Interview: Ball Park Music

For those of you experiencing Ball Park Music withdrawals after their lengthy absence from the live music scene and the triple j rotation playlist, this April will mark the end of your disquiet as the band head back on the road for an Australian tour and release their third album 'Puddinghead'.

I gave Ball Park's lead singer and songwriter Sam Cromack a call to talk about recording in a three bedroom house in Brisbane's northern Suburbs, Cromack's interest in producing more music in the future, Rick Rubin's advice for songwriting, the hospitality of the Dutch and being apart of a creative community in Brisbane.

Hi, this is Jessica from AAA Backstage. How are you today?

Yeah, good.

So just to begin with, can you tell me about the process it took to put together your latest album ‘Puddinghead’ and what have you guys have been up to since your last album came out?

Sure. We spent most of last year working on the new record. We started in about March last year and got our first space to work in. We produced the new record ourselves, so we had to find a space and buy some gear. We ended up finding a house in the northern suburbs of Brisbane. We were there for about nine months.

We did one tour in the middle of last year and we also went overseas in October and November, but apart from that we were just here in Brisbane going to a little makeshift studio three or four times a week and chipping away at the record. It was a little bit tedious at the start of the year, you know, we didn’t really have much on and we were sort of just twiddling our thumbs, but lately we’ve been preparing for the tour coming up, so we’re much busier now. 

So with the recording process in the house you were talking about, what led to the decision to record in this way and do you think you’ll continue to use this approach in the future?

In answer to your last question, I think we’ll definitely record this way in the future. The reason we got started on it…well, there was no real catalyst for doing it this way. I have always loved recording: that’s what I studied at uni, and I’ve always done a little bit of recording on my own in my spare time. Talk sort of started of the possibility of the band doing a record like that and yeah, I didn’t anticipate everybody would be so keen on the idea. Before we knew it we were trying to find a place to do it. I think we were just eager to try something new and thought that we could find a different sound or a sound that is more close to what we originally wanted.

It certainly wasn’t a retaliation to the way we’ve worked before or the people that we’ve worked with in the past, because we have a really good relationship with the guy that did our first two records, Matt Redlich. He was really helpful went we went through this process of doing it ourselves, in giving advice and helping us make things work. I think he really encouraged us to go in this direction.

In what sort of ways do you think it has changed the sound of your music compared to prior stuff you’ve recorded? Is it more of a raw live sound?

It’s actually the opposite. Previously when we worked with Matt we’d rarely sort of go over 16 channels for a song. A bunch of us would set up in his studio in the one room, smash it out, same as we would live. Whereas this time around, even though we were doing it ourselves, it was sort of the opposite. We pieced it together a lot more and manipulated what we working with, tidied it up and did a lot more editing. That was a really different process that we’d not really explored before: having all the editing and stipulation powered through the computer, and that was a really big influence on how we approached the new record and how the new record sounds. 

Did you guys develop any recording rituals during this process?

No, I mean I’m just trying to think of something….I know a lot of bands have a live ritual, you know, before you play you might do something. But I think we sort of treated our little space like a workspace. We treated it like a job. You know, I’d get up when my girlfriend would get up, I’d have breakfast and pack myself some lunch, drive to the studio and work there until dinnertime, like it was a real job. I really enjoyed that routine.

I think when you have a routine you get more work done, even though it can be hard to self-motivate.

Totally, and that’s the routine I’m used to. You know I went to school, and between school and where I am now I’ve had day jobs. Being a musician and not having that structure forced upon you can be a bit challenging sometimes. So I kind of tried to force it upon myself and I really liked those months of working on the record and doing that every day. I would definitely like to work in that way again. It’s probably sort of a little into the future, but I definitely have a long-term goal to get a space set up where Ball Park Music can work and I can work with artists. I’d really like to expand on what we did and work with other artists as well.

Right, do you have any music styles in mind that you’d be keen to work with as a producer?

Not really. I mean I like doing a bit of everything. I think being in the band has exposed me to a lot of old fashioned rock n roll techniques that I may not have otherwise experienced. You know, a lot of young modern music makers are making music on their own and on their laptops. The old sort of format of hiring a studio with a group of musicians is sort of dying away a little bit. So I think being in band really exposed me to that, especially working with Matt. I really love that side of things. I also love the more isolated producer aspect to. You know, I make a lot of music on my own, just using a lot of synthesisers and midi work, and making beats and stuff like that. So if I were to have a place to work I’d probably want to do a bit of everything.

I believe prior to Ball Park you had some other projects going on that involved some of these recording techniques. Is that something you’d be keen to continue in the future?

Well, yeah, I have a side project called My Own Pet Radio. But the band’s been really busy in the last couple of years so it’s been put to the side a bit. I used to see my side project as a way to sort of let off steam; I’d sort of retreat to that when I wasn’t getting satisfied in the band. But now I’ve been working hard to bring those two together and that was a big influence on us doing the record ourselves. Especially for me, you know, I wanted to have that extra imprint on our production. I wanted to combine the world of playing in a band with my love of production and more intricate recording techniques. So that’s why my side project has sort of disappeared a bit. But maybe I’ll revisit it soon. I’m doing a show with My Own Pet Radio just next week.

Oh, okay, where is that? In Brisbane?

Yeah, yeah, it’s just a quiet one. I’m supporting some friends at The Zoo who are launching their EP.

Just getting back to the album, can you tell me more about the songs on the album and if you’ve experimented with the song writing style, in terms of the structure of the songs and the lyrics?

A lot of the songs were actually sort of revisited. I had a lot of demos and recordings kicking around from the last few years and so when we first started the new project we all just sat down and listened to a lot of the recordings we had lying around and we picked out what liked, and what we could revisit and rework. So I think there’s sort of three or four songs that were old ones of mine and then a bunch of new stuff written for the record.

We reached a point where I felt like the record was finished; we had 11 or 12 songs and had decided on the track-lisitng. But following that, I wrote a bunch of songs thinking they wouldn’t belong to any project, but they ended up being really good: probably because I thought I was free of the whole process and didn’t need to worry about putting them on the record. We scrapped a bunch of songs and put these ones on instead. I think because I drew material from such a large stretch of time there’s definitely no underlying theme that ties them all together.

Your song writing always has a very personal touch to it. Do your songs reflect true stories and real events or are they the culmination of a variety of ideas and emotions spawned from many different sources? Or is it a bit of both?

Yeah, I think it probably is a bit of both. I defiantly tend to have a sort of personal vibe, like you said. There’s a quote that’s kind of driven me insane that I got from when Rick Rubin was recording with Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash has obviously done lots of recordings over the year and worked with Rick Rubin when he was quite old. And so Rick Rubin encouraged him to stop using the word ‘I’ in his songs so much: saying I did this and I am this, and I bla, bla, bla, and instead try and write songs outside of yourself, to make it personal, but not always just me, me, me.

I’ve really tried to incorporate that into my song writing, but I always resort to saying I and it’s really been stumping me as a writer. It’s starting to make me feel sort of selfish as a writer, and I kind of more and more start to question, you know, what am I doing here, and why do I always resort to me and I.  But I don’t know, I guess that is sort of my role as a songwriter - to tell stories. 

A lot of people do like the use of ‘I’ in a song or even first person narration in a book. It helps you connect with the writer and feel like you know them.

I agree yeah, but I think if you do it relentlessly there’s like a threshold where you sort of move from having some nice personal stories to share to just coming across as full of self interest. So I’ve been really trying to get that balance right.

Another common habit of mine I became more aware of was when I was reading an Elliot Smith biography that just came out, it’s the first one out since his death ten years ago. He had a habit that I really identified with. He would sort of share personal stories and write lyrics that were deeply personal, but then end up looking at them and decide that some aspects of what he was saying he didn’t feel comfortable with sharing. And so he would deliberately make them abstract. So I do that a lot. I’ll get the nuts and bolts of what I truly want to say and then I’ll describe it with some abstract imagery so people can’t directly interpret what’s going on in my life. I guess that’s just sort of a safety of thing, you don’t want to hurt people and cause trouble.

Yeah, and it definitely makes the work, not only more relatable, but much more timeless, if you can weave your personal ideas and reflections into a wider context.

That’s right and I think that’s what I’ve always loved about John Lennon. He can take a really simple idea, often something he is experiencing as a person, but he delivers it in a way that all the world can jump on board with that lyric and feel it. I’m trying to do that, but I don’t know if I hit the mark or not. 

So last year saw Ball Park headline a lot of the larger venues in Australia and this year you’ll be returning to those venues once again as headliners. Do you prefer to have those big spaces or do you miss those smaller intimate venues you used to play?

Well, I think in a couple of cities we’ll definitely get into some larger and really beautiful theatre-like venues, and I mean it’s glorious, you really do love it; they’re beautiful places to play, the sound is really fantastic and it’s always a pleasure to play to lots and lots of people. But, you know, once we get out of the capital cities we visit the regional areas and the rooms are a lot smaller, and so you do kind of get to have the best of both worlds.

I’ve really trained myself to go on tour with no expectations. If you get too excited about playing in the big venues or conversely, if you get bummed out about playing in the small shitty pub, you kind of doom yourself into having a bad time. You really cannot predict when a great gig is going to come along. Some of the best nights I’ve had have been in some of the most unlikely places. I think I really just appreciate aspects of both venues.

We’re there any venues in particular when you went overseas?

Well, we did a show in London in a placed called Water Rat and I think it only holds two or three hundred people. It was sold out, but I think it was pretty much 99 per cent Australians there, all expats who were living in London and already knew us from Australia. I don’t think I heard one British accent in the pub all night. That was a really fun show. There is a part of you that thinks, 'I can’t believe I travelled all this way to play to Aussies'. But that was a really fun night. It’s really good to be in a brand new environment and have to navigate through that.

Again in the Netherlands we did some small venues with pretty modest crowds, but that was really fun, the audience were really quiet there, and modest, and appreciative. And the hospitality is second to none. Just beautiful, they look after you so well, and feed everyone; there’s a real sense of family, it’s really sweet.

I’ll have to check out the Netherlands then.

It’s a cool country.

So just for my final question, after touring overseas and playing around Australia last year, how does it feel to be back in Brisbane and do you think Ball Park will stay here or move on elsewhere?

It’s hard to say. I was just talking to someone earlier in the week about how Brisbane is really becoming associated with us and what we do, and how every bit of press that mentions our bands says something like, ‘Brisbane’s very own Ball Park Music’ or refer to Brisbane or the music scene here, or that we grew up here, even though I didn’t. But yeah, it does kind of bring into question whether we’ll stay here forever. We love it here, the weather’s not always ideal, but it is a cool city. It’s a modest city, which I like. I think it’s flexible and the more we establish ourselves, the more we can actually afford to locate ourselves somewhere else. At this point I am content here and we’ll stay here. I still get this kind of fuzzy, homely feeling when we fly in and I see the city. 

I guess you do have that luxury as a musician where you can go on tour, have a break from Brisbane and then come back.

Yeah, that's true. I think it’s also nice to be apart of a place that’s growing up and discovering its identity. I always sort of get confused about people who move to Los Angeles for something like that. Obviously, there’s lots of opportunities there, but you’re kind of moving somewhere where things are already established. You can’t really be part of any new cultural movement, you can only join one that already exists. It is nice to be part of a place that is growing.

Yeah, and there’s a strong small community here, particularly for musicians. Alright, well thank-you for the chat today and best of luck with your Australian tour and your show next week.

Published by AAA Backstage.