Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
Join Cheryl Lee That Radio Chick on Still Rockin' It for news, reviews and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians.
What are they up to at the moment? Let's find out .......
Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
What has Mark Seymour been up to lately? OR Will The Undertow do the Undie Run?
Join Cheryl Lee - That Radio Chick on STILL ROCKIN' IT for news, reviews, music and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians.
What happens when a music legend's life takes an unexpected turn? Mark Seymour, from the iconic Hunters and Collectors, joins me, to share the deeply personal journey behind his latest album, "The Boxer." After separating from his wife of 29 years and moving from Mornington to Fitzroy, Mark found himself reflecting on his past, resulting in a collection of poignant songs that shot to number one on the ARIA chart. We also discuss the thrilling album launch at the Brunswick Ballroom, where Mark and his band performed the album in its entirety to a packed audience.
In an intimate conversation, Mark opens up about the inspiration behind the album's title track, stemming from his training sessions with female boxer Tiffany Cook during the pandemic.
Listen as Mark explains how real-life stories and personal interactions shape his songwriting process, creating music that resonates deeply with listeners. Gain insights into his creative journey and hear the touching and powerful stories that influenced "The Boxer." Don't miss this chance to connect with one of Australia's most revered musicians on a personal level.
What has Mark Seymour been up to lately? Let's find out!!
Get out when you can, support local music and I'll see you down the front!!
Visit: ThatRadioChick.com.au
That Radio Chick, Cheryl Lee, here. Welcome to the Still Rockin' Podcast where we'll have music news, reviews and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians and artists. We're talking to Mark Seymour today. Of Hunters and Collectors fame. We reflect on the release of his latest album, the Boxer.
Cheryl Lee:After separating from his wife of 29 years and moving from tranquil Mornington to inner city Fitzroy when Mark began writing, it came to him quite quickly and he says the idea of going back to really look at where I was in my life was something that I wasn't expecting to do at the age that I'm at. He said he just assumed that as you got older you kind of keep your bullshit to yourself, but bullshit is too strong, filled with too much meaning and had too loud of a voice not to be heard. So the so-called bullshit made it to the album and he ended up writing a lot of very personal songs. To catch up on podcasts from other favourite artists, simply go to thatradiochick. com. au. You're with Cheryl Lee and I'd like to welcome into the studio today Mark Seymour. From Mark Seymour and the Undertow Welcome back, Mark.
Mark Seymour:Hi Cheryl, how are you going?
Cheryl Lee:Well, thank you. We spoke about this time last year. You were preparing to launch your new album, The Boxer, which you did on April 19 and performed it in its entirety at the Brunswick Ballroom. How was it playing all that new music?
Mark Seymour:Well, that was pretty special that night. We had our keyboard player with us, Cameron Bruce, and pretty much did it. You know, top to bottom, exactly as it tracks on the record. You know it's a very exciting, dynamic album. We recorded it very quickly. It covers a lot of terrain, a lot of personal stuff, it's very autobiographical and it was a great room, a really, really fantastic room. It's a real music room.
Cheryl Lee:You know it's probably Melbourne's premier room really what a great way to kick it off, and congratulations straight to number one with a bullet on the ARIA chart. That's well done.
Mark Seymour:Yeah, that was a bit of a surprise, I have to say. You must be pretty proud of it. Yeah, well, I mean, I've never had that happen. My relationship with ARIA is fairly mixed. I don't really have much to do with Aria, really, but yeah, getting that number one was quite special really congratulations.
Cheryl Lee:There's a couple of singles released from The Boxer, the title track. This is based on a real life person, isn't it? During the pandemic you were training with a female boxer?
Mark Seymour:Yeah, yeah, Tiffany Cook. She approached me a while ago to do a podcast like a long time ago I think it was just coming out of the, the last lockdown and she'd seen that I had a bag in my garage and reacted to that and said I do, you want to train with me? So I actually established a pretty long-term gym relationship with Tiffany and she sort of alluded to her story, her life story as you do when you're just sort of doing that stuff you kind of talk about, you know, things come up in training. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I basically just paraphrased. Really I didn't tell her. I thought that's a really interesting story. You know she had a really interesting story. So I basically, you know, I plundered her life, really, you pinched it.
Mark Seymour:Yeah, it's like well, that's the thing about the songwriting you can use a character, create a character in the song, yeah, borrowing from things that people say to you, and it doesn't necessarily reflect on the exact detail. It just kind of suggests something about somebody in it going through some personal struggle, connect with people, because people find, find that core sense of feeling that those lyrics that allude to and they relate better. You know, if I can pull that off. It's a bit of a trick, but uh, I find if I can pull it off successfully, people really relate to the song, you know, which is kind of the whole point of the exercise yeah, yeah, and it's really interesting where the inspiration for songs and an album can come from right, out of left field and out of your life.
Mark Seymour:That's right, yeah, sometimes it's events that I go through directly or I cross paths with other people. You know I don't necessarily get to know them particularly well, but they might just tell me something about what they're going through or something they felt a long time ago, and there's always something personal in every song. I do right, do right. You know, I'm sort of coming from two places at once. Really, if I can relate to what the person's telling me on a personal level, it's more than likely going to interest me as a, as a potential way of writing a song
Cheryl Lee:let's hear that song now, the title track from the Boxer album number one. With a bullet, Do yourselves a favour. We're back to speak to Mark Seymour from the Undertow and Hunters and Collectors straight after this.
Mark Seymour:Songs can be very therapeutic too, you know.
Cheryl Lee:Absolutely, and you're pretty good at writing songs. Now Is this your 11th solo studio album. That's a pretty large body of work.
Mark Seymour:Yeah, I've stopped counting really. Yeah, it's interesting because I'm actually at the moment writing something about songwriting, developing my skills. I mean, I used to sort of in the early days of Hunters and Collectors, I would just pretty much just react to what was in the room. It was pretty much an open table. You know, I would sometimes arrive with a riff or a lyric. Other times I had nothing and I just somebody would suggest something and I might have words with me. But I've always sort of been looking for that sort of magic. Still point that the process has changed.
Cheryl Lee:I'm always reacting to circumstance pretty much yeah, and I think that's why people do connect to your songs and to your lyrics, because it's real life and it's personal and it's real well it sort of depends on.
Mark Seymour:It is real. Yeah, the emotion is.
Cheryl Lee:There's no doubt about that.
Mark Seymour:I mean you've got to be really discreet with your language. I mean you have to kind of find the right words. You know, and I do spend quite a bit of time sifting through lines, but you can always tell if someone's coming from a genuine, that the words are genuinely felt.
Cheryl Lee:Yeah, yeah, and one of the other songs from the album that I liked because I saw you perform it on telly on The Front Bar. You're clearly a Bulldog supporter. A great song, Stars of Fitzroy, about the suburb that you know. Lots of your family grew up in.
Mark Seymour:Yeah, well, that's something that I didn't kind of connect with, particularly I'd moved to Fitzroy.
Mark Seymour:Well, actually, the really weird thing was I hadn't actually moved there, but I'd sort of made my mind up months in advance that I was going to leave, I was separating from my wife. Eventually we both started looking around for alternative places to live. Yep, and I didn't really hadn't really. I realised much later, unconsciously, that I'd decided I wanted to live there. I remember telling my sister oh, I'm moving to Fitzroy, and she just said, oh well, mum's, dad's family come from there, like two generations back.
Mark Seymour:Yeah, you know, it was originally an old working class suburb, it was an industrial suburb and it's got, you know all these incredibly old. You know, it's kind of a bit like Semaphore. Yeah, you know old buildings, history yeah, a lot of it, and a lot of it's National Trust Beautiful. You know these very old, funny, like mid-ninth century factory buildings that have been converted into residences and all the streets are really narrow. It's a very small suburb. It's tiny Fitzroy. Yes, it is really tiny little place, but anyway, her comment really triggered me and I thought, yeah, that's a really interesting idea for a song.
Cheryl Lee:I saw you perform that song with one of your daughters, Eva. She's a beautiful girl and a beautiful singer.
Mark Seymour:And does Hannah sing also? Yes, she does yeah.
Cheryl Lee:You were pretty on the money. I don't know if you remember this, but you thought that the Bulldogs would finish just in the top eight, and they're seven. Did I say that?
Mark Seymour:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Cheryl Lee:Well done. I'm a Richmond supporter, so I actually don't want to talk about the footy, footy yeah, we're vying for the wooden spoon.
Mark Seymour:Yeah, it's an interesting season because there's been a lot of draws. No one's really clocking that there's a whole lot of confusion about ladder placement because there's been all these draws this season. There's been half a dozen of them.
Cheryl Lee:Yeah, which is quite unusual. You sometimes don't get any, or you get one or maybe two at the most.
Mark Seymour:Yeah, that's right, yeah, so our spot's kind of. I think we're pretty safe now We'll be in there, I think we'll finish in the top eight. But a lot of teams are staying like Geelong, you know, like God. I just wish they'd go away.
Cheryl Lee:Yeah, oh well, you were on the money. I'm, of course, at the bottom of the footy tipping because I tip with my heart, not my head. I think we should hear that song now. The Stars of Fitzroy, another single from the album the Boxer from Mark Seymour and the Undertow. But before we do, just got to say go the Mighty Tigers Back to speak to Mark again.
Cheryl Lee:What we also want to talk about today, because I believe you and I are both Mundi Mundi virgins and both of us are off to Mundi Mundi very shortly. Yes, correct yeah, so this is the fourth one.
Mark Seymour:Yeah, we've only done two. We did Birdsville, yeah, the Big Red Bash, and we're doing this one on the 15th.
Cheryl Lee:So the Big Red Bash is the sister festival to this one. You did the Big Red Bash in 2017, right?
Mark Seymour:I did yes with James Reyne.
Cheryl Lee:What's it like? What do we?
Mark Seymour:expect. Well, it looks like it's right out into the, it's in the right out. You've got to drive right out into the desert. Yeah, and you know there's thousands and thousands of recreational vehicle, like you know, cross-country four-wheel drives. It's like massive tent city, yeah, drop toilets, oh God, massive. It's a lot of fun, yeah, you know. Thousands and thousands of, like all ages you know, and a lot of fun. Yeah, you know, and a lot of international tourists as well, which is quite interesting.
Cheryl Lee:So you're looking forward to it.
Mark Seymour:Oh yeah, it's great fun.
Cheryl Lee:Apart from three days of music and mayhem, there's a lot of fundraising activities and events Do you get involved in, like the Undie Run and the Beyond Blue Day, or do you just sort of sing and make music?
Mark Seymour:I've actually read about that. That's pretty cool. That's very much a community-driven thing. I mean, it depends on what happens on the day. We get there and we see what we've got time for. You know, you get in there and you've got to kind of get stuck into production pretty much straight away and rehearsing.
Cheryl Lee:I've watched it on social media the last few years with FOMO, so Hubby and I are off in Winnebago, so we'll see you there. We'll see you down the front, oh, okay.
Mark Seymour:Cool, nice work.
Cheryl Lee:I'll give you a wave and I've warned my friends, if they see smoke signals, to send a helicopter and chopper me out of there. No, you'll have a great time I'm a five-star traveler, but anyway, we're really, really looking forward to your set you staying for the whole three days no, no, no, we're heading out.
Mark Seymour:I think we're heading out that night you're fifo.
Cheryl Lee:Are you flying in? Flying out? Yeah, flying in, exactly. Yeah, if we have the opportunity, I'd love to grab a two-second soundbite from you then, just to see how you're enjoying it to play when I get back. But we'll see how we go. All the best, safe travels. We're looking forward to the next theme from Mark Seymour. Did I hear a rumour that there is another album in the pipeline in the future?
Mark Seymour:Well, the next move's going to be an anthology, where we're going to basically put together a pretty like a three-album compilation record of material from a long way back right up to the present day. That's the next move.
Cheryl Lee:Awesome. So like the history pretty much from whoa to go. Yeah, we'll look forward to the launch of that. We look forward to seeing you at Mundi Mundi. Thank you very much, Mark, for talking to us today. I know you're a pretty busy fella, so we appreciate your time.
Mark Seymour:Thank you, Cheryl
Cheryl Lee:Cut is the seventh studio album by Hunters and Collectors, issued on the White Label by Mushroom in 1992. Reached number six on the ARIA albums chart, the band were nominated for Best Group at the ARIA Awards and Album of the Year for Cut. The following year releases a single from that album. Where Do you Go? You're with Cheryl Lee, that radio chick. Thank you so much for joining me on the Still Rocking it podcast. Hope to catch you again next time. Get out when you can support Aussie music