LIVE: Mat McHugh rescued by fan love

Not only did he fight hard to make his own records, his way, and tour with a collective of like-minded musicians,  he urged fans to expect the unexpected in his records, changing from acoustic tunes to dancehall or live musicians playing alongside electronic beats from album to album.

For his latest offering, Dancehall Days, out now, he’s returned to The Beautiful Girls name but ventured into the world of crowdfunding for the first time after he found himself in financially dire straits when he ‘‘hired friends to take care of the accounting side of the business and they spent all the money on fancy dinners’’.

McHugh told LIVE he considered making a record ‘‘on the cheap’’ or giving it away for free before turning to a Pledge Music campaign to generate funds from fans who, in return, receive exclusive access and merchandise including limited edition skateboards.

Though it might seem an odd step for an artist who has always avoided anything close to the mainstream,  McHugh said the Pledge process was simply an extension of his long-held independent approach to music.

‘‘Everyone understands how we do it and the importance of support, and this time it was the same mind set, but trusting me enough to put the support up front, rather than at the other end,’’ McHugh said. 

‘‘Then it was like, if you’re doing that, I want to do a bunch of stuff I’ve always wanted to do to bring people closer, like specific merch, vinyl and sound-check access. 

‘‘It’s worked really well, we’ve been in contact with everyone that’s pledged. To me it feels natural because it’s just an extension of the whole independent ethos anyway.’’

But that’s not to say he didn’t cop his fair share of criticism, particularly as he’d been outspoken about artists such as Eskimo Joe and Kate Miller-Heidke using similar crowdfunding for their musical pursuits.

‘‘Kate actually wrote to me on Twitter and said, ‘I thought you hated crowdfunding?’ and I wrote back to her saying, ‘I don’t hate crowdfunding, I’m just suspicious of major label artists that jump ship and all of a sudden do that’,’’ he explained.

‘‘Her reply was like, ‘Well is it only major label artists who are expected to pay for their records?’ and I said, ‘Independent artists pay for their records from the start, that’s what I’m talking about, you’re so used to having to scrape dollars and cents together for a record so this [crowdfunding] is kind of a natural evolution’. I don’t know, for a minute there were people who lost their major label deals and went, ‘Shit, we better crowdfund these things’ and that made me a bit, ‘I don’t know about this...and then I kind of got over it.’’

The resulting record Dancehall Days was written, produced and mixed in just three months and was, in his own words, an ‘‘insane’’ experience. To put the brief period in context, the 2010 The Beautiful Girls album Spooks took a year, while his solo effort Love Come Save Me took a ‘‘couple of days’’.

‘‘I was on the verge of insanity. I was getting three hours’ sleep for three months, it was such a monumental task,’’ McHugh said. 

‘‘It was three months for the whole thing:  three months ago there was zero and [by the end of August] there was a record.’’

Beyond banking worries, the main motivator for McHugh to make new tunes was  the music itself.

‘‘There were a couple of reasons [for making Dancehall Days]: I love making records and that’s what I want to do, I love to play and you really need a record to play.’’

Though he’s changed his process a little with the Pledge process, McHugh remains as committed as ever to independence, even if he does tend to vocalise it more these days than when he first started playing music to the public in the early 2000s.

‘‘It’s a bit more of a juggle now, but when I started I didn’t really have any kind of commercial – I don’t know if commercial is the word – but any kind of career thought behind it. I didn’t say, ‘I want to take this stance in my professional life’ because not even in my wildest dreams did I think music would be part of my way of earning my rent, you know? 

‘‘I just wanted to protect my love for music and I think if your motivation is correct, then you’re okay,’’ he said.

As the years have passed and he’s released record after record and toured relentlessly, the struggle remains.

‘‘You can’t really burn the building down, as much as you want to. It’s kind of like how do I find that line? How do you stand up enough for yourself and get across what you need to get across so you can sleep at night? And how much do you give?’’ he said.

‘‘It’s a battle for every single one of us, it’s never black and white. Some things you give and some things you take, as long as you’re conscious of the bigger picture. 

‘‘Musically for me,  it involves a different set of concerns, now with my – for want of a better term ‘career’ – how do I juggle my purity of aspiration with the fact that people are going to listen to it? 

‘‘We need to pay for the tour and pay all my musicians and accommodate them and stuff like that. Yeah, it’s a battle for all of us.’’

The Beautiful Girls play at The Cambridge Hotel on October 18. Tickets at yourcambridge.com  and ticketek.com.au.