A freak motorcycle accident, however, rendered McKenzie temporarily out of action and put the brake on Money for Rope’s touring schedule – until McKenzie somehow managed to defy professional and medical counsel to perform at Golden Plains. Now notionally recovered – albeit still slightly scarred – McKenzie and Money for Rope are back on track with a new single Nova Pilota, a forthcoming appearance at Brisbane’s BIGSOUND festival and a Spanish tour later this year.
“It was your classic motorcycle accident when you can’t do anything about it,” says McKenzie very matter-of-factly as he describes his vehicular dramas earlier this year. “I had a driver, an elderly lady, come out and she didn’t see me, and she drove out in front of me, and I went through the windscreen and bounced off onto the other side of the road. I damaged the left side of my body pretty badly.” Despite the extensive damage to his leg and ankle, McKenzie concedes he was incredibly lucky not to suffer permanent damage.”
The accident occurred a week before Money for Rope were due to fly to Brisbane to play alongside Tim Rogers and The Bamboos; amazingly McKenzie managed to fulfil the band’s touring commitments, playing a few shows in a wheelchair, including Golden Plains. “It was really shit timing,” McKenzie deadpans. “But we didn’t actually miss any shows. At one stage we were looking at a getting a friend of mine to play guitar – our songs aren’t that hard to play so it wouldn’t have been hard for him to learn them,” he laughs. After discarding the wheelchair McKenzie was still forced to prop up his injured leg, creating a more than impressive – and amusing – on-stage spectacle. “It was definitely a bit of an adventure,” laughs McKenzie.
Having now largely recovered from his injuries, McKenzie and Money for Rope will head up to Brisbane shortly to play the BIGSOUND for the second successive year. “BIGSOUND is a series of showcase events, more of a music conference sort of a event. There’s bands pretty much on non-stop in several venues, there’s guestspeakers, loads of industry dudes, and always lots of bands from Melbourne,” says McKenzie. “We’ve got a showcase gig on the Thursday and then a gig supporting Tumbleweed on the Friday. It should be nice and sunny and there’ll be loads of friends’ bands playing like King Gizzard the Lizard Wizard, Damn Terran – it’ll just be a really cool time.”
Early last week Money for Rope released their new single and the first release from their new album, due for release in 2014. Titled Novo Pilota, the song takes its inspiration from an impressionist painting that McKenzie has long admired. “Novo Pilota is ‘new pilot’ in Italian,” explains McKenzie. “There was an impressionist work called Novo Pilota Paul Guillaume – it was a portrait of Paul Guillaume who was a patron of the arts. I’d had some lines in my head that came out of that painting, and they fitted nicely with this song, so I used them.” Continuing the band’s regular association with Cherry Bar in the city, Money for Rope will play back-to-back shows at Cherry Bar (an irregular, if not unheard of double up for any local band) this week to launch and promote the new single, before heading out on the road for a series of east coast gigs.
Later this year Money for Rope will pack their bags for a short tour of Europe and hopefully capitalise on the release of a compilation of Money for Rope singles on a Spanish garage record label. “We put out a limited release 12” of our 7” tracks – it’s a beautiful gatefold design but you can only get it on the ‘net from Spain,” explains McKenzie. “We’re heading over to Spain in early October, and maybe some other dates in Europe and England, but it’ll be mainly Spain. A friend of ours is booking some dates over there so it’s all coming together gradually.”
In a previous interview McKenzie had disclosed that, after a French exchange trip in his teenage years, he’d defied customs regulations by bringing in some French cheese offered to him by his host family. While illegally importing cheese or cured meat doesn’t have the same rock’n’roll anarchic character as being caught with a condom full of coke up your arse, McKenzie says he won’t be trying to push the quarantine envelope this time around. “I’m going to eat as much cheese as I can while I’m over there, and just come home with it in my belly – that’s enough,’ he laughs.
BY PATRICK EMERY
