Twinmusix Interviewed Travis from We The Kings abot their Australian tour and more
WE THE KINGS
WHAT CAN FAN EXPECT FROM YOUR SYDNEY TOUR?
On this tour we wanted to do something special, we have always wanted to do something special for each country we visit. This is our 10 year reunion and anniversary for our very first album, I think it's important to give fans something they have never seen before!.I think we have been to Australia 7 or 8 times or maybe even more, but every time we come to Australia we always play the songs that people want to hear. I think we are going to do that this time as well, and that will be the consistency!. We are also going to play some of our songs that our hard core fans have wanted us to play forever, but never heard us play live. I think that is going to be really special, because some of those songs mean the world to us! except we normally don't get as much time to play songs so it will be really exciting.
WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE SONG TO PLAY ON TOUR?
It depends on the show, it’s normally whatever song gets the crowd going and it can be any song. It doesn't have to be one of the songs people really know. When I was in Mexico we were doing our tour with Simple Plan and I decided to do a cover a song that is mostly in Spanish. I had to learn how to sing in Spanish and there was a rap part but I wanted to do it for all our Mexican fans and that was my favourite song to perform at our concert because it was so different from what we had ever done and the fans just loved it and it was really cool.
WHAT STAGE EQUIPMENT DO YOU USE GUITARS PEDDLES AND DRUMS?
Danny plays an SJC Kit its a drum company, and Danny has been friends with them for a long time.I play on a Fender Telecaster and Hunter Our Guitarist plays on a Gibson Les Paul and our other guitarist plays on a Gretsch guitar. We have this wall of sound on stage vs everyone having to play the same equipment.
IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY BAND PLAY ANY ONE OF YOUR SONGS WHICH SONG WOULD IT BE AND IN YOUR STYLE OR THEIR’S?
I would have Coldplay play ‘say you like me’, because the way we play it is the way it was written and it is a summer camp song so I would love to see what they can do.
WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO START A BAND?
We had a tough time getting girlfriends when we were kids so Hunter and I started a band. We decided if we couldn't get girls we would start a band and we would be cool enough to win a girl over.
WHAT WAS IT LIKE PLAYING THE VANS WARPED TOUR?
It's really fun to me, it's like a band summer camp. We all get together we all play, it's slot of the same bands every year that we play with. The show is always amazing but we only get to play for 30 to 35 minutes, so it's nice to play for the amount of time that you re given. It's also nice to see bands you haven't seen in a long time.
There are 50 to 70 bands that play on that tour. I think the beautiful thing about music fans is they come to the Vans Warped tour to see us the King and leave a fan of someone different. Someone might come to see a different band and leave a We the Kings fan so I think that's the best part about being on tour. It's a really cool festival and this year is the last year of it.
WHAT'S THE CRAZIEST THING THAT HAS HAPPENED ON TOUR?
We started releasing songs that dive into who we are as people. For example… just keep breathing, I wrote this song about that feeling I had growing up were I wasn't good enough; I was such a Misfit and black sheep from everyone else that I didn't really have a place to fit in. Now I have lived through that and become better from it.
I hind sight I'm better from it and grateful it happened to me, at the same time. I don't wish that happened to anybody and that no one had to go through bulling or anything like that.
We have fans tattooing lyrics from ‘sad song’ on their bodies (forever) with our signatures. People also want our lyrics tattooed on their bodies in our hand writing.
Someone came to a concert and said I want to get this tattooed on me, can you write it out for me. I was extremely honoured by that, I love when that kind of stuff happens. I wrote it out for her and then I signed a piece of paper and she got my signature tattooed on her as well the lyrics.
ARE YOU RELEASING ANY NEW MUSIC ANYTIME SOON?
I just sent a song to our mixer, so he can mix it. Then I send it to mastering, so they turn up all the leaves to be equal, to all the leaves on the radio and internet and from there it goes public. I just got a file that the mixer had got the file I sent him last night, hopefully in the next 5 or so days I'll have a mix of our song called festival music and that will be the next release. It should be available December 1st.We are going to release our record differently, we are going to release a record every month till the record comes out to focus people on the songs that are really important and songs that people can connect with. We released ‘Playing Strings with Cards’ a few months ago so ‘Festival Music’ will be the second song of our album that will be released.
HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH YOUR VIDEO FOR STORY OF TONIGHT?
We had a couple of concepts that came into the video. It's not our song it's a song from the Hamilton Broadway musical production. When we came up with a video we didn't want people to think it was our song so we just wanted a band to perform it. So we had these four individual's that were going through high school that were all friends that are going off into completely different areas of the world. We try to hit off on as many topics as we could but also done on a music video. We have one last chance while we are this young to experience this moment and I hope people take the grand scheme of it and that is life is so precious that the present moment we are all living in right now don't always be concerned with the future because the future is a mystery and the past has already happened there's nothing you can do to change it the only thing you can do is live right at this moment and that's what the song is about.
Anything else you want to announce to your fans?
We are really excited to come back to Australia and Australia is the second biggest country for We the kings.