[00:00:00] Welcome to Trevor McCormack Music Podcast. I'm Chrissie Mack from Radio Northern Beaches and I couldn't be more excited to kick off this musical journey with you. Joining me is my brother, the legendary Trevor McCormack, known as Mack, a true storyteller and music enthusiast.
[00:00:18] With each episode, we're peeling back the layers behind the hits, sharing untold stories from artists and exploring what sparks the creativity behind the music that moves us all. Whether you're a diehard music fan or just love discovering new sounds, this is the place where passion meets storytelling.
[00:00:38] So, hit the follow button, share this with your fellow music lovers and leave a review. Your support keeps the vibe alive. Turn up the volume and get ready to be inspired. And let's dive into the world of music together. Let's go. Okay, hi everyone. It's Chrissie Mack and Trevor Mack and we're a little bit late this weekend because Trevor's been down in the studio. So excited. Hi, Trev. Hello, everybody. Yes, excitement. Tired. Had a great time.
[00:01:08] A lot of fun. A lot of work. So, when did you head down? About 11.30 Wednesday night and Jamie rang me sort of just about the end of my shift. He said, Dad, can you take me to the hospital tomorrow morning? I think it was about 9 or 10 o'clock. And I said, ah, he said, I've got to have two teeth cut out of my jaws. Ouch. My feeling went bad and it got him in a lot of trouble and they said, oh no, we've got to take it out.
[00:01:36] So, I said, yeah, look, no problem. I will finish work, pack the car and head off. So, I finished my shift at 11.30 Wednesday night. Packed the car, left home by about 12. Got down there about, it was a pretty good trip actually that time of the night. 2.25. So, two and a half hours, so, just under. It took me to get down there. And I had to take a whole heap of gear with me. So, I had to tow a trailer. It was a linisher and a bandsaw, some woodwork tools for you. And they were big ones.
[00:02:06] So, I had to tow them down as well. So, we towed the trailer down with those in there. And I pulled up quietly and snuck in and climbed into bed. Woke up in the morning and he said, righto. He looked like really bad. He was in a lot of pain. He's all drugged up. They give him all these medicines and painkillers. He was in a lot better shape when he came out, even though he'd had them cut out. He was in less pain, I think, when he went in. And then I went down and bought him some dinner, that's right. He says to me, just down the road from this place. He's on 100 acres. You think, it sounds like he's out in the middle of nowhere.
[00:02:35] He's like three minutes from the beach. He's probably a minute and a half to a shop. And he says, can you get me something like a curry or something mushy? I can just, easy to chew. So, I take off down to this restaurant. He tells me to go down and have a look at it. And I didn't realise it was an Indian restaurant. I walked in. They've got all these nice meals in bayonets. And so, I thought, oh, he wanted a curry chicken or something like that. They didn't have anything like that that I could understand. And I just went, well. So, I rang him. I said, they've got lamb here. He goes, oh, lamb will be good.
[00:03:04] Yeah, just give me that lamb one. That's not a bad dish. And I went, right. I'm sitting there looking at it. I went, mm, the beef looks really good. You can see just like a nice gravy and beef. I said, oh, give me one of those as well. So, I chucked a bit of rice in the container. Did you make sure it wasn't the hot one? Well, I don't eat spicy food. It just looked really good. I'm going, yum. Indian restaurants are normally really strong flavour. You know, it just smelled really good. And I'm going, oh, I've been going all that. I'm hungry. And I'm like, that looks really good. It looks like a casserole.
[00:03:33] I said, yeah, I'll have one of them. You know what I mean? I get them home. And I pop up to the table and I crack it open. He goes, oh, you've got two. I said, oh, I decided not to. We had some snacks. I'm not going to cook this. It's been a big day. I said, we'll get you fed. And I said, oh, I bought this nice beef one. I said, I'll have that. And he looked at me and he smiled. And I said, what's the smile for? That's probably more spicy than what I've got. I knew that was coming. He goes, you're all spicy. He says, it's an Indian restaurant, mate. I went, really? He goes, you won't handle that.
[00:04:03] He says, I find it hard to handle that. And so anyway, I thought, well, I'll be right. I took a scoop, put it on my plate, big spoonful. And I could barely eat it. I was fine. I was like, oh, my God. He goes, you better eat the lamb when I'll eat that way. Anyway, I said, yeah, so go get a big glass of milk, wash it down, cool myself out a bit, jump into the lamb. And I'm like, oh, I could only eat a bit of this as well. It was so spicy. So the trick to Indian, if you're not used to it,
[00:04:32] is a lot of rice and very little of the sauce. Well, this was only a little bit of rice. We just looked after him for that night. I ventured into the studios the next day. New guitars I bought. And I took my good coal clark, my original one that I used. And I thought, just in case, I'll take them all. And we got down to the studio. And I met the engineer straight away. That's Derek. Lovely man. Fantastic guy. To work with, just really easy. What a lovely.
[00:05:00] And very talented. Knows his stuff. He's everything. And almost read my mind. So the first session was, he's like, well, all right. How do you work? How do you want to do this? Have you done this before? I said, yeah, yeah. I said, I'm used to, with the first album, I said, we did nine tracks on, we've done nine, nine songs in studios off the first album. And I said, generally, I'll just play you what I'm going to do. I said, I'll pick two songs to kick off. And I'll give you a feel of what they are.
[00:05:30] And we'll go from there. I said, last time, I think I just played it and sung it. He recorded both. And he just took one off. And I either then played the guitar or I sung the song. I said, it doesn't really matter either way. But it's actually very hard to learn your whole life to play a guitar and sing at the same time. Even when you're right, playing the guitar and singing the song. He says, righto, well, let's play the guitar first. I said, righto, easy, no worries. And you sit there. And he goes, can you stop humming? Can you stop singing?
[00:06:01] All you can hear is the music. The guitar is playing the tune. And you hear, mm-yeah, oh-yeah. I said, oh, sorry. That's really harder than you think for not singing. Because you've got to sing the song in your mind. Yes. Whilst you play all the tune. You can't just play the tune because you get lost. What part am I at all of a sudden? So you've got to sing in your head or quietly under your breath. Come into the intro. Then right away you go.
[00:06:29] First verse, second verse, chorus, whatever you do. And it must have taken me about four games before I could just get the hang of shut up. Okay. And then the next thing was he goes, okay, we've got you to be quiet. He says, but in between every break in your guitar, he says, where you take a breath to sing the next part, all I can hear in the recording is where I take a breath.
[00:07:06] So he had me plugged in going through the desk and he also had microphones in front of the guitar, which were picking me up as well. So here you are trying to sit still, not move around too much so you don't squint the chair. I know, because you have a habit of clapping as well. So I'm like, let's have a good time. So I've got to sit still. And I'm like, oh, hang on. He laughed. He just laughed. He said, it's all right. We've got it. I was so funny.
[00:07:35] So anyway, we get the first track down. And I said, did I do good? He said, no, you've got it. Right on. He says, okay, now you reckon you can do it again? I said, all right, let's go. So what we did, we laid down three guitar tracks for, what's the first one I did? I think I started with Velvet Howe. Did I? Didn't I? I can't remember. Now it's got me confused. No, we started with Keep the Light On. So they're the two songs we did, Keep the Light On and Velvet Howe.
[00:08:04] So I finally got myself settled and sat still and not breathing between guitars when it went quiet in the gaps. And we did three layers of that for guitar work. Went in, had a bit of a listen to that, pulled the best bits out of that, put them together. So I'm going from a room where you record him and then back out to the engineer room where the desk is and where he works. So I'm running in and out there. And he sent me back in. He says, right on now. Put your guitar down and sing your song.
[00:08:34] I'm like, yeah, okay. No problem. Please. You don't. You have to have your guitar in your hand. Oh, where do I start? I go by feel. I am so much by habit and feel. I'm not playing the guitar. I'm going, oh. I said, hang on a minute. Grab me a guitar. Start playing it. Yeah. Okay. Oh, about there. Right on. So one, two, three, four. Okay. I said, I got it now. Okay, let's go.
[00:09:00] It's just so funny how you don't realize how set in your ways of what you do when you go to actually record piece by piece by piece. Did you not have the music in your ears, though, when you were singing? Yes. That's the thing. So you put the music in your ears. Yeah. But you're not strumming. You're not moving. You're not going, right, yeah, I'm about here. Okay, away I go. I do a lot by just feeling. I know. Not by reading or, you know, I've got a book in front of me. So I'm sitting up there looking at the words.
[00:09:30] It's all right. Okay. Let's go. Da-da-da-da-da. And I think, I'm just saying the wrong word. It's the passion that you put on yourself. And I'm like, that word's not even in the song. He looked at me and he goes, you know. I said, I'm not even singing the right lyric. I said, I just chucked in a, you know, a word. And he just laughed. He goes, it's amazing. He says, you've got to shake it out. I said, yeah, yeah, I know.
[00:09:59] So here I am jumping up and down, doing some, you know, stretches and exercises and doing all the vocal exercises and blowing raspberries, singing la-la-las. And then I think it was the excitement of actually finally being there on the first day. The adrenaline kicked in. It just, yeah, the adrenaline was in there. I'm just like, I'm so, I'm thinking, I'm actually excited. I'm not scared. I'm excited. It's just rattling me.
[00:10:27] So that took about a couple of hours to sort of get through. And I'd relax the more we got into it. So three layers of guitar, three layers of vocals. I said, all right, we've got the vocals down. We've got the guitar down. Let's put it together and have a listen. And I said, all right, let me go back in. And I said, I'll just screech out some things and do some harmonies and just throw ideas around so we've got a feel of what we're going to have around it. He's like, yeah, great. Let's do it. So we did all that.
[00:10:57] Put that one together first, just roughly, got it all sort of in an area. So we just had the rhythm guitar and the vocals and some backups around that. And then we went back in, had a bit of a break, then went back in and started on the second one. And it's a repeat method. Play the guitar, get it all going from start to finish. So we got all those tracks down, three guitar tracks, three vocal tracks, a couple of backing tracks. And away we went. We sat back into the engine room.
[00:11:26] We sat side by side. And this guy's like a magician. He just, he's so quick. And he's got a bit of a drum beat young, which that was the start in all. I said, look, I'm not a click track guy. I said, if I hear a tick, tick, dong, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, dong. I said, just, it's no good. One, two, three, four. And you've got to know where the one is. I said, you just give me a bass drum, a beat off a bass drum. Boom, boom. I said, and I will sit on that all day long.
[00:11:56] And he's like, oh, okay. Yep, we can do that. So straight into that. We learned that in Rory's studio. I just couldn't get this tick, tick, tick. And he says, well, it's actually worse because you can hear it in some of the recordings. This is a bass drum and a low beat. If I can get rid of you, you won't even hear it. So we sat in there and put them together. It's amazing what you can improve on when you sing a song and how clear you sing it. So that's what these guys are for. They just, they get the best out of everything.
[00:12:25] Every line, every word that you sing and every note that you play on that guitar. So they put it all together like a jigsaw. They pull it apart and put it all together and you end up with one beautiful track. In saying that, we're working on the first tracks, which I call a scratch track. But you then put your guitar down, your vocals down, your harmonies down, which we did the first day. Mostly on one song, I think, the first day.
[00:12:52] The next morning, we had to come back and we finished off the second one and then played with the harmonies and then got everything pretty tight. So the lead guitarist would come in. He was coming in. So he came in that second day. And what was his name? That's Rob. Now, that's my son, Jamie. He's one of his good mates. He'd been mates forever. He actually, all his mates all work around him. They all work together in the same place. So they're all working on the music studio where they love the music.
[00:13:22] They love the skating, the surfing. They're all, it's, I probably should have settled down themselves. So it's just a great crowd and a beautiful place. So this music bomb is just beautiful. It's such a lovely place and it just gets better and better as they build. I come in, when I came in the first day, they've taken a massive bus, which was the original bus all the bands toured around Australia in, right? Yeah. Now, there's another bus that's been laying there for a long time.
[00:13:51] They've kept the driver's area. So you've got the steering wheel and the front windscreen and the side windows and the mirrors. And behind that, they've just cut the bus off, only the body. And then they've cut it right back to the chassis. And they've built this beautiful deck on the back of it. Okay. This is a bus that had peace signs on it. You know, we love music. It had all the, like, the hippie stuff. But it was all sort of rusty and getting old.
[00:14:18] So they've just turned it into a big massive deck that you can play music on or chill out, you know, sit around together and have a drink. It's amazing what they do. This place has got so many things you can go look at while you're on it. It's got spaceships, cabins, like a cabin that's like a spaceship, like an alien spaceship with legs that hold it off the ground about 10 feet. And it's actually a little cabin like you can stay in. It's got hobbit houses.
[00:14:47] There's a hobbit house down the back somewhere in the hill. Jamie, my son, he just, he did all the rock work around it. He did all that. It was sort of getting water into it, a bit of moisture. So they pulled it all out and lined it again and put the dirt back in and built the stone walls off each side. It's just an amazing place. Everywhere you go, there's something you just cannot believe. So back to the studio. Back to the studio. Sorry, we've got a sidetracked. Back to the studio. So we've got our lead guitarist coming. Rob had a couple of beautiful guitars.
[00:15:17] Great sound. Had no idea what I was going to throw at him. And I sat him down. I said, well, here's what we've done. And he had to listen to the first one. And away we went. So, and he's just, he had a good feel. He didn't want to put too much in there. Really lovely man. Lovely fella. And gave us his time for that day. And just said, yeah, what do you need? You just tell me. Let me know if I'm on the right track. And we worked the rest of the day with him and used two of his guitars.
[00:15:47] Wait till you hear the sound that he's put in there. It's fantastic. I have heard the sound because you sent me the tracks. Well, they're just the scratch tracks. So wait till we polish them up and go back and work on them. Which I will re-sing, you know, once everything's in there and sorted again. And we've got everything pretty right in levels that we want. Like the bass. There's the song, there's one song there that I'm really listening to. Once I've come home, I listen to it all day to day. And I thought, keep the light on.
[00:16:14] I think I want a real bass feel. I want to hear that bass player. I agreed with you on that one. Derek, yeah. Derek, he did the bass on it. And he just had the coolest riff to it all the way through. It was just bouncy. And I went, that bass I want to hear. And I think he put it down even lower when he sent it to me. I'm like, I can't hear the bass really clearly. I can hear it, but only just.
[00:16:41] So I think when I get back to the studio, and this is how you get the ideas. I'll get back to the studio and I'll say, right, let's just start with, turn the bass up. All I want to hear is the bass over top of everything quite loud. I want to hear it all the way through from start to finish. So then we'll soften everything down. Everything seems to work on. The drums normally keep everything running in. That's the engine room. At this time, I think I might bring everything down, bring the bass up and out in front,
[00:17:10] and then put everything around that. I think that's the feel of the structure of the song. It's got this really, when it gets going, it's got a really good bounce to it. The timing's spot on, the beat's spot on. Great song, great lyrics. It feels like one of those songs everyone wants to just jump around and bounce around with. It starts slow, which we'll pick that up, as you heard. Yeah, it was a little bit too slow to start, but the second half was good, but the first half was a bit slow. Well, that's the song. I'm used to playing it as a real ballad sort of start
[00:17:39] and then getting into it. When you hear it recorded and come back to you, you get a different perspective of it. So we're going to pick that up and get the pace a little bit faster in the recording side of it. And then if I do it on stage different, we'll do a duet version. If we do it acoustic, and we'll still have that same bop, but it'll have that sort of spread out start, stretched out. The way you word it,
[00:18:08] the way the guitar slows down, speeds up, slows down. Just something I like, and I've got a perfect kit, but I'll get that. So that song, Keep the Lying On, is a really dancey song. So in saying that, then the lead guitarist says to me, Rob, he says, what do you want for the actual lead? I said, oh, I walked around, I went, oh. He says, go grab a guitar and show me. I said, well, I don't play lead, I'm a rhythm guitarist. I said, so I'd normally play a harmonica, and I'll give you every note that I need.
[00:18:37] There wasn't a keyboard handy, and I went, I said, I'll vocalize it for you. He says, what do you mean? I said, well, I'll like this, and I just, I said, I'll hit each note, I'll sing a tune, just in a la la, or ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, in the keys, that I want you to play. He went, oh, you can do that. I said, yeah. Anyway, so as the lead guitar come in here, I'm going, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, oh yeah, oh yeah,
[00:19:07] all right. He said, record that. So we recorded it, and we changed it over to him to play the guitar, and he just played the notes over my voice, doing this harmony. Okay. A lead guitar, and I said, well, I bet that hasn't been done before. We all had a big laugh, and then we replayed it, and here's all this, it's like, here's as if you've got everyone to sing, the whole crowd sing, la, la, la, la, la, to a riff, a good riff.
[00:19:37] Oh, so that's what that was. That was only put in there for the lead guitarist to play the lead. Ah, okay. So they left it in there and said, just listen to it for a while and get used to it and see what you reckon. And I went, well, that's the lead guitarist part, not, you know, so he said, no, I want you to go in and sing it again now, sing it better, as best you can, over that. So we did it a couple of times, like about, so it sounded like four or five people, or three or four people were singing the la, la, bah, bah, bah, bah,
[00:20:09] and it sort of sounded all right. They're all laughing, going, this is great, it's like a party song. So anyway, he said, I'll leave it in there and just, you know, we'll cut it out. So when I go back, we'll cut it out and I'll listen to the lead guitar. I like what you were trying to do there. It worked, but not all the way through. There's certain sections it works better on, but I like the concept of it. Exactly. So I went, well, concepts there. So if we were to really do it,
[00:20:38] I'd have to get about eight people in there or a crowd of people and just say, all right, this is what we want you to, to, bah, bah, I think it's a bah, bah, bah, something like that and get everyone to do it as a party, like a big audience sort of thing. And I said, well, if we do that, the song's going to end up being like a live song, like we record it live. And he says, what do you mean? I said, well, you know, when you get it live here, a lot of guys get them and they clink glass bottles together
[00:21:07] and the people are having a chat and everyone's singing around and then the chorus comes in and everyone sings it together sort of thing. He said, oh, yeah. I said, so we'll leave that, but it's just a thought for the moment. So, this song, People Island, could go anywhere. I said, as long as it's quirky and it's catchy. But we start, when we go back to polish it, we'll start with the bass beat. Yeah, it needs that. It's got to have that really cool,
[00:21:37] slapping, you know, sort of bass beat. even at the point of maybe, and there's an idea, which I've just thought of, a stand-up bass. That would be pretty cool because they slap those things and they make some great beats. They do. They will have to source something like that. I'll see what I can find if there's anyone around that area that can slap on a stand-up bass or make a bass really slap. Yeah, so that's interesting. Who knows? Well, it sounds like you had a great time
[00:22:06] and the music that came out of it was pretty good for a start. Looking forward to you getting back there and polishing it because the second one, Velvet Howl, was much closer to being more radio ready. Yeah, and it's not. That was the first go. That's what I'm saying. It was pretty good to get that far. But we're running out of time. So, I am going to say goodnight.
[00:22:36] I know you've been busy and you've driven back and you've gone to work and you've come home and so you must be exhausted. Yeah, didn't get back until about 1.30 last night. Got up early this morning, got ready for work and off I went again. Yeah, that's the life. All right. Well, you go have a nice big sleep and I'll talk to you soon. All right. Thank you, everyone. Lots of luck. Lots of luck. Now, don't forget to check out Trevor McCormack's YouTube and you can also go to Trevor McCormack Music
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