Since we didn't have enough time to get around to the Ten Questions with Rufus Wainwright earlier in the day, we decided to have a local Vancouver musician, Derek MacDonald, keyboard/organ player for the Orchid Highway, fill in the blanks for us instead! I grabbed MacDonald up during his shift at an internet café downtown. (Cord Magazine's questions are in blue. Artist responses are in grey.)


What do you do on your downtime between recording and touring and whatnot?

DEREK MACDONALD : I sell coffee.

The ol' day job.

The ol' day job, yeah. Selling coffee and listening to jazz records and spending too much money on jazz records.

Vice of choice.

Oh God, well, I guess it'd be coffee and jazz. And keyboards and Ebay. Ebay's a really bad portion of my life right now.

What do you buy on Ebay?

I buy birthday presents for myself and Christmas presents for myself and the odd anniversary present. Mainly vintage organs, pianos, amplifiers, microphones... And I think we just got a new console for our studio so that might be coming up. Wow. UPS likes us.

I had an Ebay conversation yesterday regarding [David] Bowie records (see Danny Michel interview). Many of.

Yeah, Dr. John I scrolled through there quite a bit.

Dangerous addicition.

It is! It is. I thought about blocking Ebay from my computers, but…

Don't torture yourself!

But I'll live in poverty for a while 'cause I just made a big purchase.

Favourite venue or city to play in.

Oh wow. I might get in trouble for this, but Timmins. Ontario.

Oh, what's going on in Timmins?

I don't know but it's very, very strange. There's this place, there's this weird Celtic circuit that we got into. It was like [Bronson?] family money, which sunk millions of dollars into these fake Irish pubs and the one in Timmins is Fionn McCool's I think. But the last time we played there, it's the kind of typical place where everybody will be in a white shirt and tie and kind of a fake kilt as a uniform. About halfway through the night, all the serving staff was wearing Orchid Highway baby tees and kilts and it looked pretty naughty. And then we piled into our bus and went to some guy's cottage or something like that, like a two hour drive through all these gravel roads which, in our school bus, was a really bad thing. And then got to this gorgeous log cabin resort thing right on the water, with a sauna, so we went from like the sauna, to the frozen lake to the sauna to the lake…

Nice. Everyone in Ontario has a cottage somewhere that people go to it seems.

Yeah it's good for touring bands.

Do you notice drastic differences in your city's scene, which would be good old Vancouver, and others? Or the audiences, in the way they perceive you and react and that sort of thing.

Sometimes they break out in rashes.

I see.

Some people take off their clothes. And some people do both.

What issues and aspects of the world most concern you these days?

Oh God. Well the tosser below us, Mister Bush. He concerns a lot of us. I don't know, the world seems a very very scary place and it's not just his fault. And it's not just his dad's fault. But yeah, just this common sense revolution that people have been talking about for years and years and that have been happening in pockets, I can probably put a lot of blame on that. But it's a scary scary society right now and I don't know what needs to change or what has to change but something has to happen.

One interview question you could care less to ever hear again?

Oh anything related to the Partridge Family. If you could veto that word from…. Or like "C'mon get happy' or yeah… Partridge Family in general. We don't like them.

What was your favourite Saturday morning cartoon?

Oh God, this is hard 'cause I'm not a morning person and I've never been a morning person.

Even as a kid?

Even as a kid. I know I know!

Saturday night cartoon? I dunno…

Okay well we'll go for Friday night at 10 o' clock on PBS, Dr. Who. It's not really a cartoon but it kinda fits.

Okay. What did you want to be when you were growing up, besides musician?

Hmmm… I've thought vaguely politics. I've thought a whole bunch of stuff but now I'm beginning just think we're going to be forgotten because our parents are just going to hold on to power forever and ever. And our kids might get it but we'll probably be selling coffee and doing day jobs for the rest of our lives. It's [recorder] got a red light.

Yeah, and it's nice 'cause it shows you…

[robotic voice] People of earth… babble babble…you can see your voice…

Yeah, so you can tell if it's picking up all the background crap and…

Ah so that's why it's doing that…

If you could trade places with anyone for a day, who would it be and what would you hope to accomplish?

Anybody? For a day? Wow. Oh, Michael Eisner and I'd put in a policy at Disney where they can only make good movies. Racy movies. Saucy movies.

Racy and saucy Disney movies?

Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah. like before. There hasn't been a good love scene in a Disney movie since Herbie. Do you remember when the bugs crawled up and brought in all the Christian rights stuff?

Subversive sexuality now, they just have to hide it in other things.

Have you seen Finding Nemo? That pissed me off so much.

What the movie in general?

Yeah the movie in general. It's like all anti-abortion and all sorts of stuff going through there. People think I'm mad. Or like this one woman, we were talking about it and she's like, "oh, I didn't notice any of that." I'm like, really? Oh God.

I didn't watch it that closely but I can see what you mean now that you mention it.

Well there's a lot of politics in Disney but…

A shark and a bear fight…

Oh we've had this battle before.

You have? So you know the rules?

Well like, who's home is it? Is it the bear or…

No it's uh…

Oh this is a different game then.

It's slightly different. There is no actual winner, that's up to you… there's just enough water for shark, a small rock in the middle for the bear to stand on. Neither have been fed for a few days and neither have any training. They fight to the death. Who wins?

Yeah shark wins.

Yeah?

Oh yeah. 'Cause the bear will like fall off the rock and hurt his paw or something the first time and the shark will get it.

(interruption by customer)

Do you have anything further to say about the shark and the bear?

About the shark and the bear incident? No.

Okay.

Wait. What kind of shark is it?

Grizzly and a great white shark.

Oh, yeah my money's on the shark.

And finally if you could ask me one question, what would it be?

You wanna go for a drink later?

Okay! Sure, when do you get off work?

About 4.

4? Cool let's do it.

Elsewhere

By Andy Scheffler
Photos : Andy Scheffler
Published : June 6, 2004.