Interview

"What I really wanted to play was the cello, but it was too big for me to carry because it was bigger than me. I used to get really frustrated so I switched to viola because it was smaller," says David McLary on the begining of his music career. When listening to Huevos Rancheros, it's clear that McLary has an enormous number of influences and a great depth of musical experience. Currently he is a guitar player and vocalist, but he's had lessons on the piano, flute, recorder, viola, and the giant-for-a-third-grader-cello. He has played classical piano, organ in a ska band and guitar in a power rock trio. McLary describes what this has developed in to as, "A pop band. I tell people it's kind of country kind of salsa." Anyone who has heard Huevos live knows that's a mild description of one of the hardest grooving bands in New York City. Dear Diary is a great pop tune with it's roots in funk except for two things; there's no drummer and the funk is provided by violins. "It's not easy finding a violin player who swings," says McLary.

While David had formal training from and early age, continuing throughout High School, most of his defining musical development took place while at Brown University. "One advantage to being a music student at a non music school is that there aren't that many people who were serious about it as I was. There were a lot of people that did it. There were a lot of people who worked hard at it, but there were not a lot of people who were really insane about it. At any hour of the day, just about, I could go into the studio and fart around. We had 24 hour access to the school's studio, so I'd spend my nights figuring out how to use everything. When I did my first record, it was kind of a compilation of the things I'd done for the last year and a half I was there."

David also spent time playing live. "I made the record with a band called Pop Wagner. We only played one show, but it was a great show. It was a huge band with a string section, two drummers, 5 or 6 horn players a couple of bass players, cause we had a stand up and a regular bass a couple guitars a couple background singers and a sampler was in there somewhere. We basically tried to play what was on the record, which was almost impossible, but it was fun!"

McLary is not one for the standard approach to putting a band together. He took approach even with smaller acoustic shows. "The thing I was doing consistently was playing acoustically and kind of busting out shows. There was a regular Tuesday night coffee shop gig. It started out as a really annoying Joni Mitchell type of evening full of all these sensitivos. Then 5 or 6 of us descended on it and started doing all kinds of weird stuff, like three people who'd all play drums at the same time. One of the regular things I did was with a saxophone quartet. I continued doing all kinds of little experimental bands for the rest of the time I was at Brown."

When did Huevos form and how did you end up with such unique instrumentation?
After I moved to NYC, I was getting bored of pop music. I was getting bored of the idea of someone who is a pretty good songwriter, but just doesn't do anything innovative. Sometimes you hear a songwriter who is really good and you get the point, but they're not doing anything else. I decided to write a lot of songs where you didn't get the point, that were really obscure, and try to do something totally new. I guess I was really annoyed with drums and the standard back beat.

So you were starting clean by ripping out the root of everything.
I've always written from the rhythm up. The words are usually the last thing that I end up writing. I would get idea from the drummer and filter it back. I would spend as much time writing the drum parts with the drummer as I would giving parts to the guitar player. So it was natural for me to focus on that as the thing to take out.

Do you write with the band, or bring finished parts to rehearsal?
(laughs) I'm a total dictator. I set up rehearsal, bring songs and try to make them do it. But usually what happens is several ideas and by the time people have played them 3 or 4 times they've changed them completely. When I hear those ideas back I give them back some changes.

So you arrive with a set of chord changes and lyrics? Usually I have chord changes and charts for all the strings and the bass player and a vague idea of what I want to happen with the percussion and a song structure. Then I will work in lyrics later. I really lean on the percussionists a lot to translate my rough sketches into good ideas.

How do you approach song structure?
I try to be conscious of what I'm repeating. When there's a repeat of a section, I will make at least something different. Sometimes I repeat half of it again. Sometimes I'll change the order of parts.

I also like to have really long bridges. If I have a 16 bar verse, I'll end up with a 40 bar bridge.

Are the lyrics autobiographical?
The idea behind Dear Diary came from seeing a movie of the week where someone was constantly writing love poems in their diary. Right after that I had a big fight with my girlfriend and I realized that the idea of going back to a diary and reading it is just so silly, because it's always the same thing over and over again. You never learn. You just keep doing the same stupid things over and over again. So nothing really happens. Lyrically it just marks time. That's part of the reason why it's a choppy, rhythmic, kind of rap like song. That's the idea behind the line Starting at point blank again, starting at square one again."

The other element is playing against the confessional folk song theme. Sometimes when you listen to a James Taylor song it sound like he's ripping a page out of his diary and playing a beautiful song about their life. None of the things I write in my diary a beautiful things about my life (laughs).

What about Look Ma? "From the day his mother birthed him, he was between some woman's legs", is an opening line that demands attention.
I had read a million Graham Greene books back to back and wanted to tell a Graham Greene like story. He's very Catholic, so there's always lots of religious overtones. He was also a total ladies man so there's lots of sexual overtones as well; everyone's damned and everyone wants to have sex all the time. It's funny the way that they totally intermingle with each other. The story is about a guy who travels around, who doesn't really do much and is always running away from responsibility. He's always dogged by religion and sex.

Who were some of your musical influences?
I listened to the first Specials album a lot. Del Amitri's first album too. Obviously I've listened to a lot of Elvis Costello.

Your voice sounds a lot like his, is that intentional?
No. In fact I have been trying to sing less like him, though I do rip off some of his melodic twists from time to time.

I like a lot of pop music. I liked Game Theory a lot when they were around. I listened to them a lot for their unusual melodic ideas. They were really good at making melodies twist in ridiculous ways and end up somewhere that you wouldn't expect them to

What are some of the musical phases you've gone through?
I did the ska thing for a while. I did the power rock thing, I tried to be Rush for a while. I had a Brazilian phase but now I'm starting to move towards a Cuban style. It's kind of my Mambo phase. I'm listening to a lot of Perez Prado.

How do you describe Huevos Rancheros?
I think of it as a pop band. I'll tell people it's kind of country and kind of salsa.

How do you explain the unique instrumentation?
I usually don't! (laughs) I tell them that it has strings in it and has a percussion section.

And no drummer?
I usually don't mention that. I probably should, shouldn't I?

How did you come up with the name Huevos Rancheros?
I like eggs a lot. I was dating someone and I had told her about cowboy toast. to make cowboy toast, you take a piece of bread, cut a hole out of the middle, and out an egg in the middle. You fry it on both sides and you end up with a piece of toast with fried egg in the middle. When I told her about this she said, 'Oh it's just like huevos rancheros," which it's not, but when I found out about huevos rancheros I was very excited.

We've started going by the name Huevos, because we found out there's another band with the same name. I also like it because it's Spanish slang for "balls."