Interviewed by: Jenny Francois
Date Published: 04.30.07

Sacramento’s CAKE has been evolving their music with quirky and ironic lyrics, distorted guitars, syncopation and brassy phrasings since 1991. They have defined their sound, the CAKE sound, as they continue their saga of making music that just doesn’t fit into a cookie cuter mold. John McCrea, known for his monotone lyrical style, chatted with us about cover songs, the music that gets played on the radio, and their four year-old through seventy year-old fan base.

Aeki Tuesday: You’ve chosen to offer your fans two new albums this year since your 2004 release of Pressure Chief, one of them is a B-Sides and Rarities album, How did the selection process of choosing those tracks come about?

John McCrea: For some reason we think we still want to make albums. So we try to choose songs that work in the context of a single listening experience. We know that people don’t really listen to albums anymore but we still somehow feel like using that kind of criteria for selecting songs to put on a collection. And the songs kind of fit together well. We were surprised by musically how cohesive everything turned out.

You recorded two covers, one was “Never, Never Gonna Give Up” and “War Pigs,” you will be playing a live version of those songs?

Yeah, sure. We kind of play live whatever we feel like playing in order for it to not feel like a jukebox every night. We sort of ask ourselves at the end of each song, what song do we feel like playing next. And it works rather well for us - not feeling like machines. We never know what we’re going to play each night. If someone comes to hear one song, it’s sometimes disappointing. We’ll probably play on a good night War Pigs and you know could be the Barry White song and who knows what else.

Much has been written about your distinctive music and singing style, when did you start performing?

When I was a kid I suppose. When I was a teenager, I started playing piano when I was a kid. Once I quit piano lessons, I started playing a lot. Making up my own little songs. I sort of went from there and picked up the guitar and the bass when I was a teenager. Somehow figured out how to write songs.

Going Back on the song “War Pigs” do you think it presents a commentary about what’s taking place right now about the US and the war?

Well, you know, it’s as old as the hills, the whole war thing. It’s certainly nothing new. You know we’re a little disappointed that, yeah we’re a little disappointed with the current situation in Iraq as a lot of people are. We actually started recording that song before the Iraq thing but it seems to go well, it’s a coincidence in a way, but it seems to go well with the current scenario in the world. The song is a good song, it holds up over the course of time. We chose songs regarding our reasons for choosing the songs, all the songs we chosen to play. We just chose songs we felt like playing really, no other reason than that.

On the Cake website (www.cakemusic.com), there seems to be quite a bit of information posted about environmental issues, getting people motivated about the issue and having them put the word out to senators or governors requesting change. What are your views on attempts such as Al Gore’s upcoming Live Earth concert in spreading global awareness?

Which concert?

Al Gore has an upcoming Live Earth concert.

As far as I know, we weren’t invited to that. I think its like Pink Floyd and stuff. I don’t think they’ve invited us.

What do you think about events such as that, do you think it’s aiding in spreading out global awareness or worsening the cause?

They’re doing a little bit of both kind of like [what] Barbara Streisand does. They are going to provide easy fodder for right wing zealous and shills. At the same time, they will bring the issue to the forefront for a few weeks, which know you needs to happen doesn’t it. Unfortunately, being a rock show, I think there probably be excesses sharply pointed out by certain elements within the news media. I imagine that would happen and perhaps invalidating it. Invalidating the concerns for a lot of people.

I’m not sure how they could really try to offset that when playing in such big venues but it will be interesting to see how that comes about.

We don’t really have the luxury of perfection right now. I think we kind of have to stumble along. It’s going to be good fodder for the opposition.

How would you describe your fan base?

You know I’m really interested by this fan base. I really don’t know exactly who they are. The funny thing is that they are on both side of the political spectrum, which is good, you know. I don’t think our music is that preachy. You know what’s really weird too; the age of this listener basis is also really, really wide. We get letters from four-year-olds and from like seventy-year-olds. It’s really weird. I’m not sure what to think of it and everything in between of course. And seems to say that we have really young and really, really old listeners. I think our culture is too segmented. It’s too age segmented and I don’t think it’s healthy.

Can you tell me about your upcoming sixth album that scheduled for a 2008 release? What can we look forward to hearing?

Oh, we don’t know yet. We’re still working on it. We’re not a band that sets out, well we do, we do set out a sort of scheme or a couple of different ideas and we usually end up going in the opposite direction. It’s sort of an intuitive process and sort of like stumbling through a dark room.

What are your thoughts about the state of music being played on radio stations? Do you think it’s just an issue with music directors selecting what they think their audience wants to hear?

It’s a little bit of both. It’s a little bit of something else - I certainly don’t think program directors have any evil intent. I just think that the business is structured in a way that makes it difficult for everyone involved. There needs to be somebody brave enough to restructure the way things work. I don’t know how that’s going to happen.

You are currently on tour right now supporting the “B-Sides and Rarities” release, how has the crowd reception been and where have you been playing?

We recently got back from a show in Minnesota and we’re going to Tennessee tomorrow and Boulder Colorado. We’re not really suppose to be playing too many shows right now because we’re really suppose to be focused on our next album but I will say that the response to War Pigs has been pretty positive. We’ve got right now people - We had a contest to do a video for the War Pigs song and we’ve got people making videos from all over the world. There seems to be a lot of positive energy around that song.

Touring life can be long and tiresome, what things do you do to wind down when you are on tour?

Well everybody reads a lot. Its actually pretty good opportunity to do a lot of the reading that you’ve been wanting to do. It’s mostly waiting for things to happen on the road. You’re waiting for the bus or waiting for the show or waiting for the airplane or whatever. I just catch up. What else do I do? I try to write. It’s kind of hard to write in hotel rooms just because of noise issues. I’m reading an interesting book called “The Omnivores Dilemma” which is about food and it’s fascinating. It’s by Michael Pollan. He’s the guy that wrote “The Botany of Desire” which is also an interesting book but this one, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” is all about the way we eat in this country. It’s really interesting. It’s not like a vegan manifesto or anything like that. It just looks at where we get our food or how we get our food. So yeah that’s what I do on tour. (laughs) I read.

You had mentioned early about people not listening to full albums, do you think that’s due to digital music stores? Such as customers having the choice of buying an MP3 whenever they want.

Recorded music is free now. I don’t think musicians are really going to make a living in ten years because the value shift has been quite effective from the recording itself to the music holder. You have a shiny, fancy, three hundred dollar music holder that becomes more valuable the more songs it devours; It’s just stuffed full of music but all that music represents human labor. It actually takes work to record music, to write songs. I think all music should be free just as long as sandwiches and rent are free. There needs to be the maturity to be consistent here. There’s definitely an inconsistent decency to the situation. Again, I would love to just change our world to have everything be free. That would be awesome. You can’t take, I mean you can in this situation but it’s hard on musicians. It’s especially hard on musicians. Friends of mine, you know they count on selling twenty-five or fifty thousand records. Now they can’t count on it, you know, but their wives [are] having a baby and they need to somehow pay the doctors. And the doctors are not going to like do it for free. I don’t know. It’s a very real dilemma for musicians. For CAKE, basically, if our recordings are free, the we really have to stay on the road all the time. Maybe for the rest of our lives which is kind of a sad carnie lifestyle.

More on CAKE

Official Site: www.cakemusic.com
MySpace: www.myspace.com/cake