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‘Indie music is like a ghetto.’ - A Conversation with William McCarthy

It’s a long read. The interview is a fairly long read. Most often I meet artists in some grey meeting rooms with someone coming in after 15 or 25 minutes telling me to ask the last question. With William McCarthy it was slightly different. I picked him up from his Berlin home a few days before he left Berlin to record his upcoming album. He bought some cigarettes and gummibears on the way to a close by bar where we sat down for over an hour to talk about everything. Music, song writing, politics, music industry, Patreon and his solo career after playing for many, many years with Eric Sanderson in Pela and the Augustines. No one told us to stop. No hand telling me we have five minutes left. No ‘one last question’. Time was flying. And I can’t get myself to shorten the interview more than I did because I find our conversation very interesting. I found William very interesting and I enjoyed listening to his stories. I hope you enjoy it, too.

Dörte: You’ve been travelling a lot. You went around America a lot with your motorbike and you want to do it here. Do you think that travelling changed the way you write music?

William: I think all travel is healthy and I think there are different kinds of travelling. There is travelling for work, there is holiday like Mallorca or something and then there is travelling through different cultures and exploring yourself in different environments.

What I’ve learned from talking to many artists is that it’s also different for them because they have always someone in town who want to show them the weird stuff and not the normal tourist stuff.

Yes, there can be a lot of differences. So, I’ve always been to Berlin with a band or a friend. I’ve never been here alone and now I’ve been living here completely alone, not really socializing at all. I’m used to people showing me around. I’m in a different environment now, navigating by myself. No one to motivate me except for myself to go anywhere.

That must be hard, especially since it’s not the perfect season to be in Berlin except if you love different shades of grey. [laughing]

Yeah, it’s pretty grey. The snow, too. It gets dark very early. It’s been an experience definitely.

Did you enjoy it?

Yes, I really like living here. I’m fascinated by history, culture and geography. So, I’m constantly looking at maps and constantly reading about what happened here, what happened in my neighbourhood, what happened in my district, what happened in the city.

In Berlin that’s a never ending thing.

It’s pretty special for that reason. All cities have this feeling. I always thought it was funny when people say ‘I don’t like Sao Paolo or I don’t like Manchester’. It’s funny because how can you make a decision about millions of people like they’re not as good as another city with a different group of people. They’re just people.

I believe whether it’s in the country or in a city that people are different. When I just talked to the lady behind the counter I said to her “that’s service” since she knew your cigarette brand. You don’t always have that in Berlin. In Berlin everyone is unfriendly including myself really.

I think any place with a long winter has that kind of frequency going on. New York has the same. It takes a lot to get through a winter. It’s difficult to go outside. New York has such strange weather. It’s constantly the hottest summer ever recorded or the most snow ever recorded or the largest amount of people to march to the UN ever recorded. Constantly there are these very big events. When it’s cold it’s just hard to not feel overwhelmed and just hide, so I think the unfriendliness is just people hiding from more data out in the world. They just want to stick to what they know and get home and cook and go to bed.

Don’t interact with too many people but in Berlin it’s also being very direct and not the American kind of way where everything is awesome.

New York is not completely like that.

Yes, I know. I travelled through the US quite a bit when I was younger and also have relatives there and with them everything is awesome and great.

California, where I’m from we say 'es ist alles gut’, is that right? We say it’s all good. It’s very difficult to find directness. If someone has a problem with you they will just not contract you again but in New York they will probably tell you directly.

Sometimes it’s better but not always.

I have a problem with my landlord. She is very direct, too direct for me.

[laughing] You should never move into my flat.

The lady I called her my friend. I said “Thank you, my friend, I appreciate it”. And she was like “Why do you call me your friend?”. And Americans call people your friend and I was thinking, it’s not just Americans, it’s Africans, it’s South Americans, people from the sun.

I think I read in an interview from you from a few years ago - I think before you did the big journey with your motorcycle. You said you come home and you have all these new contacts and all these new friends and you said who is your friends really? Who you would contact when you feel bad? In Germany it’s different. I had the same. People keep saying 'oh, you have all these friends in music industry’ but for me friends are people I call when I feel bad and not where I have to contact the PR person to arrange an interview to tell the person I feel bad in the interview. [laughs]

Yes, I think of Ray Charles there is at-home-Ray and then there is On-Stage-Ray. I think as a performer you’re going in and out of these worlds and there are a small amount of people who don’t cross into each others worlds very easily. Like my sister doesn’t completely understand exactly what I do. She has a different perspective than maybe say a radio DJ.

But it’s the same for me. I have my real friends and the ones from music industry and they don’t connect. I barely take my friends with me to concerts. But it’s on a smaller scale really. I can totally understand your landlord. I’d ask the same.

I told her that I think the close people that you love should fit on two hands but it’s ok to say 'my friend’ to everybody else. I think that’s ok. I prefer that kind of world. I think it’s sort of humanity to be kind to humanity but she didn’t see it that way. I was saying 'wow, we’re very different’ because I believe human being can love anybody, even the worst human beings can love each other. Maybe if we trust each other with love maybe we get the best from people.

But it’s hard to trust.

But I don’t think of trust when I talk to the lady at the Döner Kebap place, I just say 'Hi, how are you doing, my friend? Nice to see you.’ but that doesn’t mean that I can’t trust her. […] I also grew up near the beach.

The beach is a magic place of it’s own…

Yeah, if that’s your foundation and you have a connection with the environment and nature then that’s honesty, that’s truthful. Human beings are a little bit funny. Do you know what I mean? That’s an interesting difference.

You’re writing your own songs now, you’re going on solo tour in April – is it different to develop your own songs now? I know you’ve done it before but now there is no band around you. There is no conversation about how to build up the songs.

Yes, it’s different because the possibilities are different, sonically. On my record I think I’ll only have drums on one song. I’m trying to get as minimal as possible. But that’s not new for me. I was playing for a lot of years before I ever met Eric.

I keep thinking that you get used to stuff, you get used to having people around you and you and Eric worked for many, many years together.

It’s a bad example but maybe it’s like a theatre group and you’ve done a production for many years in Broadway or something and then the actors have to go to other things. Some of those Broadway productions like Les Miserable or Cats have been going for decades. People do them for a long time. It’s crazy.

Yes, sometimes it’s their lifetime job in a way. Quite weird. And some just do it for a few years and then they’re gone.

You know what’s really interesting: I always thought…remember Titanic and this Céline Dion song? I think she signed this huge contract in state in Vegas for the rest of her career which is really interesting: no travel, no new records, just performing a show in Vegas for the next 20 years. I don’t know what happened to her.

I think she’s still playing the show and sometimes somewhere else.

It’s weird. I think that used to happen more in the 60ies and 70ies with Sinatra and those guys. They would go to Vegas and live like Kings. There was no more touring and they could kind of retire but sing in the daytime. It’s a very strange history of performers that those people could do that. It’s interesting.

You can still make the money. Live shows are still the one income. The best earning bands are always the bands which are touring, especially in the US where it’s terribly expansive to go to a concert, to the big ones at least. So, you’re doing this but you don’t have to spend the money and time on travelling and the people have come to you. But it’s still weird.

Super weird. I think it’s taking your talent and making it a 9 to 5 job instead of a travelling gypsy life. I have been living it a long time. It has some problems, too.

It doesn’t go easy. You got to be on to make money all the time, you got to be hustling – is that the right word? Now you’ve started this Patreon - do you think having sponsors for you is the way forward for musicians?

I think it depends on what you’re doing. Everybody has a different path and everybody has different skills. I looked at many different options. I thought this one was great because people can come and get something different then everybody had before. They can leave whenever they want. They can pay whatever they want.

What I was thinking… I liked Nirvana a lot when I was young. When I liked Nirvana I had to go to a store to buy a poster, I had to buy a t-shirt and then I had to buy a CD and the I had to buy a magazine and then I had to buy a concert ticket. And then I had to look for other people to wear the same t-shirt and then we would connect and we would share the same passion for this. I was thinking now what if Kurt Cobain performed for you in his kitchen like twice a month and he send you a personal letter and he had a meet and greet before his show and he responded to your questions and he had talks about politics and cooking and how to write a song and all? Instead of spending money on the poster, a concert ticket and all of that, you just gave him twenty dollars a month or ten dollars a month or 5 dollars a month. I think that’s cool.

I’ve just learned about it and for me it seems like a really good solution, especially for what you get. I know some artists who pre sale concerts where they organize the concert when they sell enough tickets in advance. That was always kind of weird for me.

If you think about the gold rush in California… in 1849 they discovered gold. People from around the world went there. And then people started going west. People went there for work and a whole industry was build of of Gold. Hotels, prostitutes, people selling jackets, foods and restaurants and it developed into a little economy. I think what’s happened if you imagine a gold rush for music that happened 60/70 years ago and several years later the internet happened. Pretty soon all the restaurants and the prostitutes and all the hotels died. Now this is musical ghost town. I think the way the industry is going we’re going to see very good bands doing one or two records before they end. And all the executives will get as much money out of them as they can and then they’ll drop them and move to a new artist.

If you work in a major label, not those indie labels, it is all about to get as much as money as possible for you and not for the artist.

I think it’s because if you imagine Africa like the Sahara or you imagine Lions and Giraffes and there is a lack of meat, there is not enough meat for all the animals, so they are behaving very badly. It’s like New York City. If you think of ants, the insects, if you put them in an ant farm and you put too many ants in there they’re angry ants. This is New York City. They’re very angry, they fight, they’re nasty ants because there are too many of them. Now if you take Africa like the Serengeti and there is not enough meat you look at how the animals react and that’s what’s happening to music.

Yes, that’s why I like to focus on smaller bands, indie labels and bookers where I often know the people behind it in person. Huxley’s is already a huge venue for me and often I go to five concerts a week. Often I’m the only photographer there.

I like that. You can feel the energy so well. Also, the production has to be so massive. In the old days, the 80s and 90s, the tours were a promotional device to sell records. Tours supported the album sales. Album sales number one, tour it’s ok when you loose money because album sales were what we were all eating from. That’s gone. Now it’s reverse. Albums are just a promotional device for the tours. Now you have a big problem if gas is expensive, hotels are expansive. The only option is to make the tickets expansive like these bands in America you were telling me about. But what kind of fun is that when a ticket is 60 Euros? It’s fucking bullshit.

For me it would be impossible to go to any concerts like this if I had to pay. I don’t have that much money.

I read in an interview that when you write you used to imagine yourself into a different place like a desert. Is it something that you still do or was it replaced by travelling?

No, I think every time we talk we’re telling stories. I talk to you and you told me that you’re from Berlin and how it was when Berlin had a wall and how old you were and what kind of concerts you go to and what you do for work. You told me that in one hour. This is what human beings are doing. We are constantly telling stories, every day. I just went to this party. It was crazy, there was free beer and there was techno. You’re telling a story. The same goes with songwriting. I think writers like to go to different environments because it makes them think differently. If you want to keep things fresh and new you have to keep thinking differently.

In what way do you think differently when you go somewhere else?

I was just in Nepal and I really couldn’t believe the differences between Buddhists and Hindus. I thought it was really interesting. They both had a completely different feeling to me. I was in Vietnam and I saw a lot of Soviet flags and I saw a lot of alcoholism which I didn’t expect. When I went to Kenya I saw a lot Malaria and a lot of alcohol. People were pouring vodka in their beer. Every time I see something like this it makes me go home and think about things before I go to sleep. That collectively after a lot of days like that you start adding a little influence of what you’re seeing into your work. I’ve been fascinated with the Berlin wall. That if you were married and somebody was in the east or the west and they put the wall up you just couldn’t see them again. For me it is very difficult to understand if you told somebody who says 'I want to travel.’ 'No.’ 'But why?’ 'Because you can’t’ 'But why can’t I?’ 'Because of the rules.’

With that questions you’d already be on the red list.

'Because of our laws’ 'Why are our laws here?’ 'Because of our ideology.’ 'Well, I don’t have a problem with this ideology, can I please go?’ I think to visit the wall makes me realize that this is possible in the west. I just came from the far east, from Asia, and I saw a lot of things that were hard to understand. I was seeing the West for being the West. So, when I’m in the West I think this is life. No, no, it’s life in the West. When you’re in the East looking at the West, it’s Australia, Canada, America, Britain, Europe, New Zealand… you don’t think this is life. I think that perspective is so important. Also, seeing the Soviet flags in Vietnam was very interesting to me and seeing some residue of that on the memorial for the wall it’s just really… I see a love story in that.

You do?

Yes, I see humans with ideas being put upon them. Humans beings are pure.

They’re pure and they lose that when they grow up. When they’re not innocent children any more and start getting ideas from the outside. The both of us, we still have ideas being out in our head and we believe it’s right but that doesn’t mean it is right.

That’s what’s interesting about the wall. The whole system just ended. It’s just over.

Although the people don’t say it so often but you still have a big difference between East and West Germany. You don’t notice it in Berlin but when you go to the deeper East or the deeper West there are still people who haven’t been to the other “side”. In the east they still have still connective system where you help each other but when you move there from the west you don’t get into this system easily, even in your work place.

I was reading that in the east they did help each other a lot. A lot of people miss the community feeling and what’s really important. There were some good things they had with each other a lot like going naked to the beach and things like that.

Of course it’s not bad all this helping each other but if you go there from the outside you don’t get in there. It’s the same when you move to a small village in West Germany. When you’re from Berlin it’s a different word when you go there.

I feel like this in Ireland sometimes when I’m out in the small villages and stuff and you walk in and people are like 'where are you from?’ because cities are more or less global at this point. Internet has made everybody really connected and then you meet people that really don’t use the internet. That’s like wow. They don’t even realize how big of a decision that is. It’s crazy.

[for a second speechless] Yes, not using the internet nowadays…you don’t get any information any more.

I didn’t think the internet would last. I thought it was like a trend and it was going to go away. And it was getting bigger. I remember when we were in Pela we thought 'fuck, we have to make a website’. We don’t have to make flyers any more. Well, that’s really different.

It also changed playing live. Henry Rollins said it once that when he was in Black Flag they could play different venues in New York City in the same week because the people wouldn’t know. They simply wouldn’t know where they were playing any nowadays everything is on internet. If you play in the same city seven times on day 7 no one would be there because they have seen you six times beforehand.

Also, it has given a voice to the people in Iran or it’s great for music because somebody on a laptop in South Africa can make a cool hip hop record. Before they had to go to a studio and now they don’t have to. Look what it’s done to people sexuality. Kids looking at porn when they’re nine. That’s weird.

That’s crazy. In many ways it’s too much in the sense of what is accessible. I’m lucky because I got to find new music this way very easily, music that hasn’t been featured in a German magazine beforehand.

Or films or interviews… I love it for the interviews. If I think “Dennis Hopper” interview or Merkel interview….

I know. I read a ton of interviews you gave. It’s an easy way to research anything.

It’s great. But then again what I was discussing earlier today is with Obama leaving tomorrow. I was on an airplane and they told me we were having an emergency landing. There was a guy having a fight with another guy in the front of the plane who was drunk, so they just landed the airplane and I did a tweet 'I’m on a airplane. Emergency landing what on earth?- kind of thing. It was on the news. It was on abc, nbc… “Singer of Augustines: a cry for help”. It was fucking crazy because it was not what I was doing. But I saw the the media doing something to get a little more traffic.

That’s how Trump got into the game really because all of these big media outlets saw that Trump is clicks. So, they would report about him. If they just would have downplayed him, I think he wouldn’t have gotten that big.

Yes, exactly. And this is called clickbait. When I landed in New York it was all over the news. It was on the national news. I was on the news, my picture, my band, me playing. And I was like “you assholes, that wasn’t a fucking terrorist.” They implied that it was terrorism but it was a fucking alcoholic. I think if you look at media in this light, the more clicks they get, the more sponsorship they get, the more money they get, they start realizing that news is lucrative. This is a huge problem. In my country when somebody says no Muslims or this Mexico shit, I’m angry.

It’s insane. I grew up in a town surrounded by a wall. It’s no solution for nothing. People will overcome the wall, they will still come into the country – it doesn’t matter. And it’s not such a problem.

I fucking love Mexicans. I stand behind Mexicans. They are the coolest people in the world. They’re family people, their music is really happy. There is so much colour and flavour and their food is fucking awesome. And their girls are pretty and their grandparents are really cute. They’re just great. They have this macho pride. The men with their hair and they all have cool lowriders. They’re awesome. And this fucking guy is going to fucking insult them? What the fuck? And Muslims, too. Muslims are awesome.

To blame a whole religion for a few fucktards? I mean every Christian should be banned. Probably every German should be punished until now… there are probably more Americans killing other Americans is some mass shootings then terrorists doing anything. I have some relatives who don’t want to travel to Berlin any more because of what happened here, even before the thing at the Gedächniskirche happened. You have like mass shootings all the time, you’re not travelling here any more? You had planes crashing into big towers…

I was there. It was crazy. But what was really crazy about it was it was something that happened in the city which kind of made it a New York thing. All the fire fighters were from the neighbourhood and they were all going down there to help. But then it was an international thing. So, it was the worlds business but it was our problem because we lived there with the air and the trains being fucked up. I was 1.3 km away. Very close. We could smell it for a long time and the funerals with the back pipes. It was real for us. The media went fucking crazy with it.

When I heard about it for the first time in the car I thought this must be a joke.

This is also very interesting: Don’t you think it’s fucking crazy that you almost forget that the Pentagon was hit? I think it was a massive diversion of people’s attention. We don’t talk about that. That’s our nations security centre and it was hit with a massive airplane.

It’s because one shows the normal peoples tragedy and the other one shows the weakness of the country. That’s the big difference between those two. That’s why on every 9/11 there is stuff going on like remembrance stuff, even in Germany. No one mentions the Pentagon.

You know another thing: One time after 9/11 there was a protest in front of the United Nations and there were 200.000 people. That’s a lot of people. If you look at a football stadium: That’s two football stadiums of people. The whole Westside was full. You couldn’t drive. It wasn’t on the news. I don’t know if there was a gag order from the government or what was going on. It was a weird time. It was right after it but I saw the government in a different way and I saw the people being innocent - 'don’t look at the Pentagon, look at the towers, just don’t look at the Pentagon’. One of those planes was supposed to hit the White House. Can you imagine what that would have done?

I think then you would have a wall around America already, even the coast.

I didn’t expect this to be political…

Neither did I…

..but it’s ok. With the internet you would think people would be able to get informations out - like in Turkey or with government stuff and developing nations. It’s not a secret any more. They can get their mobile phone videos out into the world but I feel like the media is very, very slippery because what it chooses to support benefits it’s own interests. Obama was just talking about this: If you’re into conspiracy, if you’re into gas and oil, if you’re into whatever your fear is, you can find it. Daily, like a daily newsfeed.

We have all this media but in the when they don’t pick it up and tell the world, no one will notice. They don’t always know what a normal person can handle. We can’t handle everything.

That’s true.

I believe we don’t need to know everything what the government does but the important stuff we need to know. […] That’s the good side of the internet sometimes: you get to know this kind of stuff.

You can inform yourself. The point I’m making is I’m not sure if anybody knows now what is the honest news.

I don’t think anyone ever knew.

William: Maybe we didn’t. That’s what’s funny about Millenials. I think they look at it all like a bunch of bullshit and they don’t vote. If you look at a kid from New : they have seen heroin addicts, they’ve seen prostitutes, they’ve seen porn, they were doing drugs in Highschool. They’re not innocent kids but New Yorkers are so special. They are a different kind of animal. They just don’t care. They have this ability of not caring about things. I’m different. I’m from a small town near the water. And I have seen a fucking lot but I still have this empathy. It’s very difficult. It’s hard on my heart. I admire New Yorkers for being black and white sometimes.

I can be very black and white very often and I admire people who are not because when you are black and white you can be very stuck sometimes.

Or things can’t reach you. And then the empathy part is that things cripple you and you can’t function because it is so hard. For example I’m going on a holiday to Mexico and then you see people with no legs and you’re not having fun any more. You’re like fuck, this is really hard, this is sad and everyone else is like it’s fun, let’s go out, let’s go to the pool. And I’d say 'fuck, that really affected me’. But when you’re born and raised in New York you’re like 'fuck it man, people don’t have legs sometimes. What are you going to do?’ and that’s a big difference.

I never go to the pool. [We both laugh.] Let’s see if I have another question about music here – I never talk about politics. I know that a couple of years ago you were always questioning yourself if music is your true calling or still just a foolish endeavor – have you made up your mind now?

I think things have changed a little bit. I look at it like Charlie Chaplin. Charlie Chaplin was a silent film star, same era as Buster Keaton. When sound came a lot of actors couldn’t survive. Some of them did. Chaplin did a couple of films, Keaton did a couple of films. I don’t look at it that it’s not worth my time. I look at it as it is to survive from the silent film into films with sounds. I have to change because I love music too much to let Spotify fuck me up and I love music deeply, I love art deeply, so Youtube is not going to fucking stop me but I have to smart now.

It’s really difficult.

They said The Clash looked like a gang, like a street gang. They’re all brothers and they’re up there and I think that that’s beautiful but I think that there’s… I tell you constantly being afraid for your security, working… We did 250 concerts on 'Raise Ye Sinking Ships’, that’s a lot of concerts. If you’re playing six nights a week, 2,5 hours a night, and you can’t go to the dentist there is something really wrong. It’s sad and it’s just not fair but it’s not Charlie Chaplin’s fault that silent films ended. You have to look at things differently.

There is also this myth that artists have to suffer. If you’re not an artist, you look at it that they have to suffer in order to create good art but I personally don’t think it’s part of the process. You need stories, you need a life, you need experiences.

There are a lot of misconceptions. I love this about actors. Like Natalie Portman has been gone for like five years but she just has been a mother. That always cool about actors. Musicians don’t have the same luxury.

The level until they have this luxury is really, really high.

Yes, what you have is basically an Indie ghetto. Indie music is like a ghetto. You can’t get out and the people who got out before 2004, like Modest Mouse, they had a big hit, Interpol, those bands will be ok. For those people who came after them like Vampire Weekend or Foals there is a struggle. And below Foals, Augustines or below Augustines blablabla. We’re stuck in a financial ghetto.

When I look at a band like the Augustines it seems so weird. In the end you’ve been big, for me at least. It makes no sense that there is a struggle.

Well, think about it this way: A lot of it is the cost of touring. If you look at publishing – that’s television, commercials – and you look at album sales and you look at touring. If publishing doesn’t happen - maybe because this band is just isn’t really good for commercials or maybe it’s so competitive that they can’t get into commercials. Then the album sales are nothing any more. Eminem came out with a number 1 album and he sold 200.000 records in a country of 350 Million. That’s one country. You take that away. That leaves touring. Then you look at petrol, you look at a bus is 30.000 € a month. You see how little oxygen there is. You can’t breath. The reason why it’s like a ghetto is because that’s what happens in ghettos: no health care, no dentist, you can’t go see a psychologist if you need help, you can’t pay your collage loans. You can’t do anything. You have a lack of mobility. And then people say 'well, you need to grow up’. I’m in my 30ies. I’ve worked for 20 years. Why can’t I enjoy the fruits of my labour? It’s because everyone is listening to your shit for free. I know it sucks but people just don’t value value music, they don’t think they should have to pay for it any more.

They don’t value art. The difference is if you have a painting it’s a one off thing, so people pay money for it, or they go to a museum where they pay entrance fee or the government pays stuff to keep the museum alive. But when you are a band it’s very rare that you have financial support from the government.

I heard Canada does that.

There is a little bit, in some countries there is but it’s not very much.

This is my theory that you’re only going to see bands alive for two years. Two records maximum. You’re not going to see a band like Guster who have been together for 25 years, still an Indie band, or Yo La Tengo, Sonic Youth…

I read a while back that when you’re becoming bigger as a band you’re playing bigger venues, lesser shows and it’s lesser people as well because when you’re smaller you play these crazy 30 dates tours in small venues over the UK. Overall you have more people there. And now you’re back to busking. I saw a video you posted the other day.

I’m ok with that. Honestly it got big enough to a point where I couldn’t go out after the show because people were drunk and they wanted selfies. You can’t go out and be a part of the night any more. That part started to be kind of shitty to be honest.

I imagine. I wasn’t one of those people after your concert but I can be one of those.

I think everyone is excited. They have been looking forward to the night but what happens if you have a cold, what happens if I have a cold or my girlfriend just yelled at me and we were having a fight. You don’t have very much privacy. When you have a bus you can escape to the bus but you’re lying in your bunk which is like a coffin. Everyone’s one the bus, drinking and having fun and you just want to be normal so bad. Every night’s Friday night.

It must be crazy.

It’s crazy and it’s also very difficult to see people being not very good at their jobs. It’s also very difficult to see clubs not spending the money they should on their equipment, so the microphones are bad or their shit is not working very well. You’re just trying to give the best performance because you care for your fans because they have driven so far to see you or they flown in to see you and you can’t do your job because these guys are being cheap. It’s frustrating.

When you’re busking it’s just your own, it’s just you, your equipment, your guitar, singing about Netto….

Improv, improv, improv…

I think that is pretty cool and pretty special. I can understand why someone would play a smaller venue or go busking because I love this connection between the artist and audience which is more direct. In the Huxley’s you might see the first rows or when the light goes on a mass of people. You can’t realize who is standing there.

To be honest with you they want it to be dark so it’s Rock'n'Roll but I understand that. I was a busker before. I love the nights where people are like 'come one, play us this song, play us that song’ and you’re drinking all night and you’re just there for the right reasons. And then you play a festival and Kanye West is three hours late to a fucking concert. It’s just a different thing.

I don’t really like Festivals. Two last questions. I always love ask them. The first one is: How long did it take you to find your own voice – the singing voice but also the way your write?

That’s a great question. Probably ten years.

How did you know that this is you know, that it’s not sounding like someone else?

I don’t know. I think I just stopped thinking about it. I really love Blues music and Americana when I was young and then I found better records or more modern records. I was listening to that. I think it’s just easier to do me than to do somebody else. It takes a while. I’m glad that I’m from Generation X because maybe you had 20 CDs or 20 records but you knew them very well, every word. And now it’s so much in your phone or in your iPad or whatever. People are just listening to two songs of a record. Today has a lot of good things about today.

The other question I like to ask is: When you’re writing a song do you have a certain process or is it just sudden inspiration?

It’s weird. It changed. When I was younger, in my late Teens, early Twenties, I couldn’t afford alcohol, so I drank a lot of coffee. I would stay up all night, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and writing. As I’ve gotten older I realizes the morning is the best time for ideas so I just like to lay in bed, looking up at the celling for like an hour and trying to explore different ideas. The morning brings a lot to me. That’s a new workplace for me. It used to be at night.

You grew old then?

I guess. Happens to everybody. [we both laugh]

End. Thank you for taking the time, Billy!

I highly recommend everyone to go to his upcoming Music For The People Tour:

www.williammccarthy.org

Thank you for reading,

Dörte

P.S. Thank you, Mark!

P.P.S. And if I managed to leave a good impression during the interview, I probably ruined it straight away when I asked for this after we’ve left the bar but you have to capture the good moments, right?

#william mccarthy #billy mccarthy #augustines #interview #on tour #music for the peple #pela #tour