American rock outfit Sleeping With Sirens return to Australia for a national tour next month, treating fans to fresh tracks and nostalgic favourites.
Nick Martin, SWS’s guitarist, is still riding high from playing Team USA’s Winterfest concert alongside Good Charlotte last month. “It was really cool playing this Olympic event with all the different athletes there,” he says.
“I guess the crazy part was playing in the freezing cold; it was about 10 degrees fahrenheit (-12 degrees celsius) and I couldn’t feel my fingers at all… I’m thinking: ‘No way! There’s no way I’m gonna be able to make it through this set.’”
Their Australian tour will certainly be a welcome change of scenery for the band after the Utah chill. “I look forward to it, I just want to be… in much nicer Australian weather,” Nick says.
“We’re very excited to be back. We’ve been talking about it for so long now. We always have so much fun and the people are awesome.”
Nine years together is not an easy achievement for a band to reach, especially with the growing pains of early adulthood thrown in.
But Nick says the boys have become a tight family over the years. “There’s just a natural maturity that comes along with getting older and understanding each other a lot more,” the guitarist says.
“Every album changes, where we’re at in life changes, and it’s much different than when we were in our early 20s.”
The band is “really relaxed” after winding up their North American tour in support of their fifth studio album, ‘Gossip', released in September last year. “You never know how it’s going to be, you never know how people will react when they see it live [for the first time],” Nick says.
“But we’re able to really shine when we bring it on tour, we’re able to interact with fans during those songs in the live show because it’s a much different experience and it’s really, really positive.”
SWS are always conscious of their dedicated fan base when they’re building a set list, blending old tracks with songs from newer albums.
The diehards who come to shows with the band’s logo or lyrics tattooed on themselves are “forever humbling” for the guys. “Part of me is like ‘what’s wrong with you?’. Like, I’m not that cool, we’re the most uncool people,” Nick says.
“But I see the other side of it, where we’ve impacted a lot of people's lives in these positive ways and I always tell fans when they come up to us [that] it goes both ways.”
The band are constantly pushing themselves to experiment with new styles and try out different ideas on tour. “We’ve got a really fun thing that we haven’t really done before,” Nick teases about a project SWS will release this year.
“We want our band to be interesting; we don’t want people to just come to a show and have it be the same show as the last time they saw us.”
For the guitarist, keeping material fresh and having room to change the live show is key to bringing songs to life on tour without losing steam. “It’s really hard to find a group of individuals [who can] do that successfully without wanting to completely kill each other on tour,” he says.
“To find a collective group of people who can... keep everyone inspired and motivated... I’m extremely fortunate.”
Sleeping With Sirens Tour Dates
Sat 21 Apr - Big Top (Sydney)Sun 22 Apr - Festival Hall (Melbourne)
Tue 24 Apr - Thebarton Theatre (Adelaide)
Wed 25 Apr - Metro City (Perth)
Fri 27 Apr - Eatons Hill Hotel (Brisbane)
