60
March 1 – 14, 2014
Arts
www.SanTanSun.com
McCain content with family life, variety of projects BY CHRISTINA FUOCO-KARASINSKI
Edwin McCain, the singer-songwriter behind perennial wedding favorites “I’ll Be” and “I Could Not Ask for More,” is busy these days. He’s working on a variety of projects ranging from an ESPN program to new music. But, he says, he’s embarrassed to admit what he was doing just before an interview. “You’d laugh if I told you,” McCain says. “I’m running a forestry mulcher today, clearing some property.” That’s McCain these days, a family man who is inspired more by his 8-, 7 1/2- and 4-year-old children than current singers. “A lot of my songs have been inspired by their point of view or something that I did,” he says. “The 20-year-old songwriter that I once was, I had these larger themes. There are much bigger ideals there. Now the things I seem to focus on are, say, my daughter leaving a little sticky handprint on the wall at our house and that becomes a song. I used to have huge philosophical themes. I don’t have that anymore. The beauty in the tiny moment is just about deciding to be happy.” McCain is happy, too, to be coming to Arizona; he’s playing the Ostrich Festival in Chandler at 6 p.m. Friday, March 7. Other performers include A Flock of Seagulls, Three Dog Night and Rancho Viejo. McCain, whose last album was 2011’s “Mercy Bound,” feels connected to the Grand Canyon State.
“I love Arizona,” he says. “I spend a lot of time out there. I learned how to fly gliders in Maricopa from Arizona Soaring that’s run by a guy named Jason Stephens. He taught me how to fly. “I’m also friends with a helicopter pilot in town named Bruce Haffner. He used to fly for one of the news channels; he still might. I love Arizona, though. It’s absolutely spectacular.” At the Ostrich Festival, McCain’s setlist will feature songs from 10 of his albums. Some of the songs are acoustic, others are with his full band. “It’s a little bit of everything,” he says. “I like to tell the stories about how the songs were written, and give everyone the perspective of how it all comes about.” Despite the daunting number of songs from which he can choose, McCain explains that it’s not that hard to pick which tunes to sing. “There are some songs that, over the years, we’ve figured out these are the tunes people really like. How they go over with crowds, it becomes pretty clear which ones I should play. After many years of playing, we sorted them out.” Two of those songs are “I’ll Be” and “I Could Not Ask for More,” both of which have become favorites of “American Idol” contestants. “I love it,” he says about watching fledgling singers performing his tunes.
COMING TO TOWN: Edwin McCain performs during the Ostrich Festival on Friday, March 7. Photo by Brian Nelson
“Not only because I get paid for it. I think it’s just cool. I’m just a kid with my guitar writing songs. Now I have a song (‘I’ll Be’) that gets played all over the world. That’s amazing to me. Sometimes it doesn’t seem real. It’s an incredibly lucky thing to have happen. It’s not lost on me at all. Every day I get to play music for a living because of that song. It’s pretty lucky. You just have a nice little engraved invitation for people to come out and hear you play.” Still, it’s a mystery why those two songs really resonated with fans. “If I knew that, I would be the president of the record label,” McCain says with a laugh. “I think a lot of it has to do with they’re perennially associated with weddings. Sometimes, though, awkwardly, people come up and go ‘That was me and
my ex-husband’s song.’ What do I say? ‘Congratulations?’ ‘I’m sorry?’ I don’t know. “I know that there are two things that inspire me about music—it has to be honest and it has to be emotional for me. Even like hardcore punk music is honest and emotional. It’s just honestly angry and emotional. I think for whatever reason there seems to be an X factor in music. There is that unspoken thing that happens when somebody writes about something that means something to them. Songwriters can sometimes tap into that. I wish I could tell you I understood the alchemy of it. I’m just blessed to be a part of it.” Christina Fuoco-Karasinski is the editor of the SanTan Sun News. She can be reached at christina@santansun.com.