Bacharach and dad

Arlie McCormick is looking forward to performing Burt Bacharach tunes. Photo: Lara Macgregor

Dunedin singer, teacher and vocal director Arlie McCormick will next month take to the stage to pay tribute to the late, great American composer and songwriter Burt Bacharach and her own dad. She tells Rebecca Fox about the two big influences in her life.

Arlie McCormick has this vivid memory of her father, this very "white, middle-aged man", sitting in his Gold Coast living room singing Walk on By.

"I thought there’s something very wrong with this, but it still worked. So it sort of ended up being really interesting how this part of my life and childhood sort of really shaped where I’ve come to."

McCormick spent weekends with her father after her parents split up and her mother remarried.

"My dad and I spent a lot of time together. He was a really great muso. And so we just spent our life, with him at the piano, me singing, entertaining people that just turned up at the doorstep."

Even as a teenager, McCormick loved those weekends because "it was actually really fun".

"Then my girlfriends all cottoned on to it, and they’d all be coming down with me, and it was just a constant stream of people, music, wine and lots of Burt Bacharach, heaps of Burt Bacharach."

A few decades later and now living in Dunedin where she is a University of Otago professional practice fellow in performance voice, McCormick, who has a master’s degree in vocal pedagogy from the Queensland Conservatorium, had the idea of doing a Burt Bacharach show, but then the musician died last year aged 94.

"So we thought it’s maybe not the right timing."

Instead she continued performing with her company Pop up Productions including in Spring Awakening and with Jackie Clarke and Tahu Mackenzie in Clarke’s Diva show. In the eight years she has been in Dunedin she has also played the Bird woman in Mary Poppins and was cast in the national tour of Menopause the Musical which was cut short by the Covid pandemic. She was also the vocal director for Musical Theatre Dunedin’s We Will Rock You.

"I’ve done so much stuff behind the scenes since I’ve lived here, behind the scenes musical directing and lots of band stuff and gigs and jazz singing and, you know, corporate-y sort of work. I’ve done stuff with the Oxos [Cubans] and all sorts of things."

She is also surrounded by talented singers, songwriters and performers at the university.

"Watching all their stars rise, you know, like Emily Alice and all of these people that I’ve taught over the years doing so well. Well, you kind of get to an age where you actually lose ‘fomo’ [fear of missing out].

"But I think doing your own thing ... I think the songs really suit me at the age that I am," she said.

Arlie McCormick and her dad on the Gold Coast. Photo: supplied

So the time seemed right to finally get the Bacharach show off the ground, and pianist Stuart Walker was keen to get on board, as was the Regent Theatre.

Young has written some arrangements for the show.

"The show consists of the Burt Bacharach songbook, but some medleys of like songs sort of strung together, which he’s crafted really beautifully."

She admits some of his songs are a bit ’80s.

"There’s that terrible Wives and Lovers song that he wrote that’s about keeping yourself looking pretty for your husband. And then there’s, like, these really kind of ’80s ones, On My Own that Patti LaBelle did as a duet."

But they tell really great stories and are very clever. She is looking forward to singing The Bells of St Augustine — the last song Bacharach wrote.

"Some of the songs are so hard. Like, timing changes, key changes. I mean, there’s a reason he’s had, you know he’s had 40 No 1 hits or something ridiculous.

"Bacharach and Hal David they could just write a song. Like, it was a masterclass in songwriting. Stuart and I sit there going, how the hell did they do this?"

There is one song Promises Promises which they deliberately made "ridiculously hard" and the only person to record it was Dionne Warwick. McCormick will perform it in her show.

"She just makes it sound so easy."

However, writing the show had become a bit of a journey for McCormick, who lost her father at 53 when she was 23.

"It’s ended up also being a little bit of a dedication to my late father. He would just be so chuffed that I’m doing this, you know."

But it has also been really quite cathartic in a lot of ways.

"Because sometimes you, in your daily life, you don’t get the time, do you, to reflect on those sorts of things?"

A young Arlie McCormick belts out a tune as her dad plays the piano. Photo: supplied

She credits her singing skills to the time she spent with her dad and her mother who was an opera singer.

"I have this vision of him with the harmonica around his mouth, playing the piano and a guitar ready to go. He was like a working, gigging muso, like at the Gold Coast. That’s where I’m from originally."

He taught her to sing as she did not have singing lessons, "which is ironic because I’m a singing teacher".

"He sort of taught me jazz and contemporary and that sort of stuff, you know. The very first song we ever did was like Route 66, you know, followed by Say A Little Prayer and The Look Of Love and Close To You, you know. That was sort of the playlist."

Their weekends were full of music and she can vividly remember not wanting to go back home to Brisbane on a Sunday night.

"Him bundling me into the car on a Monday morning because he didn’t want me to go home on a Sunday night because it was too depressing. I remember that. And I still now even hate Sunday nights. It’s a weird thing."

McCormick will share some of those stories throughout the show as well, such as being in Innsbruck, Austria with her father and being whisked away to this underground nightclub where her father played Bacharach on the guitar.

"We basically got hijacked. We didn’t pay for a drink for the rest of the night. I was only 19 with my dad hungover in the middle of Europe. He was quite mad, you know, but in a good way. People do relate to human, natural, sort of normal stories."

McCormick, who had many theatre and performing credits under her belt before moving to New Zealand, is like many performers in struggling with imposter syndrome and is more used to performing as part of a group than solo.

She will have support in the second half with Harriet Moir, who has been helping develop the show, and Six60 Scholarship recipient singer Shannon Burnett will perform an original piece as well.

"It’s kind of something that I’ve never actually had all of the focus on me. So that is something that is a bit overwhelming."

The show has been months in the making and rehearsing as there is a lot of material to learn. She is also juggling it with preparation for the Abba concert with the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra in November and an Elvis show in December.

"So I’m, like, having to, like, compartmentalise. You know, this person who’s spent the last few years, you know, musically directing, sitting on the sidelines, suddenly I’ve got to do some practice and some work and I’ve got to be organised."