Interview - Ball Park Music

Leading up to their second appearance at Splendour in the Grass and their upcoming headline tour, Serina Molnar had a chat to Sam Cromack from Ball Park Music about touring, support band battles to the death, and the new Adam Sandler flick, Blended.

All Ages Concerts Sydney: Already having done a headline tour earlier this year, what made you organise a second?

Sam Cromack: Well I guess for every record we’ve put out we’ve done two big tours in support of it, so I guess we just kept with that trend. It does feel kinda odd, it does feel like we’ve toured a lot the past few years and to do another one almost felt like we were pushing a little bit but you know I hope a lot of people will come and have a good time. We really enjoy playing so we’re excited to go and play some of the stuff off Puddinghead that we didn’t play last time around so I just hope it can be a success.

AACS: Considering it’s a big 15 date tour, what are you most looking forward to?

SC: Look to be honest I haven’t even thought that far ahead, and I’m so accustomed to touring now I pretty much just throw some clothes in a bag and go to the airport. I haven’t really thought about what will be exciting and fresh on this tour. I do know we’re going to some places I haven’t been to before, so that’ll be fun. It’s always exciting to go to new towns and we’re getting to visit a lot of regional areas that we didn’t visit on the previous tours so I’m kind of excited about that. Even though we have toured a lot over the last few years some of the places on this tour we haven’t seen for nearly two years and some places are getting a show for the first time like North Queensland; we’ve never really toured there at all. So I’m pretty excited for that.

AACS: What should we expect from the ‘Trippin’ the Light Fantastic tour’?

SC: Well we did this ridiculous press release for it where we said that it was gonna be this “revolutionary” new idea, that it would be a hologram and it would look so realistic you could hardly believe it, which is a piss take because it’s just gonna be a regular tour. We kinda wanted to spin something on it so that people would think it’s something exciting and fresh. Then after we kinda did that and we were all having a laugh with our management we’ve been thinking maybe getting 3D glasses, like enough for every single person who comes to every concert but they’re not going to be red and blue they’re just clear so everyone can wear shitty glasses while we play, which is totally redundant but I think would be kinda funny.

AACS: It would be pretty funny if we rocked up to the gig and then were given 3D glasses to wear…

SC: I think people would get into the spirit of it and we could get some awesome photos from the stage of the whole audience wearing 3D glasses then you know if we post that online other people would think “what the fuck?” and that they’d gotta go to the show.

AACS: I think it would create quite a bit of buzz !

Sam: Yeah I dunno, we’ll develop something cool for the tour. I think for every tour we know we can’t go on the road with just the same old things so I think there will be some new songs that we haven’t played before, not as in brand new material, but songs off the records we haven’t played.

AACS: Will you be replicating any of the sick moves we saw in the ‘Trippin’ the Light Fantastic video?

Sam: Yeah of course, well I guess the live show was the inspiration for the film clip, I’ve kind of being doing that dancing in the show for a number of years now but I don’t why we never put it in a film clip. So we finally got around to it in Trippin, we play a few songs in the set where I don’t have to play guitar so I can just sing and I kinda just always dance like that. It’s one of those funny things that people seem to enjoy so absolutely people can expect that.

AACS: Since the boys from Millions and Pluto Jonze are your supports, who do you think would win in a dance battle against you?

SC: Well I don’t think anyone would win against me, I think they would lose and I would win cause I have mad dance skills.

AACS: Well how about Millions against Pluto Jonze?

SC: I’m gonna go with Pluto Jonze, he seems like a bit of a free spirit and like he’d be more inclined to dance than the Millions guys… but in saying that I’ve never really properly met any of them yet and I’m looking forward to getting to know them.

AACS: Can you describe how “out of this world” the light show will be?

SC: Well I don’t know how out of this world it will be, but we just figured if we put it in the press release it would be a good motivation for us to make it good but we’ve thought about this before we’ve even organised it. Kinda working on it at the moment, we’re starting to talk to a bunch of lighting engineers about designing a show for us. We do kind of want to step it up with the lighting because you know the name of the tour is the Trippin’ the Light tour and the video clip features a lot of old school 80’s kind of daggy lights so we wanna incorporate some of that stuff. We’re just figuring out what’s possible at the moment, we are hoping to have some sort of light show that is better than we’ve done before.

AACS: So I’ve heard some interesting stuff from previous tours, one being that you fed the crowd grapes that you got out of your backpack, how did that start?

SC: I think that was at Falls festival we were just there one year and getting ready to play waiting around and we were a bit bored and I had this brand new backpack my girlfriend bought me for Christmas and my bandmates said “you should wear that live”, so I wore it for a bunch of shows around that time. For each show we just put something funny in it and then pull it out of the bag. One show I had a bunch of grapes in the bag that I pulled out and fed to the audience, another show I had a kettle full of boiling water in my backpack which I danced around nervously with hoping I wouldn’t scold myself and then made myself a cup of tea in the middle of the set. Aren’t I a funny guy?

AACS: So what’s it like being asked to play Splendour in the Grass for the second time?

SC: It’s fantastic, we really wanted to play the festival so we sort of pushed hard to get on the line up and we’re stoked to be back again. We just really love the festival and it’s fun to play. We have a great time slot, we play at 4:15 and it’s an hour set so I think the sunset should be around then. My family lives near Splendour so I’m kind of familiar with that area at that time, so I kind of have really romantic notions of it and I’m looking forward to it. We have a few surprises for our set.

AACS: When you started Ball Park Music did you ever imagine that one day you’d share a festival bill with big names such as Interpol and Outkast?

SC: Well it’s funny out of all the goals I never had; there was so many things I didn’t care about achieving. One of the things I did wanna do was play at Splendour in the Grass, funnily enough because as I said I’m kind of from that area and I’ve been going to the festival every year since I was about 15 so I always much wanted to play Splendour. Maybe I had this weird desire to do that and I worked really hard until it happened. Playing festivals is such a good feeling, I think most bands would agree, there is just a really nice atmosphere and playing in those big open air stages to massive crowds is just really exciting. Of all the things I never really cared about like winning awards or getting to number whatever on the charts or having blah blah blah like your record, I never really cared too much about that stuff but getting to play these festivals was something I felt like I really wanted to do at a young age and I’m pumped to being doing it again. AACS: Well I know for me being a musician it’s my dream to one day play Splendour in the Grass.

SC: Yeah, I know the Australian festival circuit has taken a little bit of a hammering the last few years. It’s really competitive and it’s kinda changing but there are some good staple festivals that have existed for quite some time now. They’re so awesome, if you ever do get to perform at one it’s a nice feeling. It’s good too it’s changed over the years, I remember when we first did these festivals years ago, i think we won to play first at a bunch of these big festivals and you rock up so early and you play and no one’s there yet it’s really kinda intimidating and depressing. It’s like starting high school when you’re in year 7 and you feel really tiny all over again as opposed to feeling like a mad dog in year 6. That’s kind of passed now, we’ve earned our stripes a little bit and are being offered better time slots and longer sets with better crowds show up.

AACS: Who are you most looking forward to seeing at Splendour?

SC: Tune Yards, D.D Dumbo and I’d like to check out Jungle.

AACS: So how did it come about for It’s Nice To Be Alive to be featured in the new Adam Sandler film, Blended?

SC: Well they just emailed us and asked to have our song in the film, that was a good year or so ago now because they organise things so far in advance. We just got an email that said “We wanna use It’s Nice to Be Alive in a new Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore film” and we knew right from the outset that the film would be shit (laughs) but mind you I don’t wanna be going down in an interview slagging the film, I laughed my ass off when I went and saw it even though it’s ridiculously, I found it really funny. We grew up watching Adam Sandler films when we were kids so it was like “shit yeah we’d love to have our song in an Adam Sandler movie”. It’s been pretty good exposure for us too, so many people have seen that film and gotten back to us and were like “holy crap”.

AACS: Finally, when should we expect the release of Puddinghead on vinyl?

SC: I think we’re announcing that today. We’re doing a pledge campaign, people can get Puddinghead and all these different packages, there is one with Museum and Puddinghead on vinyl and you can also get t-shirts or stuff signed or whatever. I got the test pressing sent to my house on Monday and it sounds really good.

AACS: Sam Cromack, thanks for chatting to All Ages Concerts Sydney!

SC: Thank you!

If you wanna get Puddinghead on vinyl or check out what else you can get through their pledge campaign go to: http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/ballparkmusicvinyl

Catch Ball Park Music at the Enmore Theatre on Friday the 26th of September.

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