The Doug Anthony Allstars are back… again! To be more exact, they’re still here. Last year, DAAS lynchpins Tim Ferguson and Paul McDermott reunited after 20 years apart. During their initial decade together, the musical comedy troupe was rounded out by guitarist Richard Fidler. However, Fidler’s unavailability meant the reunion tour was conducted with Paul Livingston (AKA Flacco) in his place. Livingston is now a fully fledged band member, and the Doug Anthonys’ return to the stage was so successful that they’re back for another run of shows this month.
“Unfortunately [McDermott and I] tend to think the same about our purpose in the universe,” Ferguson says. “You know what it’s like; you haven’t seen somebody for a long time and they’re a close friend – when you get back together, there’s no getting-to-know-you phase. We just hit the ground running – or in my case, hit the ground wheeling – so we didn’t have to get our bearings creatively.”
DAAS started out the mid-’80s as three Canberra-based eccentrics who became a celebrated staple of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival by the decade’s end. In the early ’90s, their UK breakthrough was echoed in Australia – they appeared regularly on ABC comedy show The Big Gig before developing their own series DAAS Kapital. In all contexts, a bold embrace of taboo subject matter has been their trademark.
“It’s always been about having a different perspective on things that people, whether they’re conservative or liberal, have assumed are fixed,” Ferguson says. “There are songs we did like ‘(I Wanna Be) A Mexican Hitler’, which on the surface are just incredibly stupid songs juxtaposing Mexican imagery with Hitler and Nazis, and hopefully tearing Nazis down in the process. But of course there’s a deeper point to it and a deeper purpose than just making comfortable comedy audiences have a giggle.”
Since rebooting, Ferguson and McDermott have left their existing repertoire of comedy originals alone. Instead, with Livingstone’s help, they’ve composed a whole batch of new material. “It’s grown on the last tour into something entirely new and very surprising for us,” Ferguson says. “The first time around, DAAS were running around, trying to get noticed, trying to provoke a reaction from people. We didn’t really mind what it was and we gave the impression we didn’t care. Now that we’re old men, we actually genuinely do not care what anybody says about us; we don’t care what feathers we ruffle. I think it’s the most excited I’ve been about any creative endeavour.
“The theme is death,” he continues. “We were young men the first time around, we didn’t care about death. But now we’re all ancient, death is a good topic because it’s what our original audience is starting to worry about. People are starting to realise that clock on the wall is actually ticking and it means something. Everything is gearing towards this theme of death, darkness, oblivion. And of course, sex and war we always throw in.”
These days, Ferguson spends a lot of time handing out advice to aspiring comedy writers. In 2010, he released the comedy writing compendium The Cheeky Monkey and he also hosts courses on this same topic. He offers a quick rundown of the DAAS formula for sparking hilarity.
“Laughter occurs when people are surprised by something that’s figured,” he says. “Even if you’re laughing because you’re baffled, you’ve reached a point at the end of the story or at the end of the description where you’re baffled, and of course you should’ve seen that coming. For us, it’s always been about finding that point of surprise.”
Doug Anthony Allstarsappear at Seymour CentreWednesday March 11 – Friday March 13.
