The last comment is delivered with good-natured sarcasm itself but as they say, many a truth was hidden in jest. McDonald is getting ready for Redd Kross’ next tour of Australia and having been back on the touring scene for a few years after a lengthy hiatus, gigging seems to have the same magic it did when MacDonald was in school plugging away in The Tourists (precursor to Redd Kross) with his brother Steve McDonald. “We’ve always had this really nice, loyal following over in Australia,” he says. “Last year when we got asked to do the Hoodoo Gurus’ Dig It Up! Festival we just booked a few shows on our own too and they really went well. We had no idea because it had been like 15 years since we’d been there.”
It’s foolish to call Redd Kross’ latest album, Researching The Blues, a comeback album. They didn’t go anywhere, they’ve just been a little busy. “The fact is I’ve always been in contact with everyone who’s ever been in our band, we’ve always been friends, and my brother being my brother, well we’re half of the group anyway,” he says. “The first time we played together again, I was the only one who had not stepped on a stage for ten years and being the lead singer of an extraverted rock band, things were really daunting at first. Once we started playing, it was as though no time had passed. It’s the closest experience I can imagine to a time machine – nothing had changed and it was surreal.”
Researching The Blues appeared with little fanfare but the album is proof that the band isn’t cashing in on the latest nostalgia trend. They simply wanted to start making music together again. “It was weird because we had the basic tracks recorded for a while and we didn’t work on it for ages because we were all busy,” he says. “Then I started working on it on my own and began sequencing it and I was like, ‘Wow, this is actually a really great record.’ It was like listening to someone else’s music because of the time I’d taken off from it. I tried to mix it and it got to a certain level where I couldn’t go any further. I gave it to my brother Steve, he had just come back from his tour of Australia with Off!, and we finished it in a week. We didn’t even know how we were going to release it but somehow it was all wrapped up in a week when we finally came back to it. Then a few people we knew heard it and were offering to put it out officially.”
Even during McDonald’s time off from the stage did not equate to time off from music. “My daughter is my gig partner,” he says. McDonald also started making music with her along with his wife Charlotte Caffey, daughter Astrid and sister-in-law Anna Waronker in the lineup Ze Malibu Kids. “We’re both really into Korean pop music but she’ll also check out anything so I always have someone to go to concerts with. Charlotte’s always writing and doing tours with The Go-Go’s still so there’s always music in the house. My sister-in-law Anna Waronker has worked on stuff with me, my daughter and brother and she’s always writing for different things. We’re all very close so music has really never stopped in my life at all, I was never getting away from it and living a normal life I just stopped performing.”
BY KRISSI WEISS
