Something wicked this way comes… it’s Aussie punk-rock band Clowns as they pile into a tiny car for their ‘Dead In The Summer’ tour kicking off in January.
Clowns have spent the past year touring on the back of their sophomore album, ‘Bad Blood’, including their first foray into the European market. Drummer Jake Laderman says the band is now looking to the future. “I think we've probably taken that record as far as we possibly can,” Jake says.
“We toured the absolute shit out of it and it's been great. We had multiple pressings done here, we had some in Europe and we got to go over to Europe for the first time with that record.
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“I feel like that record has done a lot for us on a popularity level, it's really helped us a lot and with new tunes coming out, we hope to replicate that and continue going onwards and upwards.”
For the ‘Dead In The Summer’ tour, Jake says fans can look forward to hearing new music from Clowns as they currently prepare to record their latest studio album, which is set for release early in the New Year. “It's ten tracks, all slightly longer songs than the previous record and we're really excited to have some new sounding, different instruments,” he says.
“We’ve been exploring territory we've never been before, so we're all very psyched to get it underway. The album won't come out till possibly a third of the way into next year but we'll definitely be playing a couple of tunes from it.”
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The band have also been courting a selection of Australian rock royalty to make some unlikely musical cameos on the upcoming record, including You Am I frontman and Clowns supporter, Tim Rogers. “Originally we were just going to get him in for a pick slide,” Jake laughs.
“We thought that would be really funny to release the track titles and say ‘this song; featuring a pick slide from Tim Rogers', and we'd make it extremely obvious which one it is. Tim’s a really friendly guy and has always shown interest in our band, so we're just going to hang out and if I can persuade him to do something in the studio then I will definitely be happy about it, but we'll see.”
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The ‘Dead In The Summer’ tour includes a set at the Thrashville music festival in the Hunter Valley, NSW, where they’ll play alongside two legendary Australian punk acts, The Hard-Ons and Cosmic Psychos. “The line-up looks great and I’m really psyched because it's such a good Australian punk line-up,” Jake says.
“We've played a bunch of shows with The Hard-Ons in the past, same with the [Cosmic] Psychos too, we absolutely love those guys so getting to play with both of them, it’s not too common these days.”
The current success of Clowns comes at a time when the ‘killer clowns’ phenomenon has been causing a stir in Australia, a coincidence Jake says has worked out somewhat in the band’s favour. “I wouldn't say we've had any problems with it, it was just an amazing publicity boost for us for absolutely no reason,” he says.
“Even to this day, we receive messages from people hurling abuse. We were getting literally a message every three minutes for about two weeks. It was really funny to see how passionate people are about hating these clowns.”
Clowns Tour Dates
Sat 31 Dec - Bendigo Hotel (Melbourne)Thu 12 Jan - The Loft (Warrnambool)
Fri 13 Jan - Crown & Anchor (Adelaide)
Fri 20 Jan - Dicey's (Wollongong)
Sat 21 Jan - Thrashville Festival (Hunter Valley)
Wed 25 Jan - Karova Lounge (Ballarat)
Thu 26 Jan - Barwon Club Hotel (Geelong)
Fri 27 Jan - Musicman (Bendigo)
Thu 16 Feb - The Gov (Adelaide) - w/ The Descendents
Fri 17 Feb - Capitol (Perth) - w/ The Descendents
Wed 22 Feb - Eatons Hill Hotel (Brisbane) - w/ The Descendents
