Ball Park Music rises from uni beginnings to stardom

With a canon of devilishly catchy pop songs, Ball Park Music is on a roll and about to embark on a new national tour.

Ball Park Music’s Jen Boyce, Sam Cromack, and Paul Furness, front; and Daniel and Dean Hanson, behind. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

In 1989, in the NSW seaside village of Len­nox Head, a boy named Sam Cromack was born. He was an obsessive music fan who was raised on a healthy diet of classic pop and rock artists such as the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Radiohead. His adolescent peers tended to adore heavy-metal bands, where delicate skills such as vocal harmonies were pushed aside in favour of fast, bombastic musicianship. He learned guitar, began writing his own songs and dreamt of a life playing music.

In the coastal city of Coffs Harbour, a girl named Jen Boyce had been born two years earlier. She grew up loving the Beatles, too, as well as Carole King and brotherly pop trio Hanson. From a young age, Boyce loved to sing vocal harmonies — a latent talent for which she had few outlets other than singing purely for pleasure. She learned piano and spent most of her life in Brisbane, dreaming of a life playing music.

It was there in 2008, while studying towards a bachelor of music at the Queensland University of Technology, that she was introduced to four young men who would soon become her friends and bandmates.

Sam Cromack: ‘I feel super optimistic about Brisbane’s future and its music scene.’

The four men — Cromack on guitar, Paul Furness on keyboards, and twin brothers Dean and Daniel Hanson on lead guitar and drums, respectively — were each skilled at playing their instruments, but the quartet lacked a bass player. Boyce, the newcomer, took to four strings despite a lack of experience, but it was her vocal talents that really sealed the deal.

Cromack smiles when he recalls this first collaboration. “I’d been trying to learn how to sing harmonies, but had yet to meet someone I could actually do it with,” he says.

“So meeting Jen was a really beautiful moment in my life, because she was such a quick learner and had been doing it all her life. I was this energetic young kid who’d written a million songs, and she could sing harmonies. I was like, ‘This is the best!’ ”

Geoff Green is the QUT lecturer who oversaw the class where the group met — which, fittingly, was devoted to the study of pop music, and involved assignments such as rearranging Creep by English rock band Radiohead, one of Cromack’s favourites.

“They were put together in a group out of coincidence — then they played, and it was obvious to everyone that there was a real chemistry there,” says Green, who is best known as the drummer in chart-topping Brisbane rock band George. “They had a love of music, a love of playing their instruments and a love of being together. They were just so curious about so many different aspects of music; they were like sponges.”

The five students formed a band called Ball Park Music — Cromack had come up with the name as a teenager because he liked the two-word expression for a rough estimate, rather than out of any particular fondness for baseball.

Green was later awarded the nickname of “band daddy” for his role in its inception, and recalls the band members’ dedication to attending early morning lectures in their second year of study, despite some of them being sprawled on the floor, sleep-deprived after a late-night gig. “But they’d still be there,” he says.

“I could tell they were a bit less enthusiastic than normal, but they came in, and they worked. They were juggling what was required for uni while having that local success building up, and I thought they it handled quite well.”

In the decade since the band’s formation, the lecturer has watched his former students with great fondness.

“I’m definitely a fan. I love everything they’ve done: their albums, their energy, their live shows — all of it,” says Green, who describes the band’s music as “honest, fun when it needs to be, and genuine.

“When it’s like that, I think people — whether they have studied music or not — can relate to it. They feel it.”

The young performers have honed their skills in the public eye to become an exceptionally tight indie rock band. Today, Ball Park Music has become synonymous with a canon of devilishly catchy pop songs led by Cromack’s memorable lyrics, which are often romantic, optimistic, sensitive and funny, all at once.

Their fifth album, Good Mood — released yesterday — is another strong collection of songs. Central to the group’s wide appeal is its marriage of male and female vocals, as Cromack’s strong melodies are bolstered by Boyce’s sweet, stirring harmonies. Though coincidence played no small part in their meeting, an uncommon blend of talent and persistence was required for the band members to realise their collective dream of a life in music.

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Five kilometres from the QUT campus where the band met is a small studio in an industrial estate. Though neighbouring businesses in the inner-north suburb of Stafford include smash repairers, welders and sheet metal manufacturers, this unlikely space has become a hub for crafting some of the most innovative, irresistible pop music being made anywhere in Australia.

Thin, bespectacled frontman Cromack can be heard playing drums behind a roller door when Review visits one afternoon in early February, a week before the release of Good Mood. The room is crowded with amplifiers, musical instruments, speakers, a writing desk and what the band leader describes as the world’s least comfortable couch, bought purely for the appeal of its orange cushions. A low-powered air conditioning unit works valiantly to combat the hot air, while three lamps give off a warm light, adding to the homely feel.

Since April 2017, the Stafford locale has functioned as writing space, rehearsal room, band clubhouse and occasional late-night party venue — handy, given the lack of residential neighbours.

“Previously, a good chunk of this equipment existed at my house as a kind of home studio,” says Cromack, who sits by the desk and casts his eye around the room. “I was very anxious about moving out of there and coming here, because — kind of like a toddler who didn’t want to share — I was just worried about what that would feel like.

“But the whole work-life balance of having this space has been amazing. I feel like we all ­finally figured out how to come here, put our best effort in, do what we do best, and at the end of the day, try and sign off. Making this album, I’ve felt much healthier in the mind.”

For Good Mood, Cromack aimed to simplify his songwriting, after the self-imposed tension he felt while working on the 10 songs that comprised the quintet’s previous album, 2016’s Every Night the Same Dream, which debuted at No 3 on the ARIA albums chart.

“My head was all over the shop. I felt so neurotic and, frankly, not super happy during that whole period of writing,” he says. “I was always having fun, but massively unsure or unrelaxed.”

This time, Cromack decided to play to his strengths. “I made a rule for myself, which was to only write in the classic pop structure: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus,” he says. “It freed me immensely, because I didn’t have to worry about structure any more, which was always a real hurdle for me. I wrote really quickly, and was just enjoying it again. And I found that if you write with that kind of rule for yourself, some songs naturally deviate, anyway.” His preference for lengthy, direct song titles remains, as evidenced on the closing track, I am So In Love with You, or the second single The Perfect Life Does Not Exist.

As well, Cromack’s casual use of profanity — as heard on earlier songs such as 2010s iFly, whose joyful chorus exclaims “I f..king love you / I think you’re pretty” — is undiminished.

The opening lines of first single Exactly How You Are — which polled at Number 18 in the most recent Triple J Hottest 100 — includes the memorable lyric, “I don’t know the c..ts you used to hang around with / I don’t care for their names or what they did”. It, too, is a love song.

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Beyond Cromack feeling much better about his songwriting, the fifth album also finds the band more comfortable at embracing its home city. “This is absolutely the album where we’ve felt most ourselves and played into our natural image the most. Part of that was celebrating Brisbane a bit more,” says Cromack, who cites the album’s cover as an example.

Good Mood features the powerful image of a woman astride a rearing horse, which was taken by guitarist Dean Hanson out the front of the group’s Stafford studio. “Brisbane really has become part of my identity, especially because of the band,” says Cromack.

“I feel super optimistic about Brisbane’s future and its music scene. I feel like more and more people from Sydney and Melbourne are looking here and feeling a bit jealous, in a way. The only thing that would make me leave is the fact that I’ve been here for a while, and I feel like change is healthy.”

Jen Boyce made that change a couple of years ago and has called Sydney home since the day the band finished recording Every Night the Same Dream in regional Victoria. Given that Ball Park Music’s schedule is organised so far in advance, her move hasn’t really affected the band’s workflow or creative output. “It’s honestly been pretty painless,” says Cromack. “The only thing I miss is the more personal side. I’m sad that the five of us can’t get together as spontaneously.”

Boyce agrees. “I miss the hangouts, but I love Sydney,” she says, after arriving at the Stafford studio direct from the airport. “My boyfriend is a drummer and all the acts that he was playing with are in Sydney. While we were in Brisbane, he didn’t get any work, but as soon as we went there, he’s just been busy all the time. It’s worked out nicely.”

After 10 years sharing vocals in a popular band, Boyce is acutely aware of her presence as a female performer in a genre often perceived as masculine. “I’d like to be a role model for teenage girls who don’t fit into the pop music cliche world of fashion. We’re all really dorky; we’re just complete nerds,” she says with a laugh. “None of us are into fashion or anything like that. We know nothing!”

True enough, none of the band members appears to have made a special effort for their late afternoon photo shoot with Review. They’re all wearing street clothes, and there’s not a stylist in sight, which fits in with the band’s everyman — and everywoman — appeal.

“I’ve had quite a few people — parents particularly — tell me that they like that I’m a role model for their kids,” says Boyce. “I’m a woman playing music in what a lot of people think of as a man’s game, and I’m being totally myself, wearing what’s comfortable, and acting how I want to act, without outside influences.

“I think I’d like to be a role model for kids of any gender or age — but particularly girls who want to get into music, or girls who are struggling with identity and want to be themselves and be comfortable in being who they are.”

As the sun sets, the five musicians head into the warmly lit studio to uncoil cables, tune instruments, share beers and prepare to rehearse a set of songs they’ll play at a music festival in Tasmania in a couple days.

Later this month, Ball Park Music will begin a national tour that will be seen by thousands of fans attracted by the band’s idiosyncratic style. First on the schedule are three shows in the band’s home town: two for adults, and one all-ages at The Zoo, which is the first venue the band ever played.

But for now it’s just the five friends who met at university. They form a tight circle and face each other. At high volume, they run through songs new and old, including Everything is Shit Except My Friendship With You, Sad Rude Future Dude — sample chorus lyric: “I haven’t had a friend in years / I only have sex with myself” — and Literally Baby. “I think that’s our best song,” says Boyce, smiling and satisfied.

Even though Cromack tends to sing with his eyes closed, Boyce’s eyes often focus on his face as she harmonises while navigating the fretboard of her bass guitar. On display in these close quarters is that same chemistry, love of music and love of being together that first came to life 10 years earlier.

Good Mood is out now via Stop Start. Ball Park Music’s national tour begins in Brisbane on February 23 and ends in Sydney on March 9.