Why Mac DeMarco Decided to Grow Up (Sort Of) on His New Album

The 27-year-old singer-songwriter's latest effort, 'This Old Dog,' finds him dealing with adulthood and his relationship with his absentee dad.
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Mac DeMarco! It's actually you. Like, do you even understand?" A female teenage fan, dressed in flowy fabrics and looking not unlike the average Coachella attendee, is practically breathless standing next to the indie singer and guitarist. She eyes him seductively.

"Well, hello," he says with a goofy gap-toothed grin before politely informing her that, yes, it is in fact him, but now's not the best time to chat—because here outside a music venue in Nashville, smoking one Marlboro Red after another, DeMarco is attempting to humor a reporter slinging questions at him. She'll soon walk away a bit dejected, a bit dazed, a bit giddy that she met him nonetheless. Soon enough, another fan will spot DeMarco and walk on over: "Mac!"

Spend time around DeMarco and things tend to go this way. He'll tell you he doesn't know why it happens to him so much, but approachability is central to his charm and success. "Even when I'm feeling tired and people have questions for me," he says, "I don't want anybody to feel like I sheisted them."

DeMarco, 27, has made a name for himself as the easygoing, relatable, and carefree musician dude—the one you drank beers with that one time at that random house party, who's always down for a good time. He's been known for drunken, over-the-top antics, both onstage and off. But when DeMarco lived in Far Rockaway, Queens, he gave out his address and had fans come by for coffee. Last month, he invited fans to a public barbecue near his home in Los Angeles' Silver Lake neighborhood. And for an hour on this particular spring afternoon, he stood at a table inside the concert venue, signing posters and shoes and shirts and accepting gifts—an Elton John and Billy Joel shirt, a fan-drawn pencil sketch of him. Appreciative if not slightly baffled, DeMarco says his mantra for everything "is to just kind of roll with it."

The Edmonton native carries himself with the same breezy, laid-back vibe as the indie-rock guitar music he makes — like a goofier Neil Young or John Lennon, with a dash of The Grateful Dead. DeMarco plays all the major festivals and has three excellent albums and an EP to his name, but he can seem as though he just stumbled into this whole fame thing. His latest album, This Old Dog, is spare and soft and personal, and it's open about his rocky relationship with his largely absentee father. He'll tell you the LP was a creative risk, but one he felt comfortable taking if only because his fan base is along for the ride.

"It's a good thing that people meet me and are like 'Oh, this is a completely normal guy,' because it hammers down the point," DeMarco explains in an interview that touches on his cult of personality, highly dedicated fan base and ever-evolving musical craft. "Especially for young people on the Internet nowadays. Because it's hard to differentiate between complete bullshit and something that's real."


GQ: Your fans feel personally invested in your career in a way that's rare nowadays.
Mac DeMarco: I always tried to be an approachable, comfortable, normal person. Because when I was growing up and listening to bands and finding out about them, it always freaked me out when it was this sexy, cold dark rock star; a cool guy all handsome and beautiful. So I just tried to not be that. I'm just doing me. I don't really know anything else.

Interestingly enough, as everything about your career gets larger you seemed to go smaller and more inward looking with your new album.
Doing the big sexy third album felt cheap to me for some reason. And I could have done it—just written pop songs about jack shit. I tried a couple times. "Oh yeah! These chords and these lyrics that don't make any sense!" But it didn't feel real.

It would have been a departure from your entire everyman M.O.
I suppose so. I think all my records are pretty personal, but I think this time I just forgot to use the vagueness in the lyrics or in the writing.

Listeners have identified songs like "My Old Man" ("Uh-oh, looks like I'm seeing more of my old man in me") as especially autobiographical.
I was worried about it. I hadn't done anything that direct before. I've written about my dad a shitload, and my other family, and all facets of my life. But a lot of the songs on this album, I didn't think I was gonna put on an album. I was just writing them and they were sitting on my computer and I would listen to them every so often. And then I put them on an album, and it's like, "OK, well what comes with this?"

These intimate songs run counter to the idea that you're forever this wacky and wild man.
Well, there's a certain side of what we do where everyone's like, "You're Mr. Goofy! You're Mr. Crazy!" And then to play these songs and disperse with that feels kinda weird sometimes. But it also feels pretty good in another way.

And yet you'll often be painted as this one-dimensional goofball.
I think that's where the Internet comes into play. People see one thing from one time on one video of some show we played, and then it's forever present. But sometimes I am crazy, you know? Ebb and flow.

Your popularity increased exponentially in the wake of 2014's Salad Days.
I try not to think about it. Even in regards to the new album, I try not to read reviews or whatever on the Internet. And especially now the volume of things written about it is so much crazier, I just don't have time.

Scrutiny via strangers. Odd.
That's probably part of the reason I don't pay attention to it. Seeing people in the crowd, seeing the line of kids outside, seeing the sign outside the venue with my name of it, seeing the reaction [during the show], that's more what it is for me. I'll just do what I do, and if people keep liking it, fine. If they don't, it's also fine. But I keep these people in mind when I make the music. You've got to count your blessings. Even around Salad Days I got a little—not jaded, but even through writing that album I was like, "Reality check, motherfucker! You're traveling the world. Gimme a break!"

You recognized the moment could easily have passed.
The funny thing is, I'll get people that literally just heard about my music and are like, "I've been a fan for so long! I've listened to you for a year." And that's not really long in the grand scheme of things. I think some people assumed that we popped out in the last year or two or something. And I've been doing this for almost 10 years. Which is kinda nuts. But I think it helps to really have to earn your keep. I remember back in the day driving a Ford Escort to go play to absolutely nobody in a basement in Ann Arbor. And you're happy doing it! It's really sick.

You'd be making music even if no one cared.
I'd be doing some iteration. A lot of my closest friends are still in positions like that. I like making music. I like making records. And I like playing for people. So, why not?

Is there ever the worry that people will stop caring about the music?
With this last album, not really, because it was more of a therapeutic thing. Very selfish, actually. It was like, "I have to do this. I don't know why, but I have to." But I guess there's always a sort of fear. Because now there's a lot more riding on it: I have four of my friends who are supported by what we have going on. It's a whole operation, and we've invested all this money. I have a mortgage now. There's certain things that could fall apart really quick. But at the root of it I'm still just doing what I feel like doing.

Is it all bigger and more successful than you ever imagined?
Anytime we play a show that's bigger than the last show, it's like, "Wow, what the fuck?" I still remember one of the craziest feelings for me was playing Music Hall of Williamsburg in New York for the first time. And that was way down the line. That was five years into the game. That was as close to playing a stadium show as I thought I'd ever get.

You've talked in the past about your obsessive nature when constructing albums.
You get addicted to it. When I record something and I hear it come back off the speakers it's like, "Yah!" This one kind of drove me crazy, because I bought a bunch of new shit—consoles, preamps, mics—so I had a lot more options. Before, it was just tinkering and trying things, and then you get the final product and you have to live with it; that was kind of the way I operated before. Now I was like, OK, I can go back and try to fix this or fix that.

You're getting a bit older. How do you handle the excessive partying on the road?
It really depends. The first two shows of this tour were two nights in Montreal and two nights in Toronto, and I didn't have a drink for like five days after that, because it was too much [laughs]. I'm better at reeling it in than I used to be.

I'm also not as fit a fiddle so it hurts a lot more. And some of the guys in the band have been sober for a while. It's more of a balance now. Look at us, aging rock 'n' rollers in our mid-to-late twenties!


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