Playing Large Venues Is "Less Personal"

Ball Park Music’s Sam Cromack is home in Brisbane. The band are just back from South By Southwest and then head for Europe after playing Groovin The Moo and are back again for Come Together. Needless to say, it’s been a busy time.

“Going overseas is always a breath of fresh air,” Cromack reckons. “It brings new challenges, and it’s interesting to be in an environment where our following is small. It’s very different to touring in Australia. We’ll be playing in smaller venues, so it’s like going back to how we used to have to play, trying to win people over with good shows. Playing large Australian venues is nice and everything, but it’s certainly less personal.”

Puddinghead, their third album, was recorded in a house in Everton Hills over nine months. “We moved all our recording gear and instruments in there and worked on and off. I’d recorded a few solo records previously and had some recording experience from them, but they were pretty low-key. I’d studied it a bit at university, but was still anxious. Thankfully, it turned out to be a really good challenge.

“I did the artwork for the album after. I’ve always loved collage and I try to collect illustrated textbooks to cut out all the cool stuff and keep them in a big folder. When it then came time to do the art, I laid pictures out on the table and assembled them before taking a photo and editing them on my computer. I didn’t go into it with any kind of clear overarching theme. It’s convenient that there’s lots of characters with different objects for heads and then the album is called Puddinghead, but the two aren’t specifically related.

“My favourite artist is Max Ernst. He was a German artist present at a lot of the first half of the twentieth century art movements and did a lot of great collage stuff with black and white images. They were really cohesive without the changing colours or tones.”

As for the body art he sings about in Fence Sitter, Cromack admits he doesn’t have any ink of his own. “I’ve always felt a bit weird about singing that line. It’s a bit rich to say you regret something you haven’t done; I guess it was more for the sake of the song. I had considered getting tattoos when I was younger, and I talked to people about it a lot. It stemmed from the idea of wanting to write a song about not committing to anything. The line fit well and evoked a strong image, plus I thought that perhaps people with tattoos would relate to it.”

When it comes to writing new music, the band isn’t rushing things. “We were starting to think about recording some new songs, but we’ve decided to put that on hold to chill out for a bit and focus on doing all these shows and having fun. I’m in a pretty relaxing place right now.”