Is it true you once dislocated your vocal fold while you were singing on stage?

It’s still dislocated! One side of the two muscles that move your vocal folds is just like [clicks tongue and gestures to the side]. I felt it click in my throat! Yeah, it was bad. I remember the show. I knew something was wrong but I just kept singing for probably a year afterwards. Every now and then I’d go and see an ENT specialist and they’d take a look. The first one said, “Your vocal fold is dislocated – we rarely see this. How are you singing?” I said, “I don’t know, it seems kind of fine to me!” When I warm up, it starts to go back into place. It is a bit odd!

What is the most overrated album of all time?

Matt Corby’s albums, one through four?

Who is your favourite soul singer of all time?

That’s hard. Jeez. It’s like a multi-way tie. Curtis Mayfield, Charles Bradley, D’Angelo, Sharon Jones and Nina Simone. I mean, how can you beat Nina? And her as a player and in the time that she was doing it and what she was saying – so much power.

Track listings are very important to you. Do you have a spot that you secretly save for your favourite song on each album?

I feel like there’s heaps of wrong ways to do it and very few right ways. I don’t put my favourite song in the same spot each time but I have things I put around the favourite song – I try to find ways to frame it before and after songs that are important. The track listing for this album [Tragic Magic] was hard. I went a little crazy.

It used to be that track three was always the most popular song.

I don’t know why but my favourite song is normally song five or seven. There is always some little jam around then that’s sick.

Your song Maggie starts with a magpie singing as you follow the melody along on the piano. If you had to collaborate with another animal on another song, who are you going for?

I’ve got my eyes on the kookaburra. It’s got a cool polyrhythmic thing going on. It’s always on a tempo. That’s saved for my beats album.

When we recorded Maggie I was working in the studio with my friends Chris and Nat. The magpie was singing and I hadn’t heard that melody from a magpie before so I went to the piano and found the notes on my right hand. Nat was just voice memoing outside and you can hear Chris in the background making an aeropress! And then on the stroke of the last chord, the magpie sang at the same time as I played and we all just looked at each other. When we played it back, we realised it was a really sick intro.

What song would you like to have played at your funeral?

Another One Bites the Dust?

What are you secretly really good at?

I have an ability to learn things and store them well in my memory. Someone was playing with a Rubik’s Cube in front of me a few months ago and I immediately wanted to learn how to do that. Once you learn the rules, it doesn’t take too long. I was getting quicker and quicker at it. I like to set my mind to something totally trivial and do it. That’s what learning instruments is too, sometimes.

Also, I don’t want to brag but I’m secretly really good at playing the bass. I love playing bass on other people’s records. I would give up my whole singing career if someone would just pay me to go and play bass. This is my favourite bass right here – it’s a 1962 Hofner Viola body.

Does the bass have a name?

No, I’ve never been a naming guy. Imagine if I said, “Oh, this is George!”

What has been your most memorable interaction with a fan?

This has only ever happened to me once but I was in Melbourne and I was catching up with my family over breakfast. When we finished eating, we went to pay and found out that these two people who had already left had paid for all six of us. They left a message to say they really like what I did! Never even took credit for it. They just paid and left. A pretty baller move.

What is the strangest job you’ve ever had?

I’ve had a few. I worked at a skate rink. I worked at Subway. I worked at General Pants. I worked at a deep-fried seafood shop. I once dropped something into the deep fat fryer and stupidly, without thinking, I just stuck my hand into the 400-degree oil. I worked at a coffee shop for a long time, I actually loved that job. It’s like the opposite to music – you do all this stuff and then you put the music out and there’s nothing. When you make someone a coffee, they enjoy it in front of you! You’re like [fist-pumping] “YES! NEXT CUSTOMER!” It’s instantly gratifying.

People always fall in love with their baristas. Did anyone ever try and pick you up?

No, sadly. It’s more like, “Oi little peasant boy. Make me my coffee. Give me my latte. Piss off.”

What is the most chaotic thing that has happened to you on stage?

I have bad dreams about this gig. We were playing the Forum and we got 30 seconds into the second song when our monitors desk just died. So everyone could hear us but we couldn’t hear each other or ourselves. We had to stop the show and explain to the room what was happening while they tried to fix it. The stage tech comes on and says, “Hey we’re probably going to need 10 minutes – do you want to just play something acoustically by yourself?” So I did that, then he comes back and says, “We’re still no closer to figuring this out. Do you want to come off stage?”

So I was explaining it to the audience and then I just started throwing down my tight five, talking and joking with the crowd. Everyone was giggling and I was like, is this what it feels like to be a comedian? Hardest job ever. I’d hate to do that. I was freaking out because cancelling the show would ruin the tour. But we ended up like repatching this entire desk in 10 minutes – this guy, Bozzy, is a fucking genius; he ripped everything out and started again. We got back on stage, the whole crowd was so warm and beautiful, and the set felt so good after that. We went through our little crisis together. But I still have bad dreams about it.

• Matt Corby’s Tragic Magic Australian tour runs 3-14 June. He is also performing a free show as part of Vivid Sydney at Tumbalong Park on 13 June