BEDA #12: Andrew McDonald the Musician

I have come across another inter­view with some­one called Andrew McDon­ald who is not me. This time the name­sake in ques­tion is Aus­tralian acoustic muso Andrew McDon­ald. That’s him below.

The inter­view appeared in the Novem­ber issue of a Sin­ga­porean gam­ing mag­a­zine called Play­works last year.

Much like the last time this hap­pened I have been left feel­ing despon­dent and deter­mined to reclaim my fair share of atten­tion. So again I have removed the other Andrew’s responses to the ques­tions from Play­works and answered them myself. Here is a short­ened ver­sion of the inter­view as rewrit­ten by me:

Play­works: First time here in Singapore?

Andrew: That’s a con­fus­ing first-up ques­tion. I’m in Mel­bourne at the moment.

How do you find it so far?

I was born and bred and then sent to kinder right here in Mel­bourne so I guess I’m pretty con­di­tioned to the place.

What were you shop­ping for?

That’s another stumper Play­works interviewer-person. When did we men­tion shop­ping? I think you’re think­ing of Andrew McDon­ald the Shoe­maker?

You’re a gamer. Cool, we’ll talk about games in a lit­tle bit. But first, let’s talk about your music, the begin­nings, how it all started, etc. You were in a band before right?

Well, I’m not a gamer but you’re right, let’s argue about that later. Yes, I was once in a band. Me and my friend Tim cre­ated the band. We were called Pigs in Shit. We used the old ‘Power chords writ­ten on post-it-notes and picked ran­domly from an upside down pork pie hat’ method of song­writ­ing. We were pretty good.

Is your old band still together?

No. Tim moved to Tas­ma­nia to chase girls and it was no longer kosher for me to jam in his parent’s house.

What are your musi­cal influ­ences?
I have a few but I don’t really lis­ten to much new music. In fact I’m still lis­ten­ing to the first albums I ever got. The Lion King sound­track and the first Ala­nis Moris­sette album take turns on my iPod.
What about when you sing? What kind of influ­ences do you have for performing?

It depends. Some morn­ings I wake up with lots of mucus in my lungs and so I’ll sing low, bassy, Tom Waits stuff in the shower. Whereas some morn­ings my house­mates will yell at me for singing in the shower so I’ll change to some quiet Bing Crosby crooning.

Is there a pro­ducer involved with the song­writ­ing? Is there any­one who comes in and tries to change things?

I think you mean is there a pro­ducer involved with my writ­ing? I don’t have a pro­ducer but I do have an edi­tor. She’s pretty cool and tells me when I’m not allowed to do stuff like put my feet on the desk while I write. Or type with my eyes shut and call the story the Book of Fate. She’s a cool edi­tor like that.

Are you into sports?

I like bowls but I’m not really into crochet.

At least you’re a gamer, since you’ve been shop­ping for a Playsta­tion controller.

What? I’m not a gamer and any­way I don’t shop for Playsta­tion stuff. I have a cousin who has an elec­tron­ics busi­ness in Thai­land and he does my shop­ping for me. I don’t even have to pay him for the games and con­trollers he gets me when he vis­its. Instead I just let him use my garage for stor­age every now and then.

Do you record your songs on a lap­top or just hook­ing up to the com­puter on your own? Or do you pre­fer going into a stu­dio to record?

You mean do I dic­tate my writ­ing to myself? Well yes. I often wake up in the mid­dle of the night with an idea. I imme­di­ately turn on my walkie talkie and say my idea to my edi­tor who has the other walkie talkie. My edi­tor lives far far away from me, but they’re good walkie talkies, and I expect she’ll hand me a tran­script of the book I’ve writ­ten on walkie talkie someday.

Would you com­ing back to here?

You peo­ple are obvi­ously not check­ing the email ques­tions prop­erly before you send them through. Again this ques­tion makes no sense. I’ll assume the miss­ing word is ‘lit­ter’. No. I would never lit­ter if I came back to here. I mean, I live here. It would be ridicu­lous to lit­ter in my own house.