This week’s episode of the Rolling Stone Uncut podcast is joined by New Zealand musician and comedian, Bret McKenzie!
While in Sydney on his Australian tour, McKenzie sat down with Editor-in-Chief Neil Griffiths to talk all about the run, his latest album, Freak Out City, and a potential third record.
McKenzie also discussed the upcoming Flight of the Conchords reunion, how it came about and what’s next for the iconic duo.
Watch and or listen to the full episode below.
Reaction to the new album and Australia tour
“It’s really fun to play live, this record… and the audience I think gets it live. I think people… they still come to the shows [and are] kind of like, ‘Hey, it’s the guy from the Conchords’. I’m so famous for Conchords and so it’s still a bit of a stepping stone for them to go, ‘What is this other stuff?’ Or some people show up, and they’re Muppets fans, from doing the songs from The Muppets. Like, someone came to Brisbane and brought their Kermit the Frog puppet with them!”
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Almost working with Tom Cruise
“Bob the Musical is this famous Hollywood film that’s never been made. It’s been written like 20 times, and everyone in L.A. who works in music and film has had a turn at it. Me and a team had a turn at it. We’re like, ‘We’ve got it,’ and we’re like, ‘Tom Cruise is going to be the main guy’. We needed him to tap dance… I didn’t talk to him, but the director talked to him, and he said, ‘Yep, Tom’s going to start training to be a tap dancer. And he’s going to be the best tap dancer ever.’ He trains like crazy. I think he was going to train for a year so that he could do this movie, and just like nail the tap dancing. It would have been so cool. And he would have as well, by the way.
“One funny thing about actors is they think they can act their way through any job. Like they come in and they’ve got to sing a song, and they think if they act like a singer, they’ll be able to sing. It sort of works like that. There’s also a natural ability to sing notes. But it’s amazing watching them sing, and I remember one actress, we’re like, ‘Wow, that was amazing.’ And everyone was just like, ‘Nailed it,’ and the film executives were like, ‘Oh, they were amazing’. And they left, and then next day we’re listening back, like, ‘Ugh, completely out of tune.’ No one noticed because they were in there just being so charismatic!”
Surprise Flight of the Conchords shows this year
“There’s always offers simmering around, but we haven’t done anything for a while. But we had been jamming a little bit last year, just trying to write some new ideas and with no intention of booking a tour or anything, but just for fun. We’ve got a great booking agent, Nick, and he said, ‘Oh guys, there’s this offer. It’s in LA. What do you think?’ And it just sort of was the right type of gig for us. Like it’s not too big… we’re not going on the road for six months. I think it was just one gig and then they added a second show. So we were committing to one gig. And so we were like, we can manage one gig!
“We’ve got a song called ‘Jenny’ which is about two people. The song’s about a guy and a woman, Jenny. Anyway, we were like, ‘Let’s just have a go, see how much we can remember.’ And the song is about him struggling to remember, and both of us are just struggling to remember! And we got halfway through the song like, ‘I don’t know what happens… I mean, I know there’s a baby, but I don’t know how we get to that bit about the baby.’ And so then we just have to pull up the recording, and you can actually just Google our own lyrics… and then we were laughing at jokes that we’d forgotten.”
