And in 2013, it happens again, with the band jumping on the, possibly inappropriately titled (for these guys anyway) Boys of Summer Australian Tour, which happens next month. Andrew is very excited both to be a part of the tour and to get away from the cold. “Winnipeg is like minus 30, or some stupid cold like that,” he exclaims. “Toronto isn’t as bad as that. Right now I’m outside in a hoodie and jeans and I’m sort of comfortable. All my Australian friends here are still dying. We think it’s nice but all the Australians here think it’s pretty fucked up.
“But yeah we’re super excited to come back to Australia,” he enthuses. “We’ve been kind of lucky to be going there every Australian summer, and we get to avoid our winter. We’ve got this tour to Australia and then we’re going to South East Asia, Indonesia, Singapore, Bangkok and stuff like that, so it’s going to be a really interesting tour.”
Comeback Kid and Andrew himself have been absolute no stranger to our shores over the years. “I think Comeback Kid’s toured there six times,” he recalls. “I’ve probably been to Australia personally maybe 10, 15 times. I’ve been lucky enough to have made it a regular rotation. I don’t how it’s worked out, but somehow I get the opportunity to get there in your summer. I’ve experienced a Melbourne winter, which isn’t too far off what we’ve got here right now, but it’s still pretty much a walk in the park for someone from Winnipeg!”
The Boys of Summer Tour features an awesome punk/hardcore lineup. Outside Comeback Kid, there is genre mashing Melbourne act Deez Nuts, American hardcore band The Fallen Dreams and Sydney’s Hand of Mercy round out this multi-national bill. Andrew agrees it’s an amazing lineup and can’t wait for the tour to start.
“Yeah man, it’s gonna be cool,” he foretells. “We’ve never toured with Deez Nuts before, but we’re friends with JJ and stuff like that, so it’ll be super cool to be playing with them.”
He also feels that the type of show put on by bands such as these cannot be easily described, rather it should be experienced first hand.
“Trying to explain a hardcore/punk rock show, definitely doesn’t do it justice,” he says. “It’s just the fact that we’re going to be going off and getting crazy, that’s just a given. We’re hoping for no barricades, and if there are barricades hopefully people will brave the security. We try to make the show as much about the audience as the people onstage. We just try to keep an energetic positive vibe, and that’s our deal.”
The band are about to mark the ten year anniversary of the release of their first album next year, by recalling their original singer to do some special shows around the world.
“We were a band before this, but we actually started touring and put out our first album in 2003,” he explains. “I’ve been singing in the band since 2006, I used to play guitar in the band before that. I’m still really good friends with our old singer Scott, and I know he’s been itching to play some shows. So we’re just going to do a handful of shows, not a big tour or anything, in Europe, America and Canada, and play songs from our first two records. I’ll be playing guitar again and our old singer’s going to be singing. So it’s just kid of a fun thing we want to do, just mark ten years since our first album and first tours and stuff like that. It’s just an excuse to get together with Scott.
“I think the people into the band will appreciate that, that’s kinda what we’re doing it for.”
It’s been over two years since the band’s last album, Symptoms and Cures came out. Unfortunately, at this stage, fans of the band have a little while to wait before any new material is released, as the band is very much in demand on the live front even beyond their Australian/Asian tour, and for logistical reasons.
“We have a couple of songs written right now,” he informs us. “We’re probably going to release some new material maybe later in 2013. The earliest that we would try to record would be July. We’re just taking our time; we’re not in a rush to have a new album out. We have a lot of tours lined up, we all live in different cities. We have writing sessions for a week or two in one city, and then a tour, then a month or two later we’ll kinda meet up again and do another session. We’re still in the very early stages we haven’t picked out a studio or anything yet. So it’s a little ways off.”
BY ROD WHITFIELD
