Fanning Dempsey National Park: ‘It Felt Like We Had Been A Band For A Decade’

Paul Dempsey and Bernard Fanning’s new outfit, Fanning Dempsey National Park, provides lots of surprises. It’s more than a mashup of their iconic bands (sorry if you were expecting Something For Powderfinger or PowderKate). But it’s also not a completely alien life-form with no link to home.  

• Waxing Lyrical: How Fanning Dempsey National Park Recruited Abbey Road For Epic Vinyl Release

The title of their debut album, The Deluge, suggests a rush of stuff coming towards the listener – and rest assured, there certainly is that. At times, Dempsey and Fanning's distinctive voices (literally and metaphorically) remain isolated in a kind of tag team, but elsewhere, they truly blend.

Like Paul Mac and Daniel Johns as The Dissociatives – or Sarah Blasko, Sally Seltmann and Holly Throsby as Seeker Lover Keeper – the best parts of The Deluge come when the listener starts on one path that's seemingly familiar, then ends up somewhere completely unexpected. It’s a proper musical sum bigger than its parts. 

Of course, there is a clear chemistry between the musicians, both professionally and personally. They finish each other's sentences in stories, and they are clearly itching to just get out and get on with the job. "It's so nice to just talk about the music, finally," Fanning says like a kid. "It's taken so long for people to be able to hear it – we're so pleased to be able to do that and hear what people think." 

In many ways, it does feel like Fanning Dempsey National Park has been a long time coming, given how long the two have been colleagues and friends. Now the collaboration is finally here, how would it play out? Would this (and they) be serious? Up their own bums? Punny as hell? They did consider it all – with the band name, of course, expected to set the tone.

The gravitas of the National Park won out, but there was plenty of ridiculousness in the lead-up. "Paul and Oats was definitely on the cards for a while," they laugh, talking over and for each other like any good duetting partners – islands in the stream, even. 

There were also many jokes about how much saxophone has appeared on the record – particularly the first single, Disconnect. It's not the full Never Tear Us Apart or Careless Whisper, but some tasteful cheese. What was the deal with that? 

"It just needed to be brought back. [The sax] was asked to leave the party in no uncertain terms a couple of decades ago, and it's just been waiting for its time. And it's long overdue. All music is better when there's a saxophone solo. ALL music," Dempsey says directly, with no ambiguity.

Without missing a beat, Fanning adds: “I know there are a lot of people out there who are not sax fans, but when you hear a sax – particularly if it’s got tonnes of really bad digital reverb on it – it just makes you smile. And the whole concept of this album was for it to be fun. Paul had some dodgy plug-in for sax, where you could actually make it sound like a sax player. So when the songs were going back and forth, we kept saying, 'Let's put some sax on it!' And you know what, we've probably exaggerated the role of the sax – it's only on three songs in the end." 

Dempsey corrects him: “It’s only on two songs on the album! But there were a lot more songs in our bag of demos that had fake sax on them. I got pretty good at playing fake sax on the keyboards here [in my home studio], so I just kept doing it! And then it became a joke, where it was like, 'I can't even send Bernard this song unless it's got sax on it.’”

There was an important third umpire in the producer, Craig Silvey (the Grammy-winning producer for the likes of Arctic Monkeys, Sam Fender, The National and Florence And The Machine), who Fanning describes as having "a much more stripped-back dynamic for the record than the demos had" (read: less fake sax). "It's a powerful skill to have him there to strip it back to what was needed. Because we were encouraging each other with 'more sax, more harmonies, more guitarmonies’, it was a never-ending cycle of ridiculousness!” 

Yes, dear reader, they even got into ‘guitarmonies’ (guitar harmonies). 

However, there is one Oz Rock cliche they drew the line at: bagpipes. "There's sort of an inverse relationship there to what I was saying about sax making all music better," Dempsey says. “Inversely, there’s nothing that bagpipes can’t make worse. I’ll give you You’re The Voice and [It’s A] Long Way [To The Top], but they're great despite the bagpipes."

Fair enough. Fanning and Dempsey are collectively extremely cool, but they had to be wrong about something. 

A perfect example of a fabulous new path for the pair is the mid-album track Blood. While opening singles Disconnect and The Deluge present musical exploration in terms of genre and style, with Blood the singer-songwriters explore a different type of love song.  

"It's particularly about parenting, and the connection to your whole unit," Fanning explains. Inspired by a line in the speech Bob Hawke's granddaughter, Sophie Taylor Price, made at Hawke's funeral, the line about linking blood, stories, love and pain came together. "It just really struck me as such a beautiful way to demonstrate what it's like to be a parent and how that connection is so primal, and it's literally true, you know," Fanning continues.  

Once the song was sketched, Fanning contacted Price on Instagram, and after getting her blessing (as well as confirming she was also a fan of both artists and their music), the circle of cultural influence was complete. As with the original intention of the funeral speech, the final song is beautiful but also troubled – being connected and responsible, in that way, is not all sweet dreams. Often, actually, it's the slog of obligation.  

“Anyone who’s had a baby knows what it’s like to be awake at ten to five [in the morning], and the kid is just on fire, and you’re not! And especially coming from the kind of career backgrounds that we have, where being a musician means you get to indulge in your own thoughts and ideas a lot, and parenting narrows the windows on what you're able to do with that. But it's so rewarding in so many other ways that it's just a shift in thinking," Fanning says. 

The song and the sentiment are part of the hidden business of musical success. While the industry is seemingly geared towards an eternal youth where no one has any responsibilities (yet somehow an endless way to pay for the party), the reality is that if we're lucky, we all age, gain responsibilities and those who rely on us. But how does that work with musical life as it continues?

"Paul and I have kids that are a similar age, so I think he relates to the song in the same way," Fanning continues in explaining Blood. "The first verse is saying, 'Fuck, this is brutal, but there's no getting out of this; this is me for the rest of my life, as long these kids are around.’ And the second is, ‘righto, this is happening, let's just fucking do it and embrace it and go and have fun, try and make a good impact on this little human's life.’”

In reply, Dempsey says: "As he does, Bernard has taken something really huge and somehow made it concise and universal. It's a beautiful song, and I guess my comment is more about how it came together in the studio. There, it went from being an acoustic guitar song to just having this really wonderful feeling that we were able to achieve with the band we were working with. And it happened really quickly – everyone was able to find their slot really fast.

“I don't think we'd even been in the studio [for] a week with these musicians I had known, but Bernard had just met; we'd only just started playing together. I just remember recording that song, and everyone found the right spot. It felt like we had been a band for a decade."  

"I think we might have 10cc and Split Enz as a vague sort of reference, but when you're coming up with something new, it's important to give people a little bit of a range," Fanning adds. "But everyone really found their creativity and they just fucking nailed it." 

Now properly nerding out, Dempsey finishes the story. “Mike Urbano’s drumming on that song is just one of the best drum performances I’ve ever heard. It’s so subtle – but if you just listen to the drums [on Blood], what he’s doing is just so awesome. And it’s like everyone’s part in that song is just trying not to touch it. The vocal and the lyric is just so simple, what everyone else tried to do was to not get too near it.”

At the other end of the musical spectrum is the slightly grand, almost anthemic decline with tracks like Dunning Kruger National Park and King Of Nowhere. The first in particular goes there in a way that lovers of apocalyptic pop (like Radiohead's Paranoid Android or David Bowie's Five Years) will particularly appreciate. A reference to the "Dunning Kruger effect" (basically the theory that the most incompetent people are the least aware of how bad they are), the tracks let these darlings of the mainstream roll up their political sleeves.  

"I think that song says it pretty well, what we were trying to express," Dempsey says with a smile and gentle eye-roll about the various things we could all despair about at the moment. "But it's one of the few places where all this tension builds, and then it explodes. I think the thing we both love about the record, and Craig Silvey's production, [is that it] makes sure it's not this 'quiet/loud' battle, but everything happens on this line, and the train stays on the rails. There's only a couple of times where things end up in an epic rock explosion. But yeah, Dunning Kruger, as the title suggests, it’s very much about people’s skewed outlooks.”  

If you don't listen too hard, the doomsday message is easy to miss, which is the point. "Yeah, it's like the song starts with everyone just looking out their window, and by the end of the song, everyone's joined a cult,” Fanning adds. Hmmm, don't drink the cordial! 

Fanning Dempsey National Park’s debut album, The Deluge, is out August 2 via Universal – head here to stream/purchase.

FANNING DEMPSEY NATIONAL PARK

‘THE DELUGE’ AUSTRALIAN TOUR

Friday October 11 – Meanjin/Brisbane, Fortitude Music Hall
Saturday October 12 – Eora/Sydney, Enmore Theatre
Friday October 18 – Tarntanya/Adelaide, Hindley Street Music Hall
Saturday October 19 – Naarm/Melbourne, The Forum
Sunday October 20 – Naarm/Melbourne, The Forum
Thursday October 31 – Boorloo/Perth, Astor Theatre
Friday November 1 – Boorloo/Perth, Astor Theatre
Saturday November 9 – Meanjin/Brisbane, The Tivoli

Tickets: fanningdempseynationalpark.com