out some new stuff I guess, hopefully I can come up with something alright. mac-article-pic

Rock & Roll Nightclub and 2 are vastly different albums.. When you’re to release your next album, do you plan on it sounding remotely like either of these previous works?

It’s always kind of a toss up when I’m recording, there are times I feel like I’m in control of the sound or the direction I’m trying to go for, but other times it just comes out sounding a certain way. I always like making something thats new and refreshing for me, but it’s hard to say if I’ll lean towards anything.

Your last 2 music videos have featured you as a member of a cult.. And a freaky Mozart.. Approximately how many Viceroys do you need to smoke simultaneously to come up with these crazy ideas?

We always just sort of turn the camera on and do something stupid. I guess we picked up some face paint and that Mozart costume beforehand, so there’s always some initial “oh hey it’d be funny if I looked like a freak in this one” for each video, but it’s mostly just me and my friends goofing off. I smoke at least one pack of Viceroys a day, unfortunately none simultaneously, but sometimes one after another.

Now that you’ve spent a bit of time on the road.. What is the wildest thing that’s happened to you whilst playing a show?

I had a hooker punch me in the face during a set once. Usually it’s just us getting weird onstage, the crowd usually leaves that kind of stuff to us.

Any plans on an Australian tour sometime soon?

I hope so. There’s nothing slated as of right now, but it would be really amazing. Touring the states makes enough sense to me, but we only just got back from our first European tour, so I’m fairly new to this world travelling rock and roll thing.

I’d like to personally thank Mac for taking time out for this interview.. Let’s hope that you can make it to Australia sometime soon.. We’d love to have you here! And as usual, I’d like to thank YOU for reading.. There’s some pretty cool stuff lined up for the next few months here at tbs, so I hope you all come back to check it out!

- Michael

Please don’t forget to check out Mac Demarco at any of his official pages below..