A conversation with James McDonald from NZ Indie pop band Beachware
Having a yarn with musician James McDonald (He/Him) about his favourite sauce - BBQ a classic, NZ music, and a potential Christmas album…
What did you want to be growing up?
When I was really little I wanted to be the guy that stands up on the rubbish truck - for me that was the coolest thing, standing up on the back of a truck. Then in High School I just wanted to do music!
What’s your go to karaoke song?
I always thought that it would be Bootylicious by Destiny’s Child… I mean I tried it and I forgot that the verses in the song are really hard, it’s so fast. I think “All the small things - Blink 182” is much more my style.
What is your favourite sauce?
I’m a big BBQ sauce guy, and if my mum and step dad are at some boujee store they’d bring home a bottle of some fancy BBQ sauce! I’m also a big fan of the Culley’s smokey chipotle that they have going on.
What would you do if you won the Lottery?
I think I would love to open a venue. There’s not enough spaces in Auckland, especially for new bands that don’t have a huge draw it’s really hard to be like “cool I want to put on a show we don’t have money but we can bring 50 of our friends”, there's not really a space for that and there used to be and I’ve always thought I can do that, I can run a shitty something how hard can it be… probably quite hard but I think that would be my first stop for sure.
Favourite spots on Karangahape Road?
I spend so much of my life on Karangahape Road, one of my favourite food spots is Sri Pinang, the Malaysian joint down the road.
It’s a dollar B.Y.O there hey?
Yeah I think so! I’ve definitely seen people drinking VBs which I love. There’s also a little wine bar underneath us called Celeste which I go to way too often, mostly because it's right there but also because of the cool food and wine.
How would you describe your band in 3 words?
Honest/Authentic
Whatever the opposite word of serious is, music should be fun and we want it to be fun for people who are in the band and we want the shows to be fun so we try and take it as absurd and silly as we can and I think that’s a good thing.
Dancey… we’ve used that, but I just want people to have a good time, the whole idea of it is to not be serious, it’s to be fun, and for people to enjoy themselves, so maybe you can pick three words out of that from that long run on sentence
Who are your inspirations?
When I think of really cool indie pop song writing I think of bands like Phoenix. I’ve watched a lot of docos on bands like that and I’ve realised how brutal they are in their songwriting and how much they cut and change things which I really like.
Other bands that I also love are bands such as Oasis. I love them because there’s so much attitude in the songs and it's really simple. You can go to any rock shop and find someone smashing out the chords to an Oasis song, because it's not complex but the idea behind the song is so strong which I like.
I also love bands like the National, Bon Iver for like weird lyric ideas and things like that.
What are the highlights and lowlights of being in the music industry?
The whole reason I like to play music is to do shows, that is the highlight for me. Everything I do in terms of the effort is to get to the point to play that song you wrote for people who are excited to hear it. That is 100% the highlight.
I think there are a lot of lowlights. I work with a lot of female artists and it exposes me to a lot of the shittier side of the music industry, which I don’t really experience directly. And I hear these massive numbers of really awful stories from female artists and producers and crew that work in the industry and it actually almost puts me off from doing this entirely because it's so uncomfortable, I can’t imagine the experience for non-male musicians.
There's an awareness I have to make it better, an example; we try and make sure we have a balanced bill and crew when we do shows. We don’t have a massive audience or anything but we do ensure that we push for diversity and safety in everything we do and maintain conversations about issues that need to be talked
about publicly.
I’ve personally stepped away from acts in the past because of the way the surrounding team operated. We won’t work with artists or people that we aren’t certain of. In terms of lowlights that's the big one, the “Oh I sort of don’t want to do this stuff anymore” cause all these people that I really care about have had shitty times.
Otherwise, Covid pandemic striking our record from being completed. That was really hard because we rescheduled the tracking and engineering of that record 5-6 times in the end, and it's so much effort to do that. Some of these songs have full horn sections and trying to coordinate all that. That nearly broke me. At Least one occasion where we were meant to start recording the next day and then we had a lockdown and I was like I’m done I can’t do it again.
What New Zealand music have you been listening to lately?
I love all the stuff that PHF does!
The new Milk III album by Reuben Winter.
I went to the Chelsea Jade show - that was fantastic and she had an act called Deryk open that was amazing!
Issac McFarlane does this cool thing called TwoDaze where he gives musicians and producers literally 2 days to turn a song around and it becomes a compilation. I think he just did this year's TwoDaze compilations not so long ago, and there's some awesome songs that have come out from weird collaborations from people that you maybe wouldn’t expect.
Your last single was The Arcade, what’s your favourite Arcade Game?
Time crisis, 100%! you can’t really do that one at home.
You folk won the RNZ Christmas Song competition “Take Away the Tree” is a Christmas Album in the works?
Here's the thing, I’ve thought about it, but I don’t think we can replicate the success. That song is a fun song and my nana hates it…
Nana hates it?! What's the story there?
There’s a lyric in there like Nanas gonna be dead next year or something, she was like “James”, “I didn’t write the lyrics Nana” - but I did haha but don’t worry
But You’ll have to wait and see for the Christmas Album, I could definitely be persuaded...
What’s next for Beachware?
We’ve released a new tune off our debut album called “The Look and the Feel”, check it out!
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