Dave McCabe interview: Miami Speech

Image: Dave McCabe 

In a year that's seen the announcement of The Coral's return, plus successes for their former guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones, it seems fitting that 2015 should also have held a contribution from that other leading light of Liverpool's reigning 2000s music scene, Dave McCabe.

Best known as lead singer plus guitarist and songwriter with The Zutons, Dave has returned with a new album Church Of Miami this year.

It's a recording that has a completely different sound to the one we're used to hearing from him. A concept album, set in a not-too-distant future, it tells the tale of a man lost, lonely and adrift within a dystopian setting, so much so that he steals a robot from work to keep him company.

Musically it is much more dance music orientated than anything Dave's done previously. Recorded at Ape Studios in Neston with producers Viktor Voltage and Mr Chop, it recalls eighties futuristic synth pop and electronic disco. 

In contrast, Dave's former band The Zutons, although notable for the prominent sax playing of Abi Harding, were very much a guitar based rock band.

Named after Captain Beefheart guitarist Zoot Horn Rollo, The Zutons hit that long, lunar note and let it float over three albums for Deltasonic, the Liverpool label also home to The Coral.

They also had their fair share of decent single releases, not least 'Don't Ever Think (Too Much)' , 'Confusion' , 'Pressure Point' , 'Why Won't You Give Me Your Love' and 'Valerie', the latter having famously been covered to great success by Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse.

Appearing in support of his new album with band The Ramifications and adorned in several gilded sci-fi guises, Mark Dale caught up with Dave for a chat about the new album prior to December dates in Manchester, London and Liverpool.

You've been playing these songs off the new album for a couple of months now. Do you feel more confident about the stage setting for this material now?

I don't know, we've done one in a little while before these. It's just juggling things around. It feels well better. I don't really know how to answer that question, because we've not done that many gigs.

If I'm being totally honest with you. So, I wouldn't say I'm comfortable with it, but that's kinda what's good about it.

Because it's a big transition going from doing rock music and always having a guitar in your hands. 

I'm more used to it now. At first it was really kind of daunting. I didn't realise it would be until I went on stage and did it. I think it's good to get out of your comfort zone though, isn't it? Trying to challenge yourself.

You've done four videos already for tracks from this album. That's as many as you might do for a big budget, major label release.

Yeah, I didn't think about that, but it's true. They've been the easiest videos to make. They've took the least effort and had the least amount of people involved. They've been quite DIY.

How did you get involved with the producers of this LP, Viktor Voltage and Mr Chop?

I knew Joe, who's Viktor Voltage, from Deltasonic. He was like second in command there. He introduced me to Coz (Littler). I'd never met him before and I'd never been to his studio (Ape Recording Studio).

I think it's the fact that I just let them run with it, I didn't go in there with a band, a set thing. I let them do what they wanted, in manipulating the songs. If I'd have gone in with a preconceived idea it would've just looked like another band record.

What's Ape Studios like compared to some of the other places you've recorded?

It's tiny. It's got a lot of character. Sometimes it can feel a bit too small. You're kind of stuck in there, so if you have any kind of disagreement you can't really run and hide anywhere.

You've just got to get on with it. It wasn't like with The Zutons where, if you had an argument when you were in one of them big studios, you could go outside and play tennis. That was a joke. I don't play tennis.

When it came to recording the album you were just going in there, putting your vocals down, then leaving them to it? Did you write all the songs on guitar?

Pretty much, yeah. And playing some guitar. I played bits of synth as well, but pretty much let them do it. It was a long process. I don't know if I would want to spend that long in a studio again.

Yeah, I wrote all the songs on the guitar and that's how I'd take them to the studio. We'd put four or five down, layer them up, then I'd go away and write some more. Coming backwards and forwards like that. That's why it took so long. We didn't want to rush anything, we just wanted to make sure there were no fillers on it.

The album's a concept album. Can you see this character going on to further adventures in this dystopian future?

I hope so. I'd like to think so. I've got an idea for what to do next, but I haven't figured it out fully, so I don't want to say anything yet really.

So you envisage your next thing being a continuation of this project?

Yeah. It'll definitely be about the not too distant future and I'll probably carry on wearing masks on stage. Cos it's fun, basically.

So it's not a case of, right, I'll get this electronic album out of my system and then I'll go back to a more rock format?

I think what will happen with the next one, we'll have more guitars on it. Definitely. It won't be a rock album, by any means. It'll be synthesizers. I've bought a few of them, so I want to use them. They cost a bomb.

The musicians you're playing this material with live aren't the guys you recorded with in the studio. They've had to come in and learn how to reproduce this sound. Can you tell me a bit about that? Have they got a history in electronic music? Who are they?

They're all mates from years down the line. Best friends, really. That's what's good about it. They've had to learn a lot more than me, I guess, because a lot of the songs I just stand there and sing.

For some of them it's the first band they've ever been in that isn't a pub band. A lot of them play in pubs and do covers when they're not doing this.

They haven't got this like cool history in electronic music or nothing, they're just meffs from the Wirral and Huyton. And there's a Welsh fella in there. He's a bit weird, looks like an Ewok.

Your last album that you recorded with The Zutons you recorded in LA. To me, that place doesn't seem to fit very well with the story of the band, or you as a songwriter, who I sometimes think of as a classically British songwriter. What was that like, being there?

It was horrible to be honest with you. I didn't enjoy it. When we got there the first two weeks were sound. Then, after that, the band pretty much split up.

We made the worst album we ever made. I didn't enjoy that experience. I think the problem with LA is that you need a driver's license and I haven't got one. Everything's so far away, it does your fucking head in, waiting for cabs.

Church Of Miami you've built around this idea of a place with plastic faces, super tans. How much of that was actually inspired by LA or is Miami a place you're also familiar with?

Miami to me is a place of big glass buildings and false tits and that, maybe a bit like LA, but I don't really know why I picked that word.

I think it just sounds good. It sounds odd, The Church Of Miami. It's from me mate's garden, he'd painted everything white and we were stood there, years ago and I turned round to him and said, it looks like the church of Miami. We started laughing and it's just carried on. 

That fake tan, plastic surgery, ultra manipulated eyebrow kinda thing is something you don't just see in Miami and LA though, these days. No, there's a lot of that in Liverpool as well, to be honest. False lips that look like they've done ten rounds with Mike Tyson.

I think a lot of people want to be perfect nowadays. The Thing is that, when you were a kid you would have thought of as sci-fi are reality these days.

I guess maybe Pete Burns from Liverpool band Dead Or Alive you might be able to regard as a local pioneer of some of that kind of thing.

Yeah, although I wouldn't say it to his face, he's meant to be dead hard. I suppose you've gotta be if you're gonna walk around like that.

It's great to see Bill Ryder-Jones doing so well. As a guitarist you've known for a long time, has the musical tone, the mood and the lyrical content of his solo material surprised you? 

Bill Ryder-Jones's new stuff reminds me of Pavement, shit loads, whereas his old stuff was more like Gorkys Zygotic Mynci. But I love the way he's doing well and having a moment, it's really genuinely deserved. I think he will only get better, as he's the best guitarist in the world. Seriously. Go Bill!

The Coral have just been announced as headliners for 2016 Sound City. James is such a strong songwriter. Have you heard any of the songs he's written since the last LP? Is your old songwriting partnership something you could ever envisage revisiting?

I've not heard any new Coral tunes and I'm happy they're headlining Sound City. I hope they carry on for a bit once they've started.

It's taken 9 years for Liverpool's leading music festival, Sound City, to offer a Liverpudlian headliner. Do you think that signifies that the city's music scene has not had its healthiest period in the time since The Zutons and The Coral were charting regularly (in that it hasn't produced a band big enough to take that headline slot)?

I think it's down to the festival really, you would have to ask them. If there had been any other bands since it's probably The Wombats (who did play at Sound City, in 2008 - Ed). Or Circa Waves. But I think times are harder then when we started.

When I think about Miles Kane and Bill Ryder-Jones's work with Alex Turner and your own closeness with Reverend and The Makers, there seems to be an understanding, a respect or appreciation happening between these groups of musicians from Liverpool and Sheffield.

How and why do you think that happened? That relationship bypasses a very strongly musical city, Manchester, that lies between you. Is that because you all hate Mancs?

I don't hate Mancs. I don't even hate Man Utd. I think it's the same as any musician, it's just if you meet certain people. I personally don't feel too close to Sheffield musically, if anything I've found I am further away than most people with this album. But I don't mind that at all. It's the truth and it's good.

UK dates below:

Manchester - Carsons Bar, Friday 4th December

London - Moth Club, Tuesday 15th December

Liverpool - Constellations, Thursday 17th December

Read: Bill Ryder-Jones interview: Liverpool is a hell of a lot more progressive