Latest / Half the Picture / #20 - BRET MCKENZIE

Transcript

#20 - BRET MCKENZIE · Half the Picture

• 0:00
  Do you have a favorite concord song or at least a song that you enjoy the most like playing live or off the earth?
• 0:05
  I really love playing the most beautiful girl in the room live.
• 0:09
  I just, it's so fun to play.
• 0:11
  And then the recording, I'm a super fond of mother-uckers.
• 0:16
  I remember we recorded that in New York and I remember Jimmy Carr.
• 0:19
  I'm pretty sure he had popped past her.
• 0:21
  His friend of ours was in New York.
• 0:23
  He came past you to visit and we just figured out that bass line on the synth.
• 0:28
  And it was, it was, I feel like mother-uckers is really, really bang in recording actually.
• 0:33
  That's my favorite record.
• 0:42
  Hey everyone, I'm Billy and welcome back to Half the Picture.
• 0:46
  I'd like to wish everyone watching a Happy New Year and also to say how thrilled I am
• 0:50
  are guests for this episode, who is none other than Brett McKenzie from Fly to the Concord.
• 0:54
  Now, I've been a fan of Brett's music since I was a kid.
• 0:56
  I mean, I told you I was freaky.
• 0:58
  The second Fly to the Concord's album was actually the second album I've ever bought.
• 1:01
  I was such a huge fan of the concords and then later on his solo work, you know,
• 1:05
  things like songs about jokes and his most recent album, Freakout City, which he just
• 1:08
  toured, I was such a huge fan of that stuff too.
• 1:11
  And I just couldn't wait to get him on the podcast to chat to him about it.
• 1:13
  Brett and I dived right down the rabbit hole in this conversation
• 1:16
  and touched on all sorts of areas from the upcoming reunion show of Fly to the Concord,
• 1:20
  happening in the summer to the legacy of the concords themselves as well as his work in Hollywood.
• 1:25
  I own films like The Muppets and on Lord of the Rings as well as Cameo and Lord of the Rings.
• 1:29
  And we also found time, of course, to touch on his latest tour for Freakout City.
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  By the way, remember to like and subscribe to the podcast as it really helps us get more amazing
• 1:37
  guests like Brett onto the show. So, without further ado, let's roll on my conversation with Brett McKenzie.
• 1:43
  Enjoy.
• 1:44
  Hi Brett, welcome to Half the Picture. How you doing?
• 1:46
  Great. Thanks for having me.
• 1:48
  Our pleasure. Our pleasure. I've been a fan of yours since I was a kid since back in the concord's days.
• 1:53
  So, no, this was such a pleasure to have you on.
• 1:58
  Yeah, and I guess we're currently calling from a St. P. M. London time now.
• 2:03
  And how do we find you? Morning in Wellington?
• 2:06
  Breakfast. Yeah, it's morning time. Just got a cup of coffee.
• 2:09
  Really a roll. Yeah. So thanks for staying up. Yeah.
• 2:13
  No, our pleasure. Our pleasure. So, I'm curious to ask about what you've had lately,
• 2:18
  on lately, I suppose, because I guess the main thing being the tour for your latest album,
• 2:22
  Freakout City, which I actually have a copy of here, which I picked up when you came to London,
• 2:29
  recently on the tour. You came to a little gig in a rough show in London.
• 2:31
  Rough trade. Rough trade.
• 2:33
  Rough trade.
• 2:33
  That's right.
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  And London. So fun.
• 2:35
  Yeah, well, so I've just got home from a sort of medium tour.
• 2:40
  I guess it's kind of a small tour, really, but I've toured with my band.
• 2:43
  I've got this giant eight-piece band, and toured that record in LA, New York, Washington,
• 2:49
  in London, and then came back home. And yeah, I'm just going to do some shows in New Zealand, Australia.
• 2:54
  Next, coming up. Next, yeah.
• 2:57
  Fantastic. And the new album that seems to me has gone down really, really well.
• 3:00
  And the new material on it, you know, in the live performances you've been giving,
• 3:03
  people seem to have really taken to it. I mean, what was the reception like when you were doing
• 3:08
  your tour? People are into it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting. The show,
• 3:12
  yeah, I've got these new songs that aren't particularly comedy songs, but
• 3:17
  the show ends up being pretty funny and kind of, it kind of, but comes up.
• 3:22
  I can't help myself, you know, gagging around with the audience. And so the show,
• 3:27
  even though it has songs that aren't necessarily comedy songs, the show itself, the live show,
• 3:32
  is a real mixture of comedy and music. I get someone out of the audience and write a song with them.
• 3:39
  Sometimes LA, so I ask some of the audience to tell me a story about their life. And then
• 3:44
  on stage, turn that into a song and the band jumps on. And suddenly, almost like magic before
• 3:50
  the audience's eyes, a song appears out of nowhere. And usually people's stories are pretty ridiculous.
• 3:57
  The London stories, curiously, were really dark. Like, I'd just come across America and people's
• 4:02
  stories were like, oh, I met someone or we broke up in London. I was like, well, he's got any ideas
• 4:07
  in the first night. So one of London goes, there was a stabbing in the park. I was like, yeah, yes.
• 4:16
  The other ideas for a song. I mean, the next night, the next night, the idea was,
• 4:22
  I had a friend and they fell in love with, they met someone and turned out they were a Nazi.
• 4:29
  That was the... My God.
• 4:33
  I make it to the 1930s or something. So, yeah, London had really dark ideas for songs.
• 4:40
  It was quite curious. But anyway, only that being really funny, it was great.
• 4:43
  Yeah, that British dryness, I guess, is which way. It was very dry.
• 4:49
  Well, I was wanting to ask about that specifically, because I'd heard that you've been doing this.
• 4:53
  So it was an idea that you'd protested on the previous tour you'd done for songs about jokes,
• 4:58
  your first album, said a while ago. Yeah. And then you wanted to take it on the road again,
• 5:04
  and involving the audience really viscerally, which was something that I saw you do a fair bit
• 5:09
  of as well when you played with Fred West, which I came along to see. You were really involving
• 5:13
  the audience and you were enjoying the back and forth. It seemed to me a lot with the audience.
• 5:17
  Yeah, and maybe that's from doing comedy. I like the connection with the audience.
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  And also, I like the audience to be kind of a little bit...
• 5:25
  Just keeping them away. You can keep them alive. You know, keep them on edge a little bit.
• 5:29
  Like, when you start talking to someone in the audience and say,
• 5:30
  you're going to write us on the whole crowd, just suddenly goes,
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  oh, no, what's going to happen here? Oh, and they... You can feel the old room get nervous,
• 5:36
  but excited. Yeah, so I did it in New Zealand, and it was... It's very stressful, because as a performer,
• 5:42
  you're like, oh, sometimes it doesn't work, because the person's story is crazy or just doesn't seem
• 5:48
  to like get it to work. And I've got this band of musicians all staying around behind me,
• 5:52
  looking at me like, what are you doing? The first time I did it, I didn't tell the band,
• 5:56
  I was going to do it. I just started doing it on stage and they were like, what are you doing?
• 6:00
  What's happening? And then I started... I'm at the piano and I start writing the song, and the band
• 6:04
  were really great musicians, so they can just quickly jump on and get the chords. And then I'm like,
• 6:09
  okay, what about a horn line? Ba-da-ba-ba-ba-ba-bout. And then they start doing it, and then the
• 6:14
  backing vocals, and quickly it turns into a big song, but it is very stressful. I said to my wife,
• 6:20
  I was like, oh, I don't know if I can keep doing it. It's so harrowing, you know, because on tour,
• 6:24
  you end up being quite tired, generally. And so, but at the same time, it's so exciting,
• 6:32
  and it often ends up being kind of the highlight of the show because it goes from such chaos and
• 6:38
  unknown. And if the song does do get a song that works, it's really exhilarating, even for the band,
• 6:45
  and for me to play it. So yeah, it's kind of cool. It makes it kind of different from any other gig, yeah.
• 6:50
  Yeah, and I guess, yeah, as you say, it keeps you on your toes too, because you can't just be
• 6:55
  safe in the lodge that you're just playing the same set every night. There has to be a change if
• 6:58
  you're evolving the audience and that sort of improvisational way. And I guess I was curious to ask
• 7:03
  you, because like I said, you did a sort of a medium-sized tour. You played Washington and New York
• 7:07
  in LA as well as, you know, several places in New Zealand and London a couple of nights.
• 7:12
  Like, what were the most memorable stories? It sounds like, I mean, some of the London ones
• 7:15
  must be in the running. I mean, quite, like, say, quite dark energy. Like, what were some of the
• 7:18
  memorable things you heard from the audience? There was one in New York where a guy started talking
• 7:25
  at the time, and I remember exactly how I said that. He said, oh, he's like, oh, I met someone,
• 7:29
  and we got together. And I was like, oh, I can't agree how that means. He said, well, we're
• 7:33
  known each other for quite some time. We were texting, and then he revealed, oh, we've been texting
• 7:39
  for about seven months. And I was like, oh, well, that's a long time texting before you went on
• 7:44
  your first date. And then he goes, oh, well, yeah, that's because they were, they were in a relationship.
• 7:51
  And then he goes, it's so was I. I mean, you watched the whole audience just go like, oh,
• 7:59
  dude, dude, I mean, he's like, no, it was just, just friendly texts. Just, we mean, we're just
• 8:04
  friendly texts for seven months while he was in a relationship. And now, anyway, he just was,
• 8:09
  it just was amazing watching the audience like him. You know, like, oh, he's a guy. He's been
• 8:15
  to, oh, whoa, that doesn't sound like you'd manage that very well. Anyway, that was interesting.
• 8:21
  But the ones like one of the first ones, first time we did it, it was in Wonganoi in New Zealand,
• 8:27
  a sort of small town. And the woman was, the stories are always really interesting. She was,
• 8:33
  she was like, there's her partner left her with two kids, five chickens,
• 8:38
  often there were often stories about people leaving them. And, oh, one in Auckland, the woman goes,
• 8:44
  the idea was fallen out of love, right? So she's like, and I said, okay, so where's your partner
• 8:52
  have you broken up? And she goes, oh, no, no, he's right here. He's here.
• 8:58
  Oh, yeah, you got like 700 people to go, oh, no.
• 9:04
  And is that the moment where you as a musician are just like, on stage, you're like, you start
• 9:07
  rubbing your hands like, okay, I can do this into a song. I can do this. It's like, it's
• 9:12
  a day in a Ross disco track. It was quite cool, but it's very funny. It's always, it's always
• 9:18
  interesting. And it's kind of what's weird is it's like my job writing for films. So I'm,
• 9:26
  you know, often they're like, say write a story, write a song about something. And I'm looking for
• 9:31
  what might be interesting for the song. And so as people are telling me their stories,
• 9:37
  it's really similar job. He's like, what would make a good chorus? Or is something that that's
• 9:42
  is that a verse idea? And people keep talking. And the more people talk, the more, I don't know,
• 9:48
  it's often the funnier it gets, the more personal the details get. Yeah. Yeah, like,
• 9:52
  it comes to a certain point where they can't stop. And it just, and it kind of all comes tumbling
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  out. And yeah, I don't realize, often you don't realize what's funny about your own story.
• 10:01
  You know, for sure. I mean, you mentioned, you mentioned the sort of the movie work you've
• 10:06
  done, which I guess is, it's been a strong theme in your career for the last 15 years. I mean,
• 10:10
  going back to the Muppets, which you know, you famously want to Oscar for your work on the Muppets,
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  the first Muppet movie from, well, I guess I say the first, but like the first of the new wave
• 10:19
  of Muppet movies. Yeah, the new Muppet movie, but it's called the Muppet movie, I think. Yeah,
• 10:23
  it's called the Muppets. So it's clearly confusing. Yeah. All right. And then Muppets most wanted
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  after that. And having been a fan of yours for a long time and having listened of your
• 10:32
  solo work, your new solo work, and also going back to the Concord today. It's like the Concord,
• 10:36
  so you're your band with, um, with Jermaine Clemmand listening to your solo work is it's
• 10:40
  it's having obviously since you've had that extraordinary career working in film and on television
• 10:45
  writing songs. It's interesting to me to my ear, like, I feel like I can hear, uh, a shift maybe in
• 10:50
  the sort of in the work that you're doing, like, you know, in the, on the, um, the solo records.
• 10:54
  There's like a, there's a lot of bomb bass. There's a lot of, you know, I look at the bands that you
• 10:57
  use and the session musicians that you use on the records. There's a lot of, as I say, a lot of bomb
• 11:01
  bass. There's a lot of brass, you know, and it's got this great almost kind of showtune sound,
• 11:05
  kind of like in reminiscent of Randy Newman and kind of Steely Dan and, and like the new records,
• 11:09
  no exception, Freakout City, which I loved. And I guess something I wanted to ask, just as you
• 11:14
  mentioned, the, uh, the film work. How do you think, um, working in Hollywood and, um, and working
• 11:19
  on films has influenced your, the, the approach to the, to songwriting and, I guess, crafting
• 11:24
  an album in the studio that you've done on songs about jokes and Freakout City. How do you think
• 11:28
  working in Hollywood has influenced you in that regard? Huge influence because when I started
• 11:34
  of doing the film songs, which is really the muppet stuff, um, well, no, before that, like, with
• 11:40
  Concords, the songs, when we recorded the songs for Concords, it was me and Germain in the studio
• 11:45
  with Mickey Petralios, the producer, we're just playing everything, you know, I'm playing
• 11:50
  on the instruments and playing a lot of the instruments. And then, and then, um, it's all kind of
• 11:55
  super low-fi and little drum machines and little ideas. And, and that's kind of awesome because
• 12:00
  in the, the smallness of the recordings, that was always what was quite funny about Concords was
• 12:06
  us on two guitars, two acoustic guitars trying to rock out, like we're a big band or like we're a
• 12:11
  hip-hop actor or it is, we're acting like it's a full stadium gig. And then when I started doing
• 12:19
  them, the film work, the, the, the muppet stuff, I got to, that was the first time I've worked in
• 12:24
  these big Los Angeles studios. And that's just where it is in the, where films work. That's just
• 12:29
  their normal studios. So, got to go to this place called Oceanway, which is also called United.
• 12:36
  And it's on Sunset Boulevard. There's a bunch of classic old rooms and you walk in and the,
• 12:42
  the walls are lined with gold records from just for decades of gold records. Okay. And then,
• 12:48
  because it's these film projects, they, you're on these really tight schedules. You've got to record
• 12:53
  all the songs in two days or whatever. And so, they hire the best musicians, the session musicians.
• 12:59
  So, I'd never, I'd heard of, but, I'd never met them, but they show up. And the guitar player
• 13:06
  shows up. A truck pulls up full of guitars, right? And then a guy loads in all these guitars.
• 13:12
  And it's not the guitar player. There's like, there's a hundred guitars and these big crates.
• 13:16
  And the musicians are all, they all come in and you give them the charts. You say, okay, this is
• 13:20
  the song. You play the sort of demo and you're like, this is what we're trying to do. And then they
• 13:24
  go in and they play it once and it sounds better than anything I've ever played. And then,
• 13:31
  have a couple little notes like that, but it's got to go a bit faster or it's, you know, adjust that.
• 13:34
  But, and then two or three times and then you've got the song recorded. So, they're completely
• 13:39
  different to me and Jermaine sitting in a room for 10 hours going, ding, ding, ding, ding. Well,
• 13:43
  hang on, try that again, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, you know. And then, yeah, so really,
• 13:48
  it was so exciting to experience that for me just to, there was so many parts about it that
• 13:55
  were blowing my mind. And the musicians are all, what's funny is a lot of them are in their 60s.
• 14:01
  And now, probably in their 70s and they've been session musicians for a long time. And they,
• 14:07
  they stand and, you know, there's hallways with the gold records I was describing. You know,
• 14:10
  you have a tea break, cup of tea break. And they stand in the hall going, I played on that one.
• 14:14
  I did that one. They played on all the records. It's so crazy. They played on all the L.A. records.
• 14:21
  And, you know, the people that play with them, just like Michael Jackson, you know,
• 14:26
  Rita Franklin, they played it, it's, it's the Dubie Brothers. They play with all these crazy
• 14:31
  players, you know, and seeing that process and how they record. Mickey, who was the producer,
• 14:38
  who worked on Concord, who did all the muppest stuff as well. And it's done my albums with me.
• 14:43
  We, we thought, wow, we should try doing some music with these guys, like do an album like this.
• 14:50
  That's not for fun, but just, but we could do an album in like three days. These guys are so fast.
• 14:56
  You could just like, go in, down and so, and we're like, let's do it. And I said to Lee
• 15:02
  Sklar, who's this legend bass player who looks, if you look him up, he's, we play on everything. And
• 15:07
  he plays James Taylor and, um, he tours with Phil Collins and he's played lots and lots of people
• 15:13
  who play with Dolly Patton, nine to five. He played that song and he's, you go through the list
• 15:18
  of songs they've played, like the music, the musician's IMDB type thing and it's, it's crazy,
• 15:23
  but lovely, lovely guy. And I was telling him, I'm thinking about doing some music and he goes,
• 15:27
  oh, I'm keen. And then all the, all the band were like, I'm keen, they were keen to do it. So,
• 15:31
  so the Bam McKayne and we booked the studio and I wrote a bunch of songs and hilariously we,
• 15:37
  do you know they go John Bryan, he does the music for, yeah. You know what I mean, he's an L.A.
• 15:43
  great L.A. musician, um, eternal sunshine spotless mind. He did the score to that. He does
• 15:49
  Fiona Apple stuff and I met him in L.A. And I was talking to him and I said, oh, he
• 15:52
  were going to record an album in three days. And he just, he just started laughing at me. He was like,
• 15:58
  oh yeah. And then to his credit two years later, I finished the album, you know,
• 16:05
  because you get the, you record the tracks, but then you're so much more work to do. I just
• 16:10
  didn't really quite comprehend how much you adjust things and vocals and all the fixing and changing
• 16:18
  and yeah, anyway, very funny. My, my initial idea of like, I'm going to record an album in three
• 16:22
  days. That was a bit of a dream. Well, I guess that, that, that mentality of, as you say,
• 16:28
  like come into the studio with the, with the guys with the musicians and bash it out. I mean,
• 16:31
  that is quite an old fashioned, I think these days, mentality. I mean, because people spend so
• 16:35
  much time on albums, there's almost, no, there's, there's almost, because they have all the time in
• 16:39
  the world, I guess, to get it right and to produce it right and to make sure, you know, the mix is,
• 16:43
  is correct and everything and proper. And you think back to like the 70s when like Bowie, who I
• 16:47
  know you're a big fan of, was recordings that he started. Yeah, he was, he was bashing some of
• 16:52
  those records out, light transformer as well with Lou Reed in like two weeks. They would record
• 16:55
  the whole thing and it was like, I remember, it was like London, there's, that's London with
• 17:00
  their session musicians who came in, doom, doom, doom, and all that, and yeah, it's a really
• 17:06
  different process and the thing is the musicians are, it's a different type of musician. Like,
• 17:12
  a lot of those musicians grew up playing in bars, playing gigs every night and then they,
• 17:18
  then they record every day, they play the whole song and one go. So I was trying to do it like that.
• 17:26
  Now it's much more common to play pieces of music, little bits of a song. And do you know what I mean?
• 17:35
  It's like a different style of playing and I guess back at that time, you couldn't, studios were
• 17:39
  super expensive and now people can edit at home on their computers and tidy things up, which you
• 17:44
  couldn't do that. So you just had to get it right and immediately or you also left these things
• 17:50
  that were kind of not quite right, but no one, that was also quite cool. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that,
• 17:55
  it despite the fact that as we say, like, you know, you went into the studio with the idea,
• 17:59
  again, let's do this in three days and then it took a, you know, longer than that. I mean,
• 18:03
  the thing is when you listen back to Freakout City, which I've done, you know, many times and they've
• 18:07
  run up to the center view and just generally because I'm a huge fan of it, you feel that infectious
• 18:12
  energy is still in the record. Like there are so many, you know, great songs on there, like,
• 18:16
  you know, that I love, like eyes on the sun and, you know, something to come at tonight and,
• 18:20
  you know, there's so many great tracks on it, which you really get that in fact, it's sense of
• 18:23
  spontaneity and sort of infectious energy. I think that I, for me, is a theme that runs through
• 18:27
  all of your work, but particularly on this one. There's a real sense of warmth and joy to the music.
• 18:32
  Yeah. I was trying to get that feeling of the musicians in the room playing together. Like,
• 18:39
  that shouldn't come here tonight, which I think came out, the rhythm on that's pretty cool. Like,
• 18:44
  that's the funny story Lee, the bass player I was talking about. So also, he's such a character.
• 18:49
  He has a electric bass and he has this, often the producer is behind the windows saying,
• 18:55
  can you change the sound? Or can you try something different? He's got a switch on his bass
• 19:01
  that he switches. He's like, yeah, I'll try this and you switch it and the switch doesn't even
• 19:05
  connect it to anything. It's just, because then they go, yeah, that sounds great. And then he's
• 19:11
  also got another switch, which lights a little LED, which is like flipping the bird, a picture of
• 19:15
  a little flip in the bird in his bass. He's got, he's like, he's such a funny guy. He's got a book,
• 19:21
  actually, wherever he goes, he meets people who take photos of them flipping the bird and he's got a
• 19:24
  book of photos of him over decades with people, all famous musicians and people all over the world
• 19:29
  flipping the bird. But on that track, we were recording it. He put on this weird bass effect sound
• 19:36
  on the sort of sort of Octavee choricy thing and the bass instead of going, set us down like,
• 19:48
  sort of that's an exaggeration for something like that. And weirdly, we didn't notice it first
• 19:52
  because you're kind of busy listening in the room, like trying to get things right,
• 19:55
  you know, drum, standing right. And we're listening back and, hey, and then Darryl was the engineer
• 20:00
  and Mickey would produce something like, what's all the bass sound? And then, but they're too scared,
• 20:05
  he wants to scared to tell Lee to change it because he's such a kind of legend. Anyway, so like,
• 20:11
  you've got to tell him to change it. Sounds crazy. And so then I was like, if you might read
• 20:15
  doing the bass without that pedal that he'd just put on, he'd snuck on. And he was like, okay,
• 20:21
  so he goes in and replays the bass over the top, overdubs it. And then we have a clean bass part.
• 20:26
  And then six months later, when we're mixing it, we're like, that sounds good, but it's
• 20:32
  like a sort of energy. And then we put back on his original one with the crazy effect. Oh, yeah,
• 20:36
  that's awesome. And it ends up being, it ends up being like the key part of the song. And you
• 20:41
  kind of, you finish the track. And when you track something and everyone comes in and listens,
• 20:46
  it's interesting watching these amazing, oh, players, you know, because you can, if they're
• 20:52
  they're going like nodding along, then you, it's a good sign. Do you know what I mean? You're on
• 20:58
  say thing. Good. Yeah. Okay. We're good. They think it's good. That would probably fine.
• 21:05
  It gets the thumbs up, not the flip in the bird. It gets the thumbs up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 21:09
  And when you're playing that song live, then, is that something that you try and replicate? I mean,
• 21:12
  like, we're like, okay, let's try and get a bit of a pedal on there. That on that song,
• 21:16
  in particular, I shouldn't have got that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, live Jackie is the
• 21:20
  base player live. She's from Wellington. And yeah, so we got this cool pedal and she had that for
• 21:25
  that track. It's actually, it's funny. It's quite hard to get that track to play that track live.
• 21:30
  It's interesting because it's something about the way it feel in the studio. We've got something.
• 21:35
  Some tracks are easier to play live and some are tricky to get them to sit in the pocket. Yeah.
• 21:42
  And with the album, then, because, as I say, comparing it to, say, to songs about jokes,
• 21:46
  your first solo album, which I guess, I remember at the time you're saying that, like, you
• 21:50
  explicitly go, because obviously at that point, you beat, you were known for the Concords,
• 21:53
  which you're main and you're working in Hollywood with on films like The Muppets, which I guess
• 21:57
  are broadly, you know, a comedic. Yeah. And then on that album, you were like, right, we're going
• 22:03
  in the other direction here. We're going to go, even though maybe there is some of your sort of
• 22:06
  your inherent humor in there. It's like, this is explicitly, we're going in another direction here.
• 22:11
  The songs are more sort of somber, the more, in fact, listening back to it, it's quite a melancholy
• 22:15
  album, totally. It's a beautiful album, but it's, and it's quite melancholy. It is, yeah. I think
• 22:22
  it's, I was spending a little bit too much time in Los Angeles by myself. And it's quite a
• 22:28
  desolate, lonely city. If you're kind of, if you're, well, my family was in New Zealand,
• 22:34
  I'll be working there quite a lot. And I do remember, and I was reading the news a lot, which,
• 22:39
  you know, if you read the news and you write songs, they tend to be quite bleak.
• 22:44
  Yeah. And it was in a COVID as well, wasn't it? You recall one of the songs in New Zealand?
• 22:47
  Yeah. COVID, and through COVID. It's pretty, pretty sort of dark times. And yeah, it was
• 22:53
  interesting. I realized afterwards, this album was like, oh, man, I want to just make something
• 22:57
  a bit more playful. And not, I wasn't trying to, this, the new record, I'm not trying so obsessively
• 23:04
  to be, to be not funny. And at first, when I did this first solo record, I thought, oh,
• 23:08
  this is something different. And the second one now, it's all starting to feel kind of like
• 23:13
  the same thing to me, like writing a song for a film or writing a song for my record. It's in the
• 23:17
  same, it's done to be more in the same zone, which I think is a good thing. It's just, I just
• 23:23
  write the song. And if it's about something that's funny, that's good. If it's about something
• 23:27
  that's heartfelt or emotional, that's fine as well. It doesn't, and just to let them all
• 23:32
  happen at the same time. If that makes sense, yeah, I'm not kind of trying to steer it as much.
• 23:37
  But when I get hired on a film job, more often than not, I'm definitely a tend to get
• 23:47
  coming to kind of make something funny, you know, when it's a song, trying to bring some,
• 23:53
  some lightness or if it's a dramatic moment, I think the Sherman brothers who are the
• 23:59
  songwriters who worked for Disney for years and all that, you know, did like Mary Poppins and
• 24:06
  Jungle Book. Famously, they, Jungle Book, they, they got brought in and said, can you,
• 24:12
  I think they even had songs for that. And it was just too dark. So they said, can you just,
• 24:17
  Walt Disney said, the Sherman brothers, can you just write some songs for this that are fun?
• 24:21
  That's sort of the zone I get that I work in for films where I'm, I bring some lightness and some,
• 24:29
  some humour to even, to any situation in a song, even if it's a, you know, an emotional moment,
• 24:34
  try and find little pieces of lightness in there. The, I worked with Michelle Haas of Anishis.
• 24:41
  We developed, we were working on a film for Disney for a while and never got made. It's this
• 24:45
  funny movie called Bob the Musical that's been in development for about 20 years and everyone
• 24:50
  in Hollywood's worked on it. You know, everyone, every songwriter has had to go at it and lots of
• 24:55
  any music, any director who's even vaguely adjacent to music or musicals has had a, has had a
• 25:02
  go at it and, and we spent, so, you know, we spent six months working on it and it never gets.
• 25:08
  There's something, it's like a cursed project. It's hilarious. But he said something kind of
• 25:14
  interesting, which I thought was he was talking about when you're working on a comedy, you know,
• 25:22
  there are moments when you don't want to put jokes. If it gets to a moment, that's like an
• 25:29
  emotional moment. It's, it's tempting to put a really silly joke right there and throw it all,
• 25:35
  you know, throw it all away because, you know, you got emotion heightened. But he said there are
• 25:38
  times, actually, you don't, you don't want to joke. You just got to let the emotion live there.
• 25:43
  I thought that was really, I've loved that. I thought that was really clear way of figuring out
• 25:47
  how to get, you know, just comedy sometimes, they lack connection. And I think often that's
• 25:53
  because people just throw in too many jokes around the bits we've, we actually need to connect
• 25:57
  with the story. Yeah. Because that's what you're doing with comedy or drama or any genre, isn't it?
• 26:02
  You're telling a story and, you know, you want that story to have a sense of stakes and sincerity,
• 26:06
  I guess, about when it, when it matters. You want to know when to hit the audience with a joke,
• 26:10
  with humor and then when to actually draw them in. Yeah. And I think for a film, yeah, is it,
• 26:16
  yeah, it's really interesting. I think, so now I've seen what kind of a couple of films at the
• 26:19
  moment that are mus, that are actually full, full musicals, they're animated films. And so
• 26:26
  these ones, I'm the songwriter for the whole film, some of the songs are ridiculous, you know,
• 26:31
  big comedy songs and things. But some of them actually need to be, there's just, you know,
• 26:36
  the character gets lost. And it, it's a Christmas movie. And, and he, it needs, it actually needs to,
• 26:42
  it's not really going to be a comedy song that, it's just going to be a heartfelt song at that
• 26:46
  point. Yeah. Well, I remember you saying about when you were writing Man of Muppet, which,
• 26:49
  as I say, you know, was, I guess, the big hit from the Muppets movie, which won you your Oscar,
• 26:53
  and you was, I remember you describing the songwriting process of just like, how you approached it,
• 26:57
  which is like, this is like an incredibly emotional heartfelt power ballad. But it just happens,
• 27:03
  it just happens to be about a man who, you know, who, and I'm, and I'm up here, you know, and
• 27:07
  it's in between the two. Yeah, that combination is, West, you get a lot of great comedy out of
• 27:14
  that. But yeah, at the time when I'm sitting there, piano going, Am I a man? I mean, I'm just digging in,
• 27:20
  like, you know, I love that song, you know, Harry Nelson, I can't live if living is without you.
• 27:28
  I mean, it's like, Am I, that's fitness, that sort of drama to it. But Am I a Muppet?
• 27:35
  And that combination of sincerity with ridiculousness is a real gold mine for, for, for comedy. And
• 27:44
  it was, it was curious that song because they didn't, Disney didn't want that song at first. They
• 27:50
  had another man on Muppet's song. They wanted to use. And we were produced, they got me to produce
• 27:55
  both. They, because they didn't trust, they didn't like my one. So we produced both songs and then
• 28:00
  James Bowman, who directed Concord and directed the Muppets, he likes the song, you know, but
• 28:06
  we had to convince Disney, we think this one is going to work great. You know, it's, we're
• 28:10
  pretty happy with it. And, and Jason Segal absolutely smashed it out of the park work. Sometimes you,
• 28:16
  you know, you, so that was one of those, that was one of the sessions where Lee Sklow was on the bass.
• 28:21
  Was he? Now that I'm thinking back, maybe it was a different bass player in that one. Sorry, I can't
• 28:25
  remember. But yeah, it might have been different, it might have been Bex Bass player Justin. And,
• 28:29
  but the recording was like, just kind of, it just was really easy. The, the song just played itself
• 28:36
  in a way. And then Jason Segal came in, first take, boom smashed it out of the park, like it was
• 28:43
  awesome. And so suddenly the song was like, it was good. And suddenly it became the recording
• 28:48
  became great. If you know what I mean, like Jason made the song, I mean, it doesn't matter how good
• 28:54
  the song was. If you haven't got to sing it, it nails it. The song can't work. But he absolutely
• 29:00
  knocked it out of the park. And then the video, the, the moment in the film connected really well as
• 29:05
  well, because it was sort of song where you've got the stories. It's the characters having a crisis.
• 29:12
  And it kind of, and it, the song is the pivot. It felt locked in with the movie, if that makes sense.
• 29:19
  Sun as you can write a song and doesn't, they can just cut it really easily, but that, that, that
• 29:24
  was the character having a crisis, having an epiphany, moving forward, you know, internally. And so
• 29:32
  there are a lot of things just lined up and it came together really well. It's lucky. Yeah.
• 29:37
  For sure. And then that mixture of, I guess, I say, sincerity in humor, which is really strong on
• 29:42
  freak out city, as I say. As you say, you were kind of allowing some more of that native humor,
• 29:46
  the inherent humor to sort of come, come to the fore a bit. But at the same time, the album is really,
• 29:52
  you know, there's a lot of songs on it, like I say, which are very sort of feel quite concerned with
• 29:55
  what's going on and like, you know, have their feet on the ground in terms of like, you know,
• 29:58
  this is what's going on around me. This is what I see. And alongside, I guess, the kind of,
• 30:03
  more of the, the romantic songs. And I guess, as I say, songs about jokes was more explicitly,
• 30:07
  kind of like, okay, this is where we are right now. And do you, I guess I was curious to ask,
• 30:12
  like, do you feel like both albums together? Do these represent like how you feel about, you know,
• 30:17
  the world and about what's happening right now out there, you know, your general outlook,
• 30:21
  and how you feel at the moment, to their reflections. Yeah. Yeah. I think definitely. Yeah.
• 30:26
  Yeah, they're kind of very much like, um, the songs are written on these albums. They're
• 30:31
  often written at home in the evenings or during the day. And I've got these, I've got three kids
• 30:38
  and others. I think with the family, you really, you feel the, well, with kids, you start,
• 30:44
  you think about the world in a slightly different way because you see the future of it and how
• 30:49
  it's going to impact these people that are very close to you. So the concerns about the world,
• 30:55
  seem very close. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I've done the thing,
• 31:00
  recently, I sort of started getting suggestions for songs on Instagram and tried writing a song
• 31:05
  each week. Didn't go very well because I ran out, I only got through, there was, I thought I'd
• 31:11
  do it for a whole year and I managed only four weeks, but it was quite fun. People's songs,
• 31:16
  suggestions, like someone sent in a song saying, what about a song about when you partner watches
• 31:22
  your favorite TV show without you? Like, yeah. There's been quite fun writing some silly songs.
• 31:28
  Like that as well. Yeah. I guess what, what was it about it that was, was it just too tough to
• 31:32
  maintain, like a song a week is quite tough, so if I want to say, right? I mean, like producing that,
• 31:36
  was it just all the people's suggestions? I didn't record them. I just like play them on a piano
• 31:41
  or guitar, but it was, it was, it was more I wanted to keep the, I think it's like anything,
• 31:48
  you know, that if you're doing it regularly, it's, it's, you just stay kind of match fit.
• 31:54
  Too much of a lot with comics. If you're doing gigs regularly, it's a lot easier to do gigs than
• 31:59
  if you, if you don't do gigs, the longer you don't do it, the harder it is to get back on stage,
• 32:03
  you know, I'll go, you know, get them warm up the muscles here. Sure. Is that partly why you're,
• 32:09
  sort of, you're quite keen to get back on the touring, sort of see next year, because I don't
• 32:13
  use that earlier that you were practicing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. I really enjoy it,
• 32:18
  and I feel like it, it really nourishes the creative process because live, you can actually try
• 32:26
  something out quite easily in front of an audience and see if, how it goes, and it doesn't mess
• 32:34
  it because there's only one show, you know, it's not like a, all the effort of recording and releasing
• 32:38
  it is, but more. I guess it's like putting something online, but on, on, on social media, but
• 32:44
  it's a great, it's a great place to be able to keep trying stuff out and, and keep yourself
• 32:49
  fresh. I remember thinking about like some of those, some people who tour like 200 days a year,
• 32:54
  you know, used to think they were crazy, but now I'm like, ah, I think it's because it's some
• 33:00
  ways it's easier to just tour a lot, or perform, to work a lot. Then it is, to stop and start.
• 33:07
  So Bob Dylan, yeah, they're never ending tour, like he just does it, he just does it to keep
• 33:10
  match fit the whole time. I don't think, yeah, I just don't, I reckon he probably doesn't know
• 33:15
  how to not do it. Yeah, isn't it how to stop, isn't it? Yes, he's found doing, over 200 shows a
• 33:20
  year, four decades, right? Yeah, yeah. I heard he hires the same, we had a, we shared a booking agent
• 33:28
  for a while, Concord's booking agent was the same as Bob Dylan's booking agent and Los Angeles
• 33:32
  for a few years, and I was always like, what's this to a Bob Dylan? And I think there was some story
• 33:36
  I heard, I don't know who told me it, but they, he books, he doesn't stand fancy hotels, but he
• 33:41
  books the same, it's like a sort of motel type place, and he just books the same room,
• 33:47
  in each, and it's the end of, you know, the end of the, the block of rooms, so he can come at one
• 33:54
  end and stays in that end, yeah. Smart, smart. Those are the tricks of the trade, I guess, that you've
• 33:58
  developed over decades of, I'm sorry. I mean, you mentioned Concord's there. I mean, I feel like
• 34:04
  it would be a little bit more, so if I didn't touch on them, because it was interesting is that
• 34:09
  when I was researching this interview, I realised that this year, 2025, is the 20th Anniversary
• 34:14
  of the, of the, of the Flight of Concord's the original BBC Radio series, which was the,
• 34:20
  right. Yeah, this year, it came out just 2005, is when we were in London making that week,
• 34:26
  because we did Edinburgh 2002, 2003 and 2004, and then we got the BBC Radio show and we moved
• 34:32
  to London, and we spent our days at the BBC office on, as it called, Great Portland Street, I think,
• 34:37
  in London. I want to say so, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and it was this, we couldn't believe it, you
• 34:42
  know, it was like such a exciting thing. We get in there like, oh, it's quite run down here,
• 34:46
  like the buildings kind of like, I think they've fixed it up since then, but it was quite a dusty
• 34:52
  old building, but yeah, we had many discs, that was the time, and we were like, we were really
• 34:58
  inspired by Christopher Guest, and you know, you know, like Best in Show, Wedding for Government,
• 35:04
  and we were trying to, those films were big inspiration to us, and we wanted to sort of
• 35:10
  try and make our show like that, so we'd improvise the scenes, we'd have a template for what
• 35:16
  has to happen in the scene, and then we would improvise them, and it ended up being
• 35:21
  ridiculously time-consuming, because we would just keep doing the scenes, and we, that's when we
• 35:26
  first started working with Rhys Darby, so he played the manager, character, who in that show was
• 35:32
  called Brian, I think, and then in the HBO TV show, we changed the name to Murray. Yeah, it was
• 35:38
  really fun, but we were just so method, I mean, we went to the Tower of London to record a scene
• 35:43
  where my character's like shooting a bow and arrow straight up in the air and then gets hit,
• 35:48
  the arrow comes back down, that's me, and like, we're standing outside the Tower of London,
• 35:51
  it's so unnecessary to be in this location for a radio show, and I don't think it brought
• 35:58
  anything to the recordings other than lots of, lots of time, but we had a, it was great,
• 36:06
  because I think we knew, because we'd been offered a TV show, but I think we, I think the mighty
• 36:12
  bush had done a radio show, and we could tell that a radio show was going to be far more forgiving
• 36:21
  on us, making our mistakes. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, sure. Because we, I think,
• 36:27
  Channel 4 had offered us a TV idea, like a pilot maybe, but we took the radio show
• 36:36
  gig, and yeah, I'm really glad we did, because I think we did, we figured out that manager character,
• 36:42
  and without that, we probably, we wouldn't have got that into the American show, because they would
• 36:47
  have convinced us to put an American in there, I think. They taught us things that worked and
• 36:51
  things that didn't work, so that's, there's a huge one to figure out before you're filming where
• 36:56
  it's super expensive, and these, you can't redo it, you know? Yeah, and I guess reflecting on
• 37:02
  the Concord's now, like, now it's been 20 years since the radio show, and then, as we say,
• 37:07
  set the template for the TV series, and human domain as the duo that you were, you know, and you
• 37:11
  guys were an R, you know, massive, you know, in your respective careers, and together as the
• 37:16
  Concord's, I mean, what are your sort of feelings and reflections now looking back on this,
• 37:20
  now it's been 20 years, I mean, like, what, how do you feel about the Concord's now?
• 37:24
  You know, I'm starting to feel like it's, it's actually like 20 years, I don't, you know, kind of,
• 37:29
  I don't quite know how that happened, how that slipped by, but, you know, I've had kids, and kids
• 37:34
  time just sort of becomes a vortex, but now, touring with my, doing my solitors, I realize how much
• 37:43
  the Concord's songs and the show means to people, because often they come up to me after my shows,
• 37:49
  and they tell stories about the, you know, oh, we met, watching Concord's, or we got married,
• 37:55
  you know, we played your song at our wedding, or you know, is it, the show has a lot of,
• 38:01
  it's really a big part of people's lives, a lot of people grew up, like yourself watching it
• 38:05
  when there were kids, a lot of people watched it with their, the show was unusual when it first came
• 38:12
  out, and that teenagers liked it, and the parents liked it, and I think a lot of parents,
• 38:17
  and the teenagers who are now adults, but at the time, a lot of parents count to me and would say,
• 38:23
  oh, it's been so great, it's been something that's really brought me and my kid found something to
• 38:29
  do together. Obviously, none of these things we had any, we were just making our show, we had no
• 38:34
  idea, well, who was going to like it, or, you know, we had, there was not our plan to make this show
• 38:38
  that different generations would connect with, but yeah, so just now it makes me realize, wow,
• 38:44
  the show's so kind of special for people that it would be, you know, I like the idea of doing
• 38:49
  some, some Concord shows, because I think it's not that we're actively doing Concord's, really,
• 38:55
  we don't do it at all, we do a little, we started jamming a little bit last, or this year,
• 39:01
  trying to write some new, new songs, but we're not very, it's not our priority, sort of not some
• 39:08
  of it focused on anymore, so just a really different time and life for it, but because back then,
• 39:13
  I mean, we were just living it, we were, every day, we were doing two gigs, most nights of the week,
• 39:19
  during the day, make a radio show, there wasn't much time that Jermaine and I weren't spending together,
• 39:24
  and we could finish all of each other's stories, it was hilarious, and so, yeah, it's such a different
• 39:32
  time now, but I'm quite fond of looking back on it. I've always been the sort of person who doesn't,
• 39:38
  I try not to look backwards creatively, I always try to just keep looking forwards and
• 39:44
  doing new things and keep coming up with new ideas, and I was always a little bit cautious, or a
• 39:50
  maybe fearful of looking back, because it felt like, oh, if you start looking back, I'm not, I think
• 39:56
  you stop looking forward creatively, and so I was always like, oh, I don't want to, I'm not sure,
• 40:03
  I want to look back, I want to keep doing new things, and, and Conquels would always try and
• 40:09
  either, every tour would always try and have some new stuff to do, but right now, I think maybe I'm
• 40:14
  easing off and being so fussed about that, because I think actually the audience just want to hear
• 40:19
  these old classics songs, and they're so fussed about, they just want to hear Bob apart of us,
• 40:24
  this is the Ragnostris. It's not such a bad thing. I mean, which is a banger to be fair, I mean,
• 40:30
  what you just said, that reminds me a little bit of, do you know Steve Cougan, Alan Potter, the
• 40:34
  actor, comic book, I mean, I've done that well, but I've made them a few times, yeah. Yeah, it's
• 40:39
  amazing, and he talks a lot about how, for a long time, he felt a little bit like, I think he felt
• 40:43
  the same way about Alan Potter, and she felt like, if you were to return to that character, it would
• 40:46
  feel a little bit like he was stepping back, and he wanted to move forward, he didn't want it to
• 40:50
  be an albatross, and I think through the work he did with on films like Filomena and like the
• 40:55
  great comedy work he did, and you know, on stage as well, he was able to sort of come back to Alan
• 41:00
  and for it to be, for him to not feel like it was kind of an albatross, and I feel like I hear a bit
• 41:04
  some of that as well, and what you're saying, if you come back to Concord's, I feel like the vibe
• 41:08
  I get is that it would be for love, but you don't want to feel like it's just, it's an imperative,
• 41:12
  it's like you can go off and do your own thing, like, you know, do free stuff, like freak out city,
• 41:16
  and you can, you know, have a blast doing that, but then if you want to, you can go back to
• 41:21
  Concord's as well, you know, you're not, you're not, there's no imperative there to want to,
• 41:26
  yeah, that's good, yeah, yeah, that's right, and it's interesting that he's had that similar feeling,
• 41:31
  maybe it's quite common, yeah, because, but yeah, I definitely feel more eddies with the idea of
• 41:37
  circling back on it, I do quite, I do think there's something very funny about two old guys
• 41:45
  singing about too many dicks on the dance floor, so I think it's going to, I think Concord's in
• 41:50
  some ways is going to age really beautifully, like, yeah, you know, like some musicians, you know,
• 41:55
  in gigs don't age that well, you know, if they say like, it's very difficult for, you know,
• 42:02
  an act, which is all about dancing on stage and like high energy performance, to carry on doing
• 42:07
  that as an older person, but me and Jermaine have been sitting on stools with like a killer of old
• 42:13
  dudes from the beginning, so anyway, yeah, we're gonna do it, we're gonna do a show
• 42:21
  just coming year 2026, you know, to be quite fun. Oh amazing, so you guys will,
• 42:28
  oh, incredible, any kind of, I mean, any plans where it will be, will it be New Zealand or
• 42:33
  you being, you know, a Los Angeles show, there's a festival there, there's a comedy festival there,
• 42:39
  we're gonna do a gig yet, but we're not, we're not committing to a big tour or anything, but we're
• 42:43
  just sort of, we've been playing a little bit this year, and so we were like, we were like, the idea
• 42:48
  of doing some shows, yeah. Fantastic. Oh, it's great to hear that you guys are still obviously,
• 42:52
  you know, very ear-close, and like, you still obviously hang out and jam, and it's lovely to hear,
• 42:56
  you know, obviously. Yeah, yeah, it's gone with, honestly, it's, it's amazing how, if, if you both live
• 43:02
  and, even though our minds are small players, like, we're often in different countries, like Jermaine
• 43:08
  actually travels quite a lot for us work, and then, so the comment, yeah, this amazing, if you're
• 43:11
  not focusing on something, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's interesting how much effort it is to make
• 43:19
  those things happen, do you know my sense? I don't know, but that might be something about
• 43:21
  just being a bit older, your life, your, your busy with life, and your busy with work commitments,
• 43:26
  and then we're putting in more effort to try and like, spend time jamming, and yeah, and it's
• 43:34
  sometimes booking a gig, I think, is the perfect way to make sure things happen.
• 43:38
  For sure. I mean, you mentioned something there when you were talking about the, the Concords
• 43:42
  and the music you guys did together, in the fact that you don't feel like it's, it is age,
• 43:46
  particularly, and actually, it's something that I wanted to bring up because I, I would agree,
• 43:49
  I think the, the one of the magical things about the work you guys did together about
• 43:52
  then, those two albums, is the fact that the music and the comedy, both of them together,
• 43:56
  have actually aged really rather beautifully, I mean, because, because what we were talking about,
• 44:01
  I think some of it's aged, some of it hasn't aged as well with other parts, some of the,
• 44:08
  the some, some elements, I'm not sure you would, you would write now, but yeah, a lot of it,
• 44:16
  I think partly because when we first started touring, we were, we were trying to write very
• 44:22
  universal type ideas, we, because we, because of from New Zealand, we, we, early on we write,
• 44:31
  you know, you might material this, you'd have jokes that are very New Zealand specific,
• 44:34
  and then we'd go to Edinburgh and we'd do this joke that was about the, you know,
• 44:39
  some thing down the road that people in New Zealand know, but it doesn't work in the UK,
• 44:43
  so we were like, we cut those jokes. So early on, we started cutting editing our own material,
• 44:48
  so that it would connect in different places, it was all quite surreal and emotional,
• 44:56
  a lot of the comedy, it's not really political, and it's not really topical that the comedy that
• 45:03
  we do, so those have helped at age, I think. Yeah, definitely, and I think, because I think,
• 45:09
  in many ways, what you in Japan were doing was kind of, was writing against the sort of
• 45:13
  fashions of the day a little bit, because I mean, when I think back to those comedy shows that I
• 45:16
  grew up on, other than Concord, so things like the office and show, it's a lot about UK comedy,
• 45:23
  I guess, from that time, which was doing, which was doing really well, which is quite edgy,
• 45:26
  I think it shows so good. Oh, they're incredible. Oh, and they're quite edgy, yeah.
• 45:31
  Darker, yeah, much darker energy, yeah, yeah, yeah, and we were very gentle,
• 45:36
  and but we were playing gigs, like, I mean, but, well, Ricky Gervais was just,
• 45:41
  you know, just ahead of us with his TV show, like, but because I remember he came and watched
• 45:47
  our show and he had him running, and he was like, oh my god, Ricky Gervais is here, and he was
• 45:51
  such a big star, you know, he was so excited. I was like, I was like, whispers, whispers, he's in the
• 45:55
  theater, he's at the back of the venue, you know, everyone was so jazzed, but everyone was really
• 46:00
  watching all those shows, you were really watching everything about them, the office, you were watching
• 46:05
  it, and people show, we worked with, we met the people show guys around that time as well, and in fact,
• 46:10
  I think Sam and Jesse might have written a Concord's episode, they wrote Peep Show, I think they wrote
• 46:14
  one of the first episodes, but wrote, you know, they weren't really in the room, but they wrote
• 46:19
  an episode of, I think, for currently, but we were definitely Ian Morris, who worked on Beechley,
• 46:26
  yeah, Ian and Damon, they were, Ian was, Ian and Damon, which on one of us were very close,
• 46:33
  all those worlds were very, very close together, not so much Ricky and Steven Merchant, but,
• 46:38
  like you say, you're kind of seeing what they were doing, and then we were like, well,
• 46:41
  we're not quite like that, we're more in this zone, but you kind of just nudging slightly away,
• 46:47
  and then at the same time there were shows on HBO, there was a big show called Entourage,
• 46:52
  that was on when we were on, and which was about some actors trying to make it in Hollywood, I think,
• 46:59
  well one actor or a star or something in a manager, actually had a lot of similarities to Concord's,
• 47:04
  you know, in terms of show business, a manager, an actor, his friends, but it was so different
• 47:13
  to what we were trying to do, the show, they were living the fast life, you know,
• 47:17
  the fancy cars, fancy apartments, and then we wanted something that was, so by that existing,
• 47:25
  we were reacting against it, so yeah, all these things around us helped find the path for it.
• 47:31
  I've heard you talk before about how, when you were working with HBO on Flight Concord's,
• 47:35
  that like, yeah, Entourage was the big sort of HTML comedy export, and then they kind of left
• 47:39
  you guys alone, and it's what's fascinating is that both those shows, if you go back to them,
• 47:43
  like Entourage is a hard watch these days, you know, and I think even wasn't the time.
• 47:50
  Even at the time it had some, they were just quite awful, the characters were quite terrible,
• 47:56
  not the actors around them, they were just like, they were quite awful people,
• 47:59
  and the characters, and not in a good way, not in a way they're on a watch, just like,
• 48:05
  oh, the way they treated people, but blessing for us, there's a classic show business story,
• 48:11
  is that HBO was spending a lot of money on that show, because they had, they were renting
• 48:16
  helicopters, and they're spending lots of money on, you know, if your location is a real
• 48:22
  divy apartment, it's a lot cheaper to rent, to film, than it is to rent a mansion in Los Angeles,
• 48:29
  so HBO was spending so much money making Entourage, they didn't pay any attention to us, it was great.
• 48:36
  I think that we were just good, we were the leftover money, they were like, oh, these guys are
• 48:40
  going to make something that was great, they were full of half hour, yeah. And you could kind of
• 48:43
  do what you wanted, I guess, they left you alone, so you could kind of just do more or less what
• 48:47
  you wanted. It was such a blessing, and it's funny, I didn't realize, because that was our first
• 48:52
  job in Los Angeles, really, the first thing, and we'd made a pilot for NBC, we wrote a script,
• 48:59
  but we, we that didn't get made, but that was, it was the first thing we'd filmed, and honestly,
• 49:05
  even in Jamaica, I talk about this, ever since, I don't think we've ever, we've done anything
• 49:10
  that had less notes, you know, since then it's just, everything, everything, so many notes on
• 49:16
  everything now, you know, and it was quite amazing that we just didn't really get notes on that
• 49:20
  share. Yeah, and it became this huge, you know, this phenomenon, and as you say, you mentioned
• 49:25
  some of the names there that you worked with, but like, yeah, James Bobin, who you've got onto
• 49:28
  work with on the Muppets and Dorian, the Exploring, you know, he was a, you know, a real key figure
• 49:32
  in the Concords, you know, behind the scenes. He's really huge part of it, you know, it's really,
• 49:40
  it's really James, Jermaine and I, with the creators, yeah, with James, was he, he really figured out
• 49:45
  how to turn our sort of, our on-stage show into a, he made it, a narrative show, you know, he
• 49:54
  really helped us figure that out. It's funny watching it now, I was watching it with my kids
• 49:58
  I started watching it, and it's, at the time it was shot to look vintage, so now it just looks
• 50:05
  so old. It looks like it's from the 1970s or something. Anyway, quite a sort of low-fi camera setup.
• 50:15
  Yeah, it looks like it was shot like, you guys would go out onto the streets and just do it,
• 50:20
  like it was quite low-fi in that sense, but you would just grab moments. I mean, it was, it was,
• 50:24
  because we often would not have permits, we'd just go out on the street and film, and then the guy
• 50:29
  was a brilliant producer, Troy, and he, he had a, he had like a segue thing he was really into,
• 50:37
  so he would like ride around, smoke me cigars on his like segue thing, but also he'd get this
• 50:43
  steady cam, you know, steady cam, that kind of like a backpack with a camera on it, so the camera's
• 50:48
  floats, camera's the, and so he would do these shots where he'd be riding around on his
• 50:54
  segue filming, so the shots are like, whenever you see a shot in that show and it's kind of like a
• 51:00
  moving, it looks like a real movie shot, a high-budget shot, it's actually just this producer
• 51:07
  cruising around on his segue, holding the camera, getting these, doing like a really expensive shot
• 51:12
  for free, basically, with just the segue, it's really, really good. But yeah, I remember,
• 51:17
  we were filming at a park in in Brooklyn and so on, goes, is this a student production?
• 51:22
  We're like, no, no, we're a, this is a TV show, this is a HBO show, it looked like a student short film.
• 51:28
  But I think that's such a part of the charm of it, it has such a charm that show, like I say,
• 51:32
  going against the grain of a lot of sort of comedy shows from that time, which were a bit more
• 51:36
  concerned of you with like political comedy or sort of like shock value comedy, you know,
• 51:41
  the show is really sort of aged very well as have the albums, you know, because for their,
• 51:45
  for the production, because there's a real sort of, in fact, I wanted to touch on that, because
• 51:49
  actually right here I have my copy, my CD, of I told you I was freaky, which was the second album
• 51:54
  I ever bought, this is the second, this is my original album, the second album I ever bought,
• 51:58
  I remember going into HMV in Sheffield and picking that off the stands, and listening to that
• 52:05
  album a lot, I mean, the long car journey's through sort of on some holidays, through France,
• 52:10
  where I just, are the only company I had were sort of musically with, was this album and the
• 52:14
  prodigy singles. But two very different vibes. Two good options for different energies.
• 52:22
  Search different energies. And, and with, I mean, with this album specifically, because as I say,
• 52:26
  like, you know, the, one of the great things about those songs is that the production's quite,
• 52:30
  quite minimalistic, you were saying earlier about when you were about freak out city, how,
• 52:33
  on Concord's, there wasn't too much, it just sounds like there wasn't too much money, so you,
• 52:37
  you had to be inventive of what you had, and a lot of songs were sort of honed over years,
• 52:42
  and years like the first album was sort of crafted over a long period of you guys, you know,
• 52:46
  playing Edinburgh and like the club circuit. And then with this one, this one I want to say was a
• 52:50
  bit more, you can't, it spontaneously puts together like this is the soundtrack for season two,
• 52:54
  so is this kind of in the year between shooting seasons? You in Chimaine sort of put this one
• 52:59
  here. It was in the weekend, so we'd film Monday to Friday, and then Saturday Sunday we'd write
• 53:04
  songs and record songs for the, it was crazy. Like, we'll be filming recording them. I remember
• 53:09
  that song, Friends, we needed the song the next week for the, to film. We just knew it had to be
• 53:14
  a song about friends, and so Saturday morning, just get up and go, oh god, and then I remember
• 53:20
  sitting there like writing some, some little ideas about friends, and then we'd go into studio,
• 53:25
  Saturday trying the ideas kind of, and then Sunday polishing them up and then mixing it so that we
• 53:30
  could film it that week. I mean, it was so crazy fast. Yeah. So those songs, I feel like the songs
• 53:38
  on the second, yeah, so the songs on the second season are, I think often they're a little less
• 53:45
  complex in their structures, because we didn't have, we were moving quite quickly. They're often like
• 53:50
  a kind of, a section on a b section, maybe in terms of songs, you know, and then, and but,
• 53:56
  but they connect to the story really well, and that's kind of an interesting list and about,
• 54:01
  if a song connects to the story, like some of the songs from the first record are pieces that
• 54:06
  may be fully formed, they can exist by themselves. So when we play live, a lot of those songs from
• 54:14
  that second season are very hard to play live, because they don't, they're not written for a live show.
• 54:19
  There was the first ones are written, they're like full of jokes, and they're structured to play
• 54:24
  in front of an audience, and then some of the second season ones are, they're harder to play live,
• 54:29
  like we've never managed to play that song, friends, which I really love that song. We've never
• 54:35
  managed to play that live, because, you know, there's like, there's a, there's a different
• 54:40
  parts, there's a couple of extra characters in there, and I, anyway, you know, it's interesting.
• 54:44
  Is that going to be one that you enjoy my attempt, like if you, where you sort of, you know,
• 54:48
  if we're maybe in Los Angeles, when you do the show? Oh, yeah, if we get Reese,
• 54:51
  it would get Reese, get Reese shot, and Jim Geffigan shot. That'll be good. That's a good idea. Yeah,
• 54:56
  no, that's a good idea. I'll see you with, I think Jim Geffigan lives in New York, but that's a very
• 55:00
  good idea. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. But yeah. Yeah. No, that's,
• 55:09
  that's, those were written quite, quite, quite quickly, and, but sometimes there's some,
• 55:16
  there's some magic in that as well. You know, I think that one same girl, the girl with the
• 55:20
  wonky, the lazy eye, the wonky eye, that we're both sexy lady. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 55:26
  I really like that. Yeah. I was going to ask, do you have like a, I mean, I'm sure you get asked
• 55:31
  this all the time. So, you know, forgive me for asking it again. But like, do you have a favorite
• 55:34
  Concord song or at least a song that you enjoy the most like playing live or off the, I really
• 55:39
  love playing the most beautiful girl in the room live. I just, it's so fun to play. And it's like,
• 55:48
  really, yeah, it's fun to play. It's fun to sing. That's what I mean. It's got some different
• 55:53
  parts to it that make it quite fun to play, like different sections that are really cool. And then
• 55:58
  the recording, I'm a super fond of mother-uckers. I feel like mother-uckers or inner-city pressure
• 56:05
  are probably, you know, in the studio, you kind of, you're trying to capture the energy of the song.
• 56:12
  And also, we were always aspiring to like, oh, we wanted to sound like, you know, the petrol boys
• 56:16
  or, you know, inner-sea pressure. We were on mother-uckers. I'm not sure exactly what we were going
• 56:21
  for it, but I feel like the track, I remember we recorded that in New York, and I remember Jimmy
• 56:25
  Carb, he had a friend of ours, he was in New York, he came past you to visit, and we just figured
• 56:30
  out that baseline on the synth. And it was, it was, anyway, I feel like mother-uckers is a really,
• 56:36
  really bang-in recording, actually. That's my favorite. It's a phenomenal track song. I mean,
• 56:41
  like, all those songs, like, say, like, that will be on repeat, you know, on car journeys for me,
• 56:45
  but that one particularly is, it holds up. And it's funny because you mentioned those sort of,
• 56:50
  the influences that you guys had, that you guys had on the songs, but not only that, but what
• 56:54
  you were aspiring to, it's like, of inner-sea pressure, it's petrol boys. So, you know, you have all
• 56:58
  these different bands that you're clearly such fans of in different genres. Well, when I was on
• 57:02
  the way here to record this, I was really listening to Bowie, again, off the first track album,
• 57:07
  which is one of the favorite tracks of the first album, Your Tribute to Bowie. And like, that
• 57:12
  seems to go through like four or five different sort of genres of Bowie eras in the space of,
• 57:16
  yeah, different, different Bowie decades, yeah. Dickens, yeah, you've got, like, Hunky Dory,
• 57:20
  you've got that stance, you've even got, I think, a little bit of heave-in in there, you've got,
• 57:23
  like, a little bit of all this stuff going on. It's like a sort of smorgasbord of, like, let's
• 57:27
  dance at the end, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, that was really fun in the studio,
• 57:32
  Mickey Petralia. Yeah, he was having a ball, like, it's, it's quite fun, referencing stuff,
• 57:38
  like, what do they do? All that snare sound, that's kind of cool. And you just,
• 57:41
  sometimes just one little element can subtly make it sound like it's exactly like that period.
• 57:47
  That buddy song, you know, that story, how we wrote that one, do you hear that story?
• 57:50
  I don't know if I'm making part, maybe. I'm not sure, like, really, like, driving around Wellington.
• 57:56
  And there's a radio station in Wellington called Radioactive, which is like the student radio,
• 58:00
  which all our friends, you know, I used to work there, everyone's worked there, and they were doing
• 58:03
  a competition, and me and your man were driving along, and we started phoning in to try
• 58:08
  into the competition, pretending to be David Bowie. Like, so, you're like, oh, this is Bowie here.
• 58:14
  Yeah, I want to put my name down for the, for the, to win the three parts of the show.
• 58:20
  And set in. We was driving along, pretending to be Bowie laughing away. Then we went back to our
• 58:25
  flat and just spent the whole day pretending to be Bowie. And by, I think by dinner time,
• 58:30
  our flatmates got back and would, literally, spend the whole day being Bowie and just singing
• 58:35
  different bits of, I'm Bowie. Yeah, hey, Bowie. Hi, man. He's talking to each other. It's Bowie.
• 58:40
  That song just came from us being goofing around pretending to be Bowie for a day, and yeah,
• 58:47
  and it's funny because what then, I love that thing about coming up when you're riding,
• 58:52
  commenting and stuff, that that moment when you first come up with a funny idea and you're laughing
• 58:56
  in the room or, and what's so curious is that moment is the still the thing that is funny on
• 59:06
  stage, no matter how much time passes, you know, if, if we sing that song this year or whatever,
• 59:13
  and so it's 20 years, no more, because this was, I think that was in 1998 when we did that when
• 59:18
  we wrote that song, 98, 99. So, and then now, even now, the bit that will make the audience laugh
• 59:25
  is me and Jermaine going like, hey, Bowie. Hello, man. Like, that's the bit, the same bit made us laugh
• 59:33
  20 years ago, is the bit that's still funny. It's so cool. It's so, it's, it's really strange,
• 59:40
  you know, and the bit that you spend all the time, you might spend his time crafting the lyric
• 59:43
  and the little part that, you know, he thinks funny and clever, but the bit that people really laugh
• 59:50
  is just me and Jermaine going, Bowie. Bowie. Thank you for the round. Well, I think that's the trick,
• 59:57
  isn't it? It's like, if you can make the person, what something I hear a lot of is that when it comes
• 1:00:01
  to like song writers or writers and filmmakers is like, you know, if you make something personal,
• 1:00:06
  it has a way better chance of resonating with other people and becoming something universal,
• 1:00:10
  rather than if you're aiming for kind of a general sort of thing. So, if something that, if you
• 1:00:14
  have a, if you land on a joke or even just like a gag or an impression that makes you laugh,
• 1:00:19
  there's a way better chance that it will connect and make other people laugh 30 years on. So,
• 1:00:24
  and it's, which is what I think has happened a lot with, with the, the work that you've done.
• 1:00:28
  It's not guaranteed though, because often Jermaine, I would laugh a lot about something,
• 1:00:32
  then we'd perform it live and no one would laugh. We're like, damn, we thought that was really funny,
• 1:00:39
  turns out that it's not funny at all. Well, I mean, you've got, yeah, you know, it swings around
• 1:00:44
  having like, I think that's one of the benefits of working with other people as you've got like,
• 1:00:49
  if you're a stand-up by yourself, I think you get better at knowing when you've found something
• 1:00:53
  funny, but you don't really know to you test it with a crowd, whereas I think with the,
• 1:00:57
  if you're in a duo or a group, you can, the room or in a writer's room, you know something's
• 1:01:02
  funny because the room just starts laughing. Yeah. I mean, speaking about what you're staying on,
• 1:01:06
  very for, for a moment, I mean, well, I don't know if, because, because I guess famously one of
• 1:01:11
  your famous sort of appearances that you made on screen is in the Lord of the Rings trilogy,
• 1:01:16
  as as figure it, the, the Elf in Lord of the Rings, you have a, you're in there a couple of times
• 1:01:21
  in first reading. Right, I can use all the movies, I'm hoping I'm going to get a, get a return.
• 1:01:27
  As Andy Circus phones you're up, it's going to be like, right, you know, you're in. You're in.
• 1:01:30
  I got a, I got a head of heart man on the socials. Yeah, well, I remember you saying once that like,
• 1:01:35
  if you're from New Zealand, if you're living Wellington, there's like a, there's like a 90% chance
• 1:01:40
  that's you or someone that you know will have been in Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit in some
• 1:01:44
  custody. Oh yeah, I was, I was sorry, it's just started raining here. I don't know if you're hearing
• 1:01:49
  the, the rumble on the roof, but the, yeah, they did these auditions where they put outlines
• 1:01:58
  on the wall, like short, medium height, but short, you audition for a Hobbit wide and musely,
• 1:02:04
  you were anork, tall and skinny, you were an elf. And then you went through the audition,
• 1:02:08
  there was hundreds of people going for auditions. And I was like a tall, skinny guy. And so I got
• 1:02:12
  put into the elf and I had like thin features, you know, so I became an elf. But I saw a video,
• 1:02:18
  Jacinda, I'd do in the form of prime minister, she auditioned for Lord of the Rings. I mean,
• 1:02:23
  my dad was in Lord of the Rings. My brother was in Lord of the Rings. My younger brother wasn't in it.
• 1:02:29
  It was, it was a lot of men. I'd say most men in New Zealand are in Florida. There's not that many,
• 1:02:36
  there's not that many female roles in those books. Well, I remember there was a, when, when they
• 1:02:42
  were casting the riders of Rohan for two towers, I think like they ran out of men, they ran out of
• 1:02:46
  male extras. So they had to, they had to draft in sort of the, to play the riders, the guys on the
• 1:02:51
  horses, they had to draft in like loads of women, you know, who were incredible riders to,
• 1:02:56
  and dress them up in fake beards and everything. Yeah, because when we got all the men, they used to get
• 1:03:01
  that. Yeah, that's right. And they also got the New Zealand army. Did you hear that story?
• 1:03:04
  So I played, but they just got the army. It's like the New Zealand army are out in the desert,
• 1:03:11
  dressed as Orcs. It's so crazy that it was a really cool time because the whole country was, um,
• 1:03:17
  was really involved and supportive and proud of it. It was, um, yeah, it was very, it was
• 1:03:24
  really cool time because it was the first big movie really that was made here and it brought
• 1:03:29
  the whole country together. And, and, but it was, it was quite hilarious. The army was, you know,
• 1:03:35
  you know, being Orcs, yeah. Yeah, but, but did you know that, um, that Bowie, like, say, Ben,
• 1:03:40
  it was mentioning Bowie, like, he auditioned. Well, he, he auditioned for, for our round. He,
• 1:03:46
  he, he, he went up for our round. There's like a video, there's a, I remember, um, one, Billy Boy,
• 1:03:50
  he played, yeah, yeah, Billy Boyd or Dominic Monahan, what he played, one of the hobbits was in a,
• 1:03:56
  yeah, and I was in it was in a casting room. Yeah. And then, and then Bowie just comes in.
• 1:04:01
  I would have, I would have got to hang out with them. Yeah. Cause you have that scene in the hobbit,
• 1:04:05
  right? With you, is he when he go weaving as you? Yeah, I look at friends with me and Hugo,
• 1:04:09
  we even got to hang out quite a lot. I mean, I love Hugo, but imagine if that was me and Bowie hanging
• 1:04:14
  out on set. She can, can you imagine? I never got that one. That would have been so cool. Oh, man,
• 1:04:21
  yeah, I feel that's one of my big regrets. They never got to see Bowie perform. Um, and
• 1:04:26
  never got to meet him, but never got to see him performance. I always just thought I would,
• 1:04:29
  I'd get another chance. He has bummer. Yeah. I heard he, yeah, he'd like, um, um,
• 1:04:36
  Bez Lerman. I, I was talking to Bez Lerman one time. He's an Australian, you know,
• 1:04:40
  legend Australian director and he was friends, really good friends with that bow and he'd told
• 1:04:44
  him about our Bowie song. And um, Bowie was not, she was like, what is this thing? He wasn't sure
• 1:04:50
  about it. With it was, he wasn't sure if he should, and Bez Lerman was like, you should,
• 1:04:53
  you should, you should check it out. It's really good. You'll like it. You'll like it. Yeah.
• 1:04:56
  So I think Bowie might have seen the Bowie song, but we never connected sadly. Yeah. Well,
• 1:05:01
  well, that's, that is a shame. I mean, so I was going to ask if, if, if you guys had connected
• 1:05:05
  all, I mean, Bowie was a huge comedy fan as well. He loved, you know, like he, I think he spent
• 1:05:09
  from the 90s onwards, he was really keyed in to like, you know, British comedy and sort of
• 1:05:13
  global comedy. So I'm sure he would have been a fan of like, if he had heard the song, at least he
• 1:05:17
  would have been like, oh, that's really, really cool how they've done that, you know. Yeah,
• 1:05:21
  well, maybe it was just too close to home, you know, you nailed him too well. Yeah, I think,
• 1:05:26
  well, he was an, he was an extra, it wasn't he? It was, it was really great. And no, I do,
• 1:05:31
  that's what I mean, I feel like we were really close to, I felt like it was just a matter of time
• 1:05:36
  and we were going to cross paths, you know. It happened. I'm so gutted that I've never heard that
• 1:05:43
  story about him auditioning for Oh, and that would have been insane because he would have been
• 1:05:47
  in Wellington hanging out literally. We would have been going out for dinner.
• 1:05:50
  Yeah. Well, yeah, I think what, what it, what it, I know, man, I know I'm sorry to, I've,
• 1:05:58
  I've got to, I've got to do it. We got to do it with Bowie. Well, didn't you, I remember
• 1:06:04
  hearing you say that when you were, when you were working on the Hobbit with like Ian McKellen and Hugo,
• 1:06:08
  we had all these scrapes. You guys would just be jamming kind of riffing in between. On the, on the
• 1:06:13
  Hobbit, we were, so Hugo's, he both, you're going to be in a super cool people and you know,
• 1:06:20
  there's a lot of waiting around on set and we were in one room. They had this crazy rig
• 1:06:26
  at two studios running at the same time. There's camera, there's on this Peter Jackson,
• 1:06:30
  always has the fanciest machines making them doing the shots. Very different to a segue and,
• 1:06:36
  and, and two rooms. One room is full of factors playing the dwarves and everything's,
• 1:06:43
  there's all the sets bigger, but exactly the same set and another room normal sized set with me,
• 1:06:51
  Ian McKellen, Hugo weaving in a bunch and a few of the elves, I guess. And, but the two things
• 1:06:57
  have been filmed at once and they get put out of the top of each other. So it looks like we're in
• 1:07:00
  the same room and there's two cameras moving at exactly the same time. So you can have a camera that
• 1:07:05
  moved. It's so fancy, but also so slow. Like this, I can't remember the name of the machine they
• 1:07:11
  had, but basically it was just the overtime machine because we would wait there for hours while they
• 1:07:16
  got these two cameras to move at exactly the same speed. And in that time, while we were waiting
• 1:07:20
  around me and Ian McKellen and Hugo weaving just started making, we were laughing about the idea
• 1:07:24
  of the Lord of the Rings, the musical. And yeah, and so we were writing songs as we were, I can't
• 1:07:28
  remember, we were just laughing away, giggling away and then Peter Jackson calls, okay, and action.
• 1:07:33
  And then we start doing the same way as to walk in and where it's meant to be really serious. And
• 1:07:37
  Ian McKellen starts, without moving his mouth, you know, he's like, you know, I can't remember
• 1:07:42
  what we were seeing about, but he's like, oh, with the donor all those, you know, like, so suddenly, like,
• 1:07:51
  we just start losing it. I mean, it's the best thing. It's so fun laughing when you're not allowed
• 1:07:57
  to laugh. It's like being at school or you don't get that much as an adult, you know, you know,
• 1:08:03
  but we were, we were in hysterics trying to be serious. And then they, Peter Jackson yells, cut
• 1:08:09
  because he's like, can the elves please get their shit together? Because we're just, we're all giggling
• 1:08:16
  and like, so funny man, it was so good. Anyway, yeah, imagine if that was Bowie, imagine that
• 1:08:23
  it'd been Bowie and Ian McKellen. But he got Jimmy, he got, he got, he got weaving so good.
• 1:08:30
  He's a legend. Yeah. So, well, you mentioned something there about how like laughing when you're
• 1:08:35
  not supposed to is like the sweetest kind of laughter. And I totally agree, it's like when you're,
• 1:08:39
  when you're, when there's a sort of social impetus, or whether it be a professional one, like,
• 1:08:43
  if you're on set, well, like, you know, you're not supposed to be laughing, but you can't help but
• 1:08:46
  just like crack up. Like it reminds me, I think the closest I can get to that in day-to-day life is
• 1:08:51
  if I'm listening to a podcast or if I'm listening to a comedy show, and I'm out and about,
• 1:08:55
  and I'm walking around central London, like, crack up, you sort of catch yourself, like, oh,
• 1:09:00
  trying to, you're like sitting on the train or something. Exactly. Yeah, you've got to really hold
• 1:09:04
  it in because if you're on public transport, you don't want to, you know, you don't want to seem
• 1:09:07
  like a lunatic. Yeah. But like you're saying, you're just, like, corpse inside, you know? It's
• 1:09:13
  that feeling of, if you've got someone in the, like you say, if you're at a work environment,
• 1:09:18
  someone who's the boss and you're not, you're supposed to be concentrating and people start laughing,
• 1:09:24
  that is just so good. Within, I guess that's like a teacher or a boss, whatever, whoever, but
• 1:09:29
  yep, funny, funny times. Yeah, really good. Yeah, we get that, I guess, in the studio, I guess, like,
• 1:09:35
  and they do have a lot of laughs when you're on the job, like, in the studio, is it quite a fun,
• 1:09:39
  you know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, students find the musicians always really funny. And actually,
• 1:09:47
  there's a bit of, if that situation was quite a lot of, there's a little bit of pressure,
• 1:09:50
  so you kind of, oh, actually one of the recent times where I had that feeling that we're talking
• 1:09:53
  about was when we were recording the song, there's a song on there kind of called Freak Out City,
• 1:09:58
  which is now the album that's called Rabbit Hole, and we had nine of us in the room recording
• 1:10:02
  together. And weirdly, I was singing and I turned my head and my cap fell off and knocked the microphone
• 1:10:11
  and sort of went like, but you're in the middle of a take and you've got nine people and everyone's
• 1:10:15
  trying to do their best. We know that recording's good. So you're like, keep going because we don't
• 1:10:18
  want to ruin this take, but Moana and Iris saw me do this insane cap microphone sort of thing,
• 1:10:27
  which was just so super clumsy kind of Mr. Bean situation in the studio. And then they started
• 1:10:34
  laughing, then I started laughing, and then the guitarist looking at what's happening? Why they're
• 1:10:38
  laughing? And then the whole track just sort of, we're doing our best to try and keep playing
• 1:10:43
  music through the laughter, but it just unraveled and eventually a minute, you know, it collapsed to us.
• 1:10:49
  And so that was a right, we abandoned that take. But yeah, that was that feeling where you're
• 1:10:54
  trying your best not to laugh because you don't want to ruin everyone else's great performance.
• 1:10:59
  You know what I mean? And you're in the same room so that you can't make the noise. There's a lot
• 1:11:04
  of pressure not to make the sound, yeah, that was really funny actually. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:09
  Iris, Iris and Moana, you say the two backup singers. Yeah, you saw them at the rough trade
• 1:11:16
  in store. We said they were great and they were having a good time. Yeah, they're really great
• 1:11:23
  singers. And yeah, yeah, so they've done all the shows and they're on a lot of the record.
• 1:11:28
  They do all the harmonies and vocals and the record. They're really cool. Yeah.
• 1:11:33
  Fantastic. No, no, they were, I love the performances you guys gave on the tour, but also
• 1:11:37
  a yeah, a rough trade west where like you know, they say like say as that spontaneous kind of
• 1:11:41
  infectious energy to it, they're both the album and the live performances, which is lovely to see.
• 1:11:45
  And speaking of people who like, I guess like collaborators, because something that we ask on
• 1:11:49
  the on half the picture, we ask all I guess is, you know, because we get like filmmakers on
• 1:11:55
  and like musicians as well and writers. I mean, and people who are very sort of keyed in and
• 1:11:59
  passionate about, you know, what's going on out there in like the sphere of like, yeah,
• 1:12:03
  music or film or what have you. Out of interest. Is there anyone out there working right now who
• 1:12:06
  haven't worked with before, be you know, an actor, writer, musician, you know, director who you'd
• 1:12:12
  love to work with? Like, is there someone out there who's kind of firing you up and getting you
• 1:12:15
  excited about what's going on and that you'd like to work with? Potentially. Well, I've always been
• 1:12:22
  a big fan of Wes Anderson, you know, like Wes Anderson was was rocking before we started doing
• 1:12:30
  our things and was huge influence on me and Jamein and Tyker and and he was sort of our hero.
• 1:12:37
  And I guess he's probably 10 years older or something or he was just, he was already making films.
• 1:12:42
  I think he was making them in the 90s bottle rock it was in the 90s. And that's boy. Yeah. Right.
• 1:12:47
  Oh, those are all again, those are huge. They're a big influence on our stuff. So he's had a
• 1:12:53
  big impact. I think he's probably the biggest impact. So honestly, if there was ever a chance to
• 1:13:00
  collaborate with him, I would definitely make it happen. Yeah. Because it's just really got such a
• 1:13:07
  he's got like a such an amazing style that's that was, you know, his thing that's really influenced
• 1:13:14
  cinema, you know, and TV, everyone's influenced the whole generation. So he's probably probably the
• 1:13:21
  the big, big film person I'd like to work with and yeah, that's probably one of my big heroes.
• 1:13:26
  Yeah. Amazing. I think you've got a shot of that personally because I feel like it's because
• 1:13:30
  because for what I know of Wes, I mean, like he seems very keyed into like, you know,
• 1:13:33
  the common obviously being incredibly funny person and filmmaker himself. I feel like he's very
• 1:13:38
  keyed into comedy and and you know, just generally music like obviously having worked with Mark
• 1:13:42
  Moversburg on, you know, some TV on all the soundtracks and yeah. Mark Moversburg did the
• 1:13:49
  I did some work on the Minecraft movie and Mark did that. So I met Mark. He's so cool as
• 1:13:55
  what a genius. He's like, here's a studio in Los Angeles that's this weird, used to be a
• 1:14:00
  cosmetic surgery building and it's this green building school in Mutato studios and it's this
• 1:14:07
  like it looks like something from a sci-fi movie. So his studio is like octagonal and it's full
• 1:14:12
  of like this cool desk and it's all like it looks like you're in Star Trek and he's there making
• 1:14:16
  his music and he's got all these cool old synths and he's an absolute bonkers genius that guy.
• 1:14:22
  Anyway, he was telling me I was like, what was it like doing the Wes Anderson films, you know,
• 1:14:25
  because he was because I was curious to the big fan of Wes Anderson and he's telling me cool stories
• 1:14:30
  about him coming up with ideas and Wes Anderson really being into getting the music, having music
• 1:14:38
  as he's making the movie. So he's listening to music while he's writing it but also having
• 1:14:43
  music ideas that may be affect how he films it. Rather than putting music on all end, there's
• 1:14:50
  a bit of a collaboration going on at the same time. So Mark would sometimes come up with ideas and
• 1:14:54
  send them to Wes Anderson and that might be something that he was like, oh that could be good for
• 1:14:58
  a sequence and then I love that. You know that bit and oh, it's life aquatic, you know, the submarine
• 1:15:06
  sequence and that cool, that music, that music, honestly, and again, that's a real sort of,
• 1:15:12
  that was that really influenced us, meant to mean, when we were like, that was like, we all
• 1:15:19
  loved that. Like wow, the music just felt like it made that scene magic, right?
• 1:15:25
  Where the camera is going through, can you get a tour of this? Yeah, I love that.
• 1:15:29
  Yeah, it's a sort of a sort of senti thing. And anyway, really, really cool. My mother's
• 1:15:36
  bow is what a guy, yeah, awesome. Incredible. I'd even go to say he's a little underrated. I mean,
• 1:15:41
  I think he's just, he's never, I don't think he's ever not been great. You know, I mean, all the
• 1:15:46
  music is produced with Devo and then, you know, with Wes, you know, sat and working on soundtracks
• 1:15:50
  and he even worked with Tyker on, on Four Agnirot. So like, yeah, yeah, that's right. He's done a
• 1:15:54
  couple of things with Tyker. And he, honestly, he's so productive. It's insane. How much music
• 1:16:01
  that guy's created? It's in, honestly, it's like, like, but I know what you mean, he's, he's, he
• 1:16:06
  is a really big deal, but he's maybe not as well-known as he's done a lot more music than maybe people
• 1:16:15
  realize on TV and film. 100%. He's been so prolific for so long. People definitely know him in his
• 1:16:21
  work, but like, I feel like sometimes they can sit, shout it from the rooftops a little bit more,
• 1:16:24
  because yeah, I just think he can. Yeah. Well, I was, we, we, because we worked on the Minecraft
• 1:16:28
  thing. We had a dinner and we were talking about, it was all the music team. We're in Wellington.
• 1:16:32
  They came to Wellington and they recorded the orchestra here. And we were chatting away and,
• 1:16:39
  and we were talking about some documentary. I don't, I don't, we were talking about documentaries
• 1:16:43
  we like. Have you seen that one about Klaskinsky, that my best fiend? Have you seen that one?
• 1:16:47
  The, I know I've had the hurt sock. That's, yeah, I was like, yeah, that's this region.
• 1:16:51
  This is one of my favorites. He's watched that. And, and, and then we were talking about,
• 1:16:55
  someone was talking about some other documentary. And then my mother, my mother goes, oh, I think I've
• 1:16:59
  seen that. What is that one? And then he goes, oh, yeah, you know, I did the music for that. Like,
• 1:17:04
  he's done so many things. He doesn't even remember doing the music for a whole movie. It's like,
• 1:17:11
  yeah, he's done hundreds of movies. It's crazy. Yeah. I think about like, yeah, John Williams,
• 1:17:16
  all those composers as well, they've done like hundreds of movies or even like, I remember this.
• 1:17:20
  John Williams is next level. Even in the music world, he is, he's on another stratosphere. Like,
• 1:17:27
  when we, when I dig the, when I got to go to the, the Academy Awards, they have, they have
• 1:17:32
  drinks for the music department, all the music people. So nice. And it's like the music,
• 1:17:38
  the head of the music Academy's house. And it's this nice house sort of, and we're all there
• 1:17:43
  having drinks. And it's super chill. It's so different to the actors or the, it's just not like
• 1:17:49
  the music people in movies are so just way more grounded, you know, because you don't, there's no,
• 1:17:55
  they're all behind the scenes. So they just like really lovely people. And you have to be a nice
• 1:17:59
  person pretty much to be able to work because you got to work with people. And John Williams was there.
• 1:18:04
  And I just was talking to different composers and different musicians. You could tell when they
• 1:18:10
  introduced John Williams to for his little, he got an award that he is. And amongst composers,
• 1:18:18
  John Williams is just like, just, you know, so highly regarded. He's that no one, he's just the
• 1:18:27
  different, like he's, it's like he's a different creature. He's so good. I mean, he was, he's really,
• 1:18:33
  a lot, he's very old now. But like, even all the composers that were there were like, wow, he's
• 1:18:37
  something else, you know, all the great composers who do films. And then there's John Williams,
• 1:18:42
  who's like a different, different kind of league, yeah. And he's been going, and he's still going,
• 1:18:47
  like he's in his 90s, but he's still doing it. I mean, that's the remarkable. I mean, that's kind
• 1:18:51
  of when you know that he's doing what he loves, you know, I mean, and he's just, yeah, he's just
• 1:18:55
  not going to stop, you know, yeah, that's just a cool, I remember that moment going, ah, yeah,
• 1:19:00
  he is good, isn't he? Yeah, like, because then you listen, you listen to, you know, Indiana Jones
• 1:19:05
  or something like, oh, yeah, Star Wars, you're like, holy shit, it's good, man, the music's so good.
• 1:19:11
  Yeah. Yeah. Did you ever, did you get to, did you say hi to him at that, at that event?
• 1:19:15
  I didn't come to those kinds of things. I was one of those ones. There's a big,
• 1:19:18
  rim of different people, but yeah, it was very, it was a really special,
• 1:19:23
  special thing to get to go to that was cool. So, well, I guess, and this is just like a,
• 1:19:28
  I guess, like a general question, but as we record, as the time we recorded in this, it's,
• 1:19:32
  you know, 15th for December, you know, Christmas is around the corner and 2026 is coming down the
• 1:19:36
  pie. I mean, do you have any sort of, like, hopes or goals for 2026 or any resolutions?
• 1:19:41
  Are you a, are you a New Year's resolutions kind of guy? Oh, well, my New Year's resolution,
• 1:19:45
  which I tried last year was to write a new song each week. I think I might just try it again,
• 1:19:50
  because I liked, I liked the idea of it, but I just didn't manage it. What else? I'm, I'm,
• 1:19:56
  I'm building a music studio in Wellington, and I'm going to finish it. I'm having to have it
• 1:20:02
  ready by June. So, I'm quite excited about getting a new creative space for, for writing and
• 1:20:09
  recording. So, it's quite a, yeah, it's kind of a busy year for me in terms of, I've got a lot of
• 1:20:15
  films that look like they're coming to life this year in the, in the production. They won't
• 1:20:21
  be coming out this year, they won't be coming out, they'll be coming out in the next four years,
• 1:20:25
  but for me, that's non-radiq part is that the, I do the songwriting at the front end of these
• 1:20:30
  movies. So, it's looking like quite a fun year, actually, for, for, for songwriting. Fantastic.
• 1:20:36
  And then, of course, as you say, you know, you've got that show with, with Jermaine, and then I
• 1:20:39
  think I want to say you, you're planning to come back, you come back to like America in the UK for,
• 1:20:43
  to do a bit more touring as well, is that on the card sort of? It's not locked in yet, but yeah,
• 1:20:47
  I'm hoping to bring the band back over. It'll have to be the second half of the year, yeah,
• 1:20:52
  just some more shows. I mean, it's so fun. I had London has just had a great time of London,
• 1:20:57
  and I thought, wow, we should, I really want to try and do a tour on trains around the UK,
• 1:21:01
  doing, you know, doing the shows and just travel by train to all the towns, hoping to get that
• 1:21:05
  on books, yeah, get that planned up, yeah. Well, hey, I mean, if you, if you, if you do come back,
• 1:21:10
  yeah, to London, if that, that ends up happening, I mean, I'll be, I'll be there, because, you know,
• 1:21:14
  like Sam, I've been a fan of yours for years, and, you know, I've, you know, I love the work you do,
• 1:21:18
  and, and I'm so, you know, I'm so chuffed that you were so generous of your time to come on the
• 1:21:22
  podcast today. So, thank you, man. Thanks so much for, I'm glad we, we got this to work out.
• 1:21:27
  That's really cool. Yeah, me too. And like I said, I can't wait to see what you've got to,
• 1:21:30
  uh, got coming out, you know, the next year, and yeah, just, you know, I say, you know, big fans,
• 1:21:35
  so, uh, no, thanks so much for, you know, the pod Brad. This was so much fun. All right, yeah. Cool,
• 1:21:40
  man. All right. Thanks, he's.
• 1:21:41
  Hey guys, thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Brett McKenzie. Remember to
• 1:21:54
  like and subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, and stay tuned for more exciting
• 1:21:59
  interviews and guests coming soon on half the picture.