[00:00:00] Welcome to Trevor McCormack Music Podcast. I'm Chrissie Mack from Radio Northern Beaches and I couldn't be more excited to kick off this musical journey with you. Joining me is my brother, the legendary Trevor McCormack known as Mack, a true storyteller and music enthusiast. With each episode we're peeling back the layers behind the hits, sharing untold stories from artists and exploring what sparks the creativity behind the music that moves us.
[00:00:30] Whether you're a diehard music fan or just love discovering new sounds, this is the place where passion meets storytelling. So hit the follow button, share this with your fellow music lovers and leave a review. Your support keeps the vibe alive. Turn up the volume and get ready to be inspired. And let's dive into the world of music together. Let's go!
[00:00:53] Hello there listeners, it's Chrissie Mack and Trevor Mack again for our podcast. And hi Trev, you've been out and about lately. Hello everybody, yes I've been out and about again. Not very often I get free time but I took a night off and I went over to the RSL, took a friend of mine and his wife and said, you've got to listen to this girl sing. She is unbelievable. Her name's Heidi and she can sing, she's one of those girls who can sing anything. Doesn't matter. You pick a song she'll scroll through her little iPad and she'll go, righto, let's go.
[00:01:23] And she just sings it. And wow, what a set of vocals this girl has. Her mother, she says, her mother is probably pretty close to the Fleetwood Mac Stevie Nicks.
[00:01:36] She grew up as a little girl with her mum and her dad in music. And they used to do little Broadway shows and all sorts as she grew up, right up to now. She's sung everywhere and anywhere you can imagine. And she always seems to get an unbelievable guitarist that plays with her as well.
[00:01:54] So my friend down, because he loves learning leads and pieces of guitar, I said, mate, this guy's like a magician. He sits there, he taps on foot pedals and he presses buttons. I said, he plays an acoustic guitar, he plays the bass lines, he plays the rhythms and he plays the leads all in one guitar at the same time just about. So that's fascinating.
[00:02:20] Unbelievable. He's so good. He's so clever. So I took him down there for a bit of a treat. Come on, you come down and watch these guys play. Only a duo. And the best entertainment I've seen for a long time around here.
[00:02:32] For a singer and a guitarist. It's like a full band and the vocals, this woman can sing. Actually, they both can sing. Just every note, pitch perfect. The screeches, the squeals, the highs, the lows. She's got everything. And a friend of mine, which is lovely. So yeah, had a good night with that. So I went out and listened to some music rather than played it.
[00:02:54] Well, that's good. It's nice to take a break and get some input as well. And also to support other musicians because that's really important, supporting other musicians. Oh, yes. Yeah, absolutely. That's what I love to do. I love to get the new music onto my programs and, you know, get it out there so that people can hear all the newest music.
[00:03:18] Okay. Well, Heidi, she's heading off. She's a good writer too. She's got some great written songs. But she's been just doing a lot of main work. And the next one, she's doing a Fleetwood Mac tribute show in New Zealand. She said she's heading for about five. Oh, wow. I love Fleetwood Mac. That's one of my favorites. You can sing Fleetwood Mac like you wouldn't believe. Fantastic. Yeah, so we'll have fun doing that one. Okay. So other than that, what have you been up to?
[00:03:44] Well, back to the grind again working. I've helped Dave set up all the music studio at Sandgate. I think I've got to hang a TV on a wall. That's probably about it. And he's got a bit of tidying up because we lugged a heap of stuff over to the studio and just build one room, which will probably be where I'm teaching. So he's got to get through all that stuff and clean that up. I'm still tidying up my work, trying to downsize.
[00:04:07] And then we'll get, yeah, we'll get in at least a couple of days. I'll get down there and the rest of the week up here until I either sell the business or do something with it. So that's where I'm at with that work side of things. Very excited to go down to Sandgate. So mainly I've just pulled out my songbook and started from page one and just started flipping through all my songs and playing them. I'm itching to get down on either a stage at the Cardigan bar. So if anyone's in Queensland local, I'm going to pop down there. They do a Thursday night open mic.
[00:04:37] And I thought I'd get in there and shock a few people and have a bit of fun, take Dave with me and we'll just do what we do. And then we'll probably end up doing a couple of shows there every now and then. I'm really looking forward to that. So just going through all my songs, every one of my songs, I will sing in that Cardigan bar and test them out again and polish them up and see what the response is. Well, people that are close by need to get down there and support you. Yes.
[00:05:04] Oh, yeah. Yeah. We'll let everyone know when I finally decide, right, we've got our Thursday, Friday, Sundays and hopefully Sundays down that way and we can start playing some music and do a lot of teaching and have some fun. So how are you going with the time off? How close are you getting now to getting your time off? I've got one more Sunday. This Sunday's the last Sunday. That's right. And then I don't work any more nights for the rest of this month and all of next month.
[00:05:31] So I go back, it'll be August, the start of August. So you've got time to really concentrate on your music for a little while? Yeah, and do my day's work. I can squeeze a few more jobs into the beginning of the week. So it'll be half my maintenance work and then half into music. So I'm splitting it rather than leaving one and starting another. So I've still got a lot to do. I'm still going to be very busy. But hopefully we can wind that down or sell it off one or the other.
[00:05:56] All right. So how did you go going back to the songs you originally started with and how much fun did you have playing with those? A lot, actually. And actually, there was a couple that I sat there because I haven't written all the music in for everything. I've got lyrics everywhere and they're all in a book and I flicked through them and I started putting the actual music to some of them. But you get there and you think, oh, how did this go?
[00:06:21] Yeah, well, I've got it all recorded. So if you forget, just let me know and I'll send you the track. I thought, that's not good. It took me a minute. I thought, oh, now I remember this tune. I remember the middle eight now. Oh, OK. So I'm laughing at myself. Just for God's sake, sit down and just put the music over it. I protected my music that way where no one could see the lyrics because they had no idea what the tune was. Well, that's fair enough. That's a good excuse.
[00:06:49] It was sort of my security of no one can steal this because they can read it, but they've got to make up their own tune. So yeah, and I had a bit of a giggle to myself and thought, no, no, I've got this, but I will. I've got a mate of mine who's very clever and he's just got through a big operation. He says, I'm bored out of my brain. Come and play music. I said, well, I've got some jobs I need done. I said, I need to put all these original songs into an iPad in a separate spot and we need to put all the music to it.
[00:07:19] Oh, can I, can I, can I? He's like a puppy. Oh, that's really sweet of him. Oh, he's fantastic. He helps me here and there with the technology side of things. So yeah, that's my next, I suppose, project. And that'll help me go through the songs again and really polish them up and, and alter a few things if we have to. As you know, I do. The song could be, well, could be written in 2012. We haven't recorded it other than you and I.
[00:07:48] We might just change something, you know, put something, a new outro, a bigger middle eight or a better intro. So it just, yeah, it grows every time you go back and play it again. Yeah, well, you wrote them quite a long time ago and you've learnt so much since then. So it makes sense to, to come back to them and readdress them. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And you just, yeah, you're right. You learn, your skills get better.
[00:08:18] So when you play it next time, you think, wow, well, I can do that now and I can chuck this in here. I'll work for a bit of a turn on this. Yeah, change it to, all right, I want a female singing here or more vocals there. I want a saxophone here. I want a lead guitar there. It's, yeah, I can hear it all coming back and bigger and better. That's a good thing. That's my thing now is to just, I've done all the gigs that I've had to do, which I, I said I wouldn't play this year, but I've done a couple and the contests.
[00:08:47] So now it's just get back into the music, into the originals and let's make them shine. Well, that reminds me, I'll have to go into the website to find out when they advise of the winners of the song contest because I haven't gone back and had a look at that yet and we haven't seen anything. It closed on the 31st. So I suppose it'll be a few weeks before they get through everything. Yeah, I'll have to go and check what's going on.
[00:09:16] So yes, that's Australian singer-songwriters. That's the one? We entered that one, I did the album another day. So that would be 2012, 13, 14, somewhere around there we put in It's Alright and it got up very high in close to winning. I think it was in the top 25, somewhere around there. So let's see what we can do this time. Yeah, and I don't think I told the listeners but I remember we talked about I wrote a song
[00:09:45] and so I actually put my song into the competition too for lyrics and spiritual. Oh, cool. Because it's a beautiful song, that one. Yeah, I'm really pleased with it. So it'll be interesting to see how well it does because the lyrics, every time everybody hears the lyrics they're in tears. So I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing but it obviously gets, the words get to everyone. And just for the listeners, it's more or less about what's happening in the world today.
[00:10:14] I was sitting watching the news and all the deaths in Gaza and the wars starting up and Mr. Trump and all the rubbish that's going on in the world. And I don't know if you've ever felt that way, everybody. You've got this need to just give a guttural scream out loud and you can't. It sits in the pit of your soul and you just can't vocalise it.
[00:10:42] And I just thought, I can't do this. I have to get this out. So I sat down and I just wrote and I just wrote a whole lot of words that just fell out of me, like they do you. The first time it's ever happened to me, they just fell out of me. Yeah, and imagine I was in tears. I was in tears. I was just so devastated by what's going on in the world today.
[00:11:09] You know, coming from a world where we've seen wars and we saw, you know, the Vietnam War, et cetera, et cetera. But to watch these wars and the way they're being fought and the amount of people that have been needlessly murdered by what's going on is just insane. And so I just let it go. And then I had the problem, I had to put music to it. So I had to figure out what sort of music. And I sort of, I tried quite a few different methods and tunes
[00:11:38] and I finally came up with one I really liked and that made me cry again after I listened to it. So I thought, oh, that hasn't been properly put together and, you know, recorded whatever, I put it in. So let's see how we go. Yeah, no, good luck with that one because I've heard that one and it was very deep. It was. It was literally from my soul. Yeah, yeah. It really was.
[00:12:07] And hey, who'd have known? Yeah, I didn't know. I didn't know I had it in me. As a younger woman, I sang and I sang well, but I never got into the public forum as such. But now every time I try to sing, I just start coughing because I'm so out of training. It's not going. In fact, I started to train my voice again, but the problem was that I just kept coughing, so I gave up. Yeah. Well, you can still write a good song.
[00:12:36] Look what we did with Velvet Howe. We put that one together really well. And I love that. And now we've got the video of it because the videos from Country Stars have come through and I'm just about to pay for them and download them. You haven't seen it yet, but the Velvet Howe video is beautiful. Oh, thank you. It's just acoustically and sung beautifully and he recorded it absolutely beautifully.
[00:13:04] So I want to put that one up as soon as we get hold of it. And the photographer has also sent through the photos and we'll organise to get you some of those as well. Yeah, I did have a look at them last night, night before I checked those out. And there's a couple of photos in there. We'll grab them. Yeah, that looks good. And I've noticed the other contestants have been getting them up on their Facebooks and social media and stuff because they've obviously been sent theirs as well. Yes, they pop up.
[00:13:34] Yeah, that pops up on my social media and they're all great. Like I never knew these people. Now I see them all the time popping up on my Messenger or Instagrams and Facebooks and it's exciting. Yeah, I've hung out with those guys. They've hung out with me. And I know, I've met the winner and I've met the person that goes second or third. And I'm going to go hang out with them. So yeah, that'll be nice.
[00:14:02] That's exactly what I'm going to do shortly with everybody I met there is get in touch and see if we can't catch up and yeah, see what we can't steer up as well. I am going to give Cole a ring to. He said give him a call. So we'll give him a yell and say hello. All right. I task you this one. By next podcast, you've got to have called him. Absolutely. Good. All right. Well, I'm going to leave it on that note because I've got to get off
[00:14:30] and get some other programs sorted out. Oh, by the way, speaking of programs, the second winner, Chris, I've forgotten his last name, sorry. One of our presenters on Aussie Beats actually played one of his songs and mentioned that he had won a place in the country stars. The music's getting out there. Yes. That guy has got talent. And what a beautiful person. And I spent a lot of time in Papua New Guinea.
[00:14:59] So I am so pleased to see someone from Papua New Guinea getting out there. And sing country. Yeah. And sing country. I know I said I was going to let you go, but just this one last thing. I spent a lot of time out in Papua New Guinea about on and off for six years and I met a young fellow. He was very young, just before his teens when I was over there in Pogra. I actually physically took a keyboard over to him
[00:15:28] from Australia over into the mountains and nearly got it taken off me as I went through the airport. But they eventually let me take it through. And he now produces a lot of Papua New Guinea songs. And I've said to them, translate some of them into English for me and I'll put them on the radio show. He hasn't done that for me yet. Yeah. Well, Chris, we sat there when there was a break at the competition there, country stars, and we just sat off the side and he's playing a tune
[00:15:56] and he's humming some stuff and I couldn't, I just couldn't believe it. I said, mate, that is beautiful. He goes, oh, that's what we do. He says, all the friends sit around over there back home. He says, and this is what we do. They do because they don't have TV and they don't have any of that. Well, most of them don't. And they're very community-minded. Yeah. Oh, it was beautiful. And then even, I think, the bass player walked past. He sat down with him. We're humming tunes and vocalizing some harmonies and he goes, that's what it's all about.
[00:16:26] I said, you got it right. Telling stories. That's right. Yep. Yep. Just creating sounds and music and song. All right. Well, I'm going to get off and go and do my other programs. So I'm going to bid you good day and lots of love and I'll talk to you next week. All right. Take care, everybody. Bye. And you can also go to Trevor McCormack Music for any podcasts that you might have missed.
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