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Apr 18, 2023 By Mark Redfern Photography by Kiera McNally

Mac DeMarco has announced some new tour dates for July and August. They are in support of Five Easy Hot Dogs, a new instrumental album he released digitally and on CD in January via Mac’s Record Label. A vinyl release for the album is expected this summer. Check out the tour dates below.

DeMarco had this to say about the tour in press release: “Hello, Mac D here. In July we are bringing Five Easy Hot Dogs to the stage. Should be nice, should be different, hopefully, it will be special. Hope to see you there.”

Five Easy Hot Dogs is an instrumental album recorded in various cities during a road trip up the West Coast.

“The plan was to start driving north, and not go home to Los Angeles until I was done with a record,” DeMarco said in a previous press release. “Kind of like being on tour, except there weren’t any shows, and I’d just be burning money.”

After playing a January 2022 show in the Bay Area, DeMarco planned to keep heading north, stopping at motels/hotels or friends’ houses, recording along the way. The song titles are simply named after the city each song was recorded in and the tracklist is in chronological order in terms of when a song was recorded.

“Some places I stayed longer in than others, some of them I knew from the past, others not so much,” DeMarco explained. “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.”

He added: “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. 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 journey ended at a cabin he booked in Utah. “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 said. “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.”

DeMarco’s previous album was 2019’s Here Comes the Cowboy. Five Easy Hot Dogs’ album title might be a reference to the 1970 movie Five Easy Pieces, starring Jack Nicholson.

Mac DeMarco Tour Dates:

Fri. July 14 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Ford Theatre
Tue. July 18 - New York, NY @ Webster Hall
Wed. July 19 - New York, NY @ Webster Hall
Thu. July 20 - New York, NY @ Webster Hall
Mon. July 24 - Paris, FR @ Cabaret Sauvage
Tue. July 25 - Paris, FR @ Cabaret Sauvage
Wed. July 26 - Paris, FR @ Cabaret Sauvage
Sun. July 30 - London, UK @ Hackney Empire
Mon. July 31 - London, UK @ Hackney Empire
Tue. Aug. 1 - London, UK @ Hackney Empire

(On sale: NYC - 4/21 @ 10am EDT,
London/Paris - 4/21 @ 10am BST/CEST,
LA - 5/9 @ 10am PDT)

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