Playing across America and Europe? Check. Rockin’ this year’s ARIAs red carpet? Check. Getting arrested in Madrid? Check… And that’s just 2011.
“We just quit uni in November last year, so a year ago now, and the plan was to try and get a gig or two in London,” says Willows. “Once we got to Europe it just spread out of control and we ended up spending seven months travelling around the world. We had a lot of fun times, we slept in a van for a good month in America, and we drove over 17,000 kilometres in less than a month around the country. When we were in Paris, we got arrested because we did a guerrilla show, one of them was under the Eiffel Tower actually where they were having mass demonstrations and starting huge bonfires. We set up there and played a guerrilla show and of course the cops came and took us in the station but I don’t remember much else after that. One of my biggest highlights was playing in Iceland in this community of 160,000 people, but it still felt like a small town even though it was a capital. The sun never sets over there, you’d be up at midnight thinking it was the afternoon, there’s no sleeping there.”
Another obvious highlight for Willows occurred in Nashville, Tennessee, as the frontman recalls, when he offered to give Nicole Kidman a copy of his band’s CD only to have the actress insist that she purchase two copies instead.
“Nashville we loved – it was the opposite to LA where it was very Hollywood and artificial,” says Willows. “Nashville has the same amount of stars but it’s more of a community. One of the gigs we did had such a relaxed, cool vibe about it, with people just hanging out and you could hardly tell that they were famous because of the attitude. We were just hanging out and having drinks with people like Kings Of Leon, then Nicole Kidman rocked up and she bought two of our CDs. We were going to just give them to her, but she was like, ‘are you selling them?’, so she bought them.”
Admittedly, Willows agrees that very little of what the band has managed to achieve so far would have been possible without social media. And while guerrilla campaigns are nothing new in the digital age, social media like Facebook and Twitter has been mostly responsible for Set Sail’s ability to literally pack up and tour anywhere and everywhere.
“Actually, I don’t think it would be possible at all for us to do what we’re doing because social media is the only way that you can get the word out. People are following you only because you’re posting videos on YouTube and Facebook and keeping them in the loop about what you’re doing that way, without that it wouldn’t be possible. At the same time, I really believe in the nature of the whole street promotion, guerrilla aspect of having a band. I’d love to see more bands take on that approach, do some secret shows and really build up a fanbase from the ground-up. In Melbourne we’d do heaps of pop up shows in cafes and things like that, random laneway shows on the street. It’s sort of like busking but all around the world. It just felt natural for us to focus on other countries rather than other cities. It was just a matter of going, ‘well, instead of Sydney, let’s play in China!’ or ‘instead of Perth, let’s play in Dubai!’ We literally left Australia with $800.”
In just one year, the group of “uni drop-outs,” as Willows jokingly describes Set Sail, has gone on to release an EP, make preparations for a full-length album ready to be recorded next month, and is currently promoting a brand new single in The Boat Song.
“Our EP ended up taking us into a much more poppy direction than we’d hoped but we’re still happy with it,” says Willows. “It actually sold nearly 10,000 copies so far which is great. The single is off of that and it feels very summery, it’s very feel-good. We really had fun making the video too – we’re in this boat in the ocean and we’re fighting monsters, then one of us goes off with a mermaid and it’s all very fun and cheeky and adventurous. We’re really looking forward to the shows because it’s going to be very different to what people are used to seeing from us. Usually we’re in a pop-up format which is very stripped down – sometimes our drummer even plays on a bucket on the ground! So this is very different and it will present the full spectrum of what we’re really like musically.”
