ASHLEE: To start off with, I just want to say thank you for giving us your time this morning.
TRENTON: Yea, no worries.
So, I guess first things first. Your national tour is soon to kick off, which is pretty exciting considering the last time you guys toured home was what, January/February, correct?
Yeah, that was our last full tour. We did a couple of club shows when we got back a few months ago but, they were mainly capital cities. So yeah, we’re able to play our full headline set now and take out the entire package so we’re looking forward to it, very much. It’ll be great to get back to a few regional spots. I don’t know if Newcastle is really considered regional but yeah…
Yeah, I guess it would kinda be considered that in comparison to the bigger cities, sure. A lot of tours seem to bypass it when they do big national tours…occasionally, not all the time but yeah.
Our last show there was actually at The Loft, which closed a little while ago I think?
Yeah, I actually photographed that show and it shut down because the council didn’t want to fund it anymore.
That sounds about right.
Yeah, which is great cause now all the kids have nowhere to go now so, it makes sense!
And then they complain we have a drinking problem in our culture.
Exactly. And then these kids can’t get to these shows because most of them are minors, so shows like your Newy date is 18+, so it’s really a shame because when you guys played The Loft, it was a really good crowd with a very diverse age demographic.
Yeah, unfortunately that’s the way things are, I suppose. All ages venues are very hard to come by now.
They are very scarce. So, since you last toured here you’ve toured both the UK and US, yes? There was a headliner involved there too, am I right? Do you find that mental?
Yeah, we headlined in both and it was our first headlining tour in those countries so, it went really, really well. I think we always hoped for it but you know, we did our first soldout headlining tour around Australia which is great because it gave us a headstart for the UK and US. We had the headliner in the UK before the US and it was in London and I think it was like literally three people shy of selling out or something like that so that was like 500 people in the room, which was huge for us. Especially considering it was a headline tour, suddenly all the pressure is on you to be pulling people, so to actually see people turning up to your shows; it is just such a cool feeling. I think we’re a bit more of a reactive band ‘cause we think ‘oh, this is rad’ and then we look back and think ‘that was actually, really, really cool’.
That’s awesome! Now that you’ve headlined the UK, US and Australia, how do you find the touring experience differs, if at all, across these counties?
Yeah, look every country has its own kind of touring identity. Like, the UK, because it’s quite short drives everywhere, we actually do have a bit more time to sleep in [laughs] and get a good night sleep in a hotel, rather than in a backseat or a bunk on the way to the next place like we have do in Australia or the US. So, yeah. UK, I think we enjoy ourselves more because we’re not so rushed. In Australia, because it’s spread over weekends, it is really relaxed and casual and we enjoy it because we get to see our friends and family. And the US is very much getting into a routine over a few weeks; the shows are all fantastic but it really is a case of got to bed and drive overnight in the converted shuttled bus we have over there. In terms of crowds, there’s not massive differences but in terms of, I guess the mood and feel, for us as a touring band it’s great because it keeps us fresh and keeps us from getting too stuck into the routine and becoming too causal with the rest of it.
Over the past few years, you’ve toured with some of the heavyweights of punk and hardcore like Pierce the Veil and Sleeping With Sirens. You’ve shared the same stages and bills with some really big names like The Used and The Offspring when you did Warped AUS. You also, as you said, get to see friends and family when you tour so you also get to tour with friends like Tonight Alive…tell me, collectively as a band, what do you take away from touring with these names and individually for yourself, what do you take away from it?
Collectively, out of those tours, you take on a lot of wisdom. When we started, Pierce The Veil was out first big tour those guys are fantastic people and they were really, really encouraging and you know, quick to offer, even on Warped tour, advice and it’s great just to share that experience of being on the road together. Collectively, we’ve taken a lot of wisdom and experience for how we approach our touring and approach our strategy as a band from a business side of things and you make good friends with good people. We’ve been very lucky to tour with such a great bunch of bands, with not a huge amount of ego’s, ‘cause those bands are definitely out there but we’ve done pretty well with being able to tour with the good ones. Individually, it’s very much the same and I think being able to do headline dates after a support tour and seeing how many people you’ve pick up or running into people that say ‘oh, I discovered you guys by the PTV tour’ or ‘I’ve just started listening to you recently’, that kind of affirmation; we’re still growing and we’re still reaching people, and they’re connecting with it. It’s not a hype thing or a popularity thing, people are coming to see what we’re about and I think that being a band, for us, that’s our image, that’s our music and our brand and the way we carry ourselves and tour and that’s what people connect to and for myself, that’s the most affirming part of it.
Excellent. So, on the flipside, you guys will be who Forever Ends Here will be looking up to in many ways. They’re all still very young guys-
And doing great!
Oh, yeah. They’re going nuts. Do you feel you have a kind of duty of care when it comes to being the headline act? Like, showing the young guys how it’s done.
Yeah, you know, we are very conscious of how things are done and we’re quick to share our touring experience and with our Australian touring we have been lucky enough to help out developing Australian bands on a consistent tour with arranged dates. We want to go out with bands that are good people and bands we enjoy watching and we wanna hang out with, so we’ve been very lucky with the bands we’ve toured with and they’ve been good people who share their experiences and wanna hang out with us and not just have us there to round out the numbers and I think that’s a great thing. Bands should be encouraging the next generation because that’s why we have so many bands that get stuck and don’t now where to go because no one’s told them what to do or what to expect and what’s normal so, so few bands do get a chance to get out there and there’s been some great bands that just disappear because no one showed them how to tour effectively and people leave then bands because they don’t know what they’re in for. And we know we’re very lucky with what we’ve got but even in the early stages there’s lots of stuff we wish we could have learned earlier on, so if we can pass that on, all it’s doing is strengthening the music and the happier the bands are and the more involved the fans will get. That’s everything approved, so it’s a self-perpetuating thing and we want to be apart of that.
Awesome. Next, I have to ask you about ReImagine, which is due out on September 16. A most excellent announcement I must say. My FB timeline was a little pleased! I know you guys have said it’s well, a reimagining and a rediscovering of Unimagine (wonderful album too, I rated it very highly in my review last year) but where along the way did you all go, let’s do this and do it just as good as last time?
We’ve done acoustic stuff in the past and find it’s a good way of actually connecting with fans and just playing acoustic sets after the PTV tour and we’ve always enjoyed it and we all listen to the softer side of the world we play music in so we’ve always enjoyed the kind of music and you know we’ve always identified with our songs on a personal level. We don’t just write something because people might like it, we write because we enjoy it and we enjoy playing, so being able to take all those influences we love (Paper Kites, Bon Iver etc) and working it onto our own music let us rediscover and rebuild our songs from the ground up. We’ve always wanted to do that and we always wanted to do the acoustic stuff but we wanted to get a chance to do it justice and let it take on a character and be meaningful and it came down to, look, we’ve got a bit of time, lets just get away, lets just do it and got to a house in the Snowy Mountains for a week, lock down together, play music over and over again until something settles and go from there. The whole recording process for the EP has been quite flexible because we wanted to make sure we were doing it right so we wrote the tracks before we booked the studio time and yeah, it felt really good but then we got into the studio and we weren’t sure if we’d have enough time to really do it justice but Erik (Ron) our producer is brilliant and we went really well with him and a week and it was more than enough time to get the five tracks down and really make it the best we could, so it’s been a very organic process.
Well, that’s a nice segue because I was going to you, if you found that to be a more therapeutic means of recording? Less mechanical, even, than being in a recording studio adhering to deadlines and whatnot?
Yeah, it was a great thing because we’ve started writing down for album three and we do need to have that written pretty soon and we are kinda feeling that pressure so it does impact on the writing process but being able to do Reimagine really naturally and to relax and enjoy the process, rather than needing to have it done, and ready to be released by a certain point, it’s just a nice approach.
So with this third album that you’re in the process of writing, do you feel you need to outdo yourself with each album or are you just in a headspace that say’s ‘we’re so lucky to be doing this, regardless of what happens, we know we’ve made our mark and we’re proud’, sort of place?
Look, we enjoy everything we do and if we weren’t enjoying it then there’d be no point continuing on with it at all, do you know what I mean? Of course, we’re not necessarily trying to out do ourselves but we’re definitely trying to improve ourselves and push ourselves to do better and progress in a way that we wanna explore different avenues but keep a natural journey with our music. So, from Ground Dweller to Unimagine, there was a clear difference in the imagery and the songwriting and with Reimagine, we really had a way to explore the future possibilities. Following onto this next album, we wanna enjoy progressing ourselves and improving what we can and keeping it fresh and interesting.
Well, that’s, so that concludes everything quite nicely.
Yeah, yeah.
On that note, thanks for hanging out with me today. Look forward to seeing you in Newcastle.
Thanks heaps.