Mac DeMarco - Five Easy Hot Dogs

Mac DeMarco returns with an all new instrumental album on his own 'Mac's Label' imprint.

“The plan was to start driving north, and not go home to Los Angeles until I was done with a record,” DeMarco says of Five Easy Hot Dogs, a collection of instrumental recordings from his time on the road. “Kind of like being on tour, except there weren’t any shows, and I’d just be burning money.” All of the songs on Five Easy Hot Dogs were recorded and mixed in the corresponding city from each song title, and the tracklisting reflects the chronological order in which the songs were produced. “Some places I stayed longer in than others, some of them I knew from the past, others not so much. I tried to keep things busy all the time. If I didn’t know what was up in a city, I’d just walk around ‘til someone recognized me and go from there. I met a lot of interesting people this way, and had a bunch of cool experiences.”

Following a show in the Bay Area in January of 2022, DeMarco’s plan was to stay in motels or hotels or people’s houses, and to record in these places, too. If something wasn’t working, he would just keep on driving. “I had my guitars with me, a bass, a weird little drum kit with a kick drum we sawed in half in Golden Gate Park, all the stands and cabling I’d need, a couple of mics, an old model D, and a TX7,” DeMarco says. “I wound up picking a bunch of stuff as I went as well, trying to keep it as travel friendly as possible though.”

DeMarco’s excursion began in California, taking him around North America before concluding with an abbreviated stay in Utah, where DeMarco had booked a cabin. “It probably could have slept about 20 people, but instead it was just me withdrawing from nicotine with a bunch of taxidermy animals all over the place. No other humans for probably 50 miles in any direction. Horrible idea. I lasted one night and went back to Los Angeles the next day,” he says. “When I first got back home, I felt as though I had given up on my idea and failed to finish what I was trying to do. But that’s all dog shit.”

“The nature of ripping around and recording and traveling in this manner doesn’t lend well to sitting around and planning or thinking about what it was that I was setting out to do. I didn’t ever have a sound in mind, or a theme or anything, I would just start recording. Luckily the collection of recordings from this period all shake hands, they have a present musical identity as a whole. I was in it while I was in it, and this is what came out of it, just the way it was.”

“This record sounds like what rolling around like that feels like. I hope you enjoy.”