Former Yves Klein Blue guitarist and now front man of four piece Babaganouj Charles Sale is currently on tour in support of the band’s new single ‘Too Late For Love’. Old friend and fellow Brisbanite Sam Cromack from Ball Park Music is just about to release and tour his band’s third album Puddinghead. The guys sat down to have a chat for Tone Deaf, the result? Pre show rituals, cheese association games, and drive by shootings.
Sam Cromack (Ball Park Music): Hey buddy
Charles Sale (Babaganouj): Hey bud, how are you going?
Sam Cromack : Pretty good, yourself?
Charles Sale: Good! I have some silly questions for you! Well, there’s serious ones too.
Sam Cromack : Sounds good. Hey, love your new song by the way. I’ve heard it a bunch of times and you nailed it, great chorus. I listened to it online when it was first posted and I’ve since heard it on Triple J.
Charles Sale: Yay, it’s about time we got played because if we didn’t I’d probably get really grumpy and blame JJJ like Whitley did.
Charles Sale: OK. First off: free association. What music genre do you associate with each of these three types of cheese: 1.Wensleydale 2.Red Leicester 3.Camembert
Sam Cromack : 1. Never heard of this cheese, but it sounds like a nice country town in England, so Blur.
2. Also never heard of this cheese (God forgive me!) but it also sounds like a nice country town in England, but it also has the word red in front of it… So maybe a British band with a political edge. The Sex Pistols!
3. I know this cheese, creamy and safe- Coldplay.
Charles Sale: PERFECT. You have a new record coming out with the baffling title Puddinghead – it reminds me of the song by Ryan Adams called Halloweenhead which I don’t understand. What does Puddinghead mean?
Sam Cromack : It’s a Shakespearean insult I became aware of in high school. We were studying a Shakespeare piece – can’t remember which – and one character calls another a puddinghead. I had always found it pretty amusing and we actually worked on a song called Puddinghead for the record, it didn’t end up making it, but the title stuck.
Charles Sale: I first became acquainted with you when you worked in a café in Paddington called the Java Lounge you were a barista. Do you still have a painful day job, and how difficult is the struggle to maintain it or live without it?
Sam Cromack: I threw in my other day job in December last year. So I’ve spent all of this year as a full-time musician. It is a funny thing. I think, for most musicians, it’s absolutely part of the dream. When it finally arrives it is a strange thing to deal with. I’m not going to go on record as whinging about being a full-time musician – that would be bad. I just want to emphasise that, for someone like myself who likes to be busy and active, that the newfound freedom can lead to boredom and/or misery.
Charles Sale: Ball Park Music have always had the wry humour found in other bands from Brisbane like the ever-referenced Custard and Regurgitator – was this born from a love of these bands, or something that comes inherent to you?
Sam Cromack: I’ve definitely been aware of those bands growing up, and have since listened to a lot of both artists, but yeah, when I first started writing and didn’t intend to capture their attitude necessarily.
I think when I began playing locally I made a conscious effort to not take myself too seriously. I wanted to entertain when I was onstage, you know, make jokes. I think that’s a very Australian thing. It may very well be more prominent in our neck of the woods (as opposed to Sydney or Melbourne). I guess that came to influence a lot of the writing in Ball Park Music.
Charles Sale: I know you rented a place to record in – it looked like a lot of fun on your Youtube teaser video thingy – did you have any issues settling in there or noise complaints?
Sam Cromack: We didn’t have too many issues finding a place. Initially we were renting a unit behind our drummer Daniel’s place. It was super cheap and we were there for a couple of months but the building had to be demolished. That felt like a big setback at first. I think we felt like we’d bitten off more than we could chew.
Anyway we set about finding a new place and, fortunately for us, the kind of places we were seeking weren’t exactly drawing a lot of competition from other tenants. We needed a place that was cheap, a little bit shitty (so we wouldn’t have to look after it too much), and away from neighbours. The place we secured was in Everton Hills. It was this funny little place with shaggy carpet and a flat roof. It had lots of tacky wallpaper. It was on a big block and we never received any noise complaints. Mind you, we actually weren’t that loud. When we would jam, it was never for long and we could rarely be bothered setting up our full live rig. It was more low-key. One night I was watching the news and there was a drive-by shooting right near our studio.
Charles Sale: Oh man, I hope you didn’t start any beef – is there a rival band in the neighbourhood?
Sam Cromack: Haha, no rival bands that I know of. If there were though, we’d fuck them up.
Charles Sale: Yeah you’d be right – there are five of you no doubt with different skills and perks in armed/unarmed combat.
Charles Sale: Finally – You have a cool tour coming up which even goes to Darwin where my aunty lives – I played a show the other week and just before we went on stage, we all had a shot of coffee Patrón. It made for a good show. Do you have a similar pre-show ritual or drink?
Sam Cromack: We always put our hands in, count to three and then throw our hands in the air and yell whichever meme is amusing us at that given time. We tend to cycle through dumb words and sayings that make us laugh. For a while we’d yell ‘Soooo dry’ like a dolphin that’s been taken out of the water. We like to say ‘good’ a lot when we should probably be more excited with words like ‘awesome’ or ‘shit yeah!’. And you have to drag it out, like ‘goooooooood!’ Sometimes it’ll be something really random. Once the audio blew out on the plane and made this sound like ‘shpüt’, so we’ll opt for that word every now and then as well. Haha.
Charles Sale: Anyway, thanks Sam, it’s been great!
Sam Cromack: No worries dude!
Ball Park Music’s album Puddinghead is out April 4th on Start/Stop.
Babaganouj Too Late For Love Tour Dates
Monday 21st March – World bar, Sydney
Tuesday 22nd March – Brighton Up Bar, Sydney
Monday 28th March – Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane
Ball Park Music Puddinghead Tour Dates
Saturday 15th March – Mountain Sounds Festival
Thursday 3rd April – Uni Bar, Wollongong
Friday 4th April – Zierholz @ UC, Canberra
Saturday 5th April – Metro Theatre, Sydney *ALL AGES
Wednesday 9th April – Hoey Moey, Coffs Harbour
Thursday 10th April – Coolangatta Hotel, Coolangatta
Friday 11th April – The Tivoli, Brisbane
Saturday 12th April – Great Northern Hotel, Byron Bay
Sunday 13th April – Alhambra Lounge, Brisbane *Under 18s Daytime
Thursday 17th April – Hotel New York, Launceston
Friday 18th April – Butter Factory, Burnie
Saturday 19th April & Sunday 20th April – Republic Bar, Hobart
Thursday 24th April – Astor Theatre, Perth
Friday 25th April – Studio 146, Albany
Saturday 26th April – Prince of Wales, Bunbury
Sunday 27th April – Newport Hotel, Fremantle
Wednesday 30th April – Railway Club, Darwin
Friday 2nd May – The Gov, Adelaide * ALL AGES
Saturday 3rd May – Corner Hotel, Melbourne *Under 18s Daytime
Saturday 3rd May & Sunday 4th May – Corner Hotel, Melbourne
