Interview: Get Dead
On their third European tour the electric/acoustic punk rock band Get Dead finally made it to Austria. Heavy Pop met Sam (singer) and Tim (bass) right before their concert on May 26th at dasBach in Vienna to talk about their tour, the life on the road in general and future plans.
Heavy Pop: Your European tour started about a month ago and you’ve been on the road for quite a while right now. So, at first: how are you? And how is Europe treating you?
Sam: We are great!
Tim: Yeah, we are good! Exhausted.
Sam: Tired, but Europe has been great. It’s our third time back and we love coming to Europe. It’s always a good time.
Tim: The hospitality is amazing and the curry is delicious.
Sam: Is the curry delicious? I don’t eat fucking curry.
(Tim was eating curry from the catering during the interview.)
It’s your first time in Vienna, right? Because the Mad Caddies after-show at Arena last year was unfortunately cancelled.
Sam: Yeah, we didn’t make it. I’m sorry about that. That was my fault.
Really? What happened?
Sam: I got extremely sick and by extremely sick I think we got extremely drunk and we didn’t make it to the van in time.
Tim: But we also blame our driver for that one.
Sam: Yeah, we didn’t know that it was an after-party-show. So we thought we had to be there at 9 o’clock when we could have showed up at 1 o’clock at night and our driver said, “Oh no, there is no way we can make it”. We were only an hour late getting to the van, so basically our driver was lazy and didn’t want to drive the eight hours to get here.
Where have you been at that time?
Sam: Hannover aka hangover.
And tour life in general. Is it how people imagine it?
Sam: No. The other boys downstairs they have girlfriends and stuff, you know. And not every night is a party, but I think that they think that it’s a lot more than it is – like girls everywhere. But a typical day of tour is: you wake up at 8 o’clock in the morning, you try to get some bread in you and a beer or some juice or whatever you can, you drive for 8 to 10 hour to the next show, you show up, you unload, you do a sound check, we do an interview or two and then we get about one to two hours to hang out and decompress. We play, we get extremely sweaty and gross and then we have to load our equipment, put it in the van and drive away. So, it’s not like people think. Some nights are better than others. I mean it’s the greatest time in your life, but it’s also the worst experience that you could ever have.
Tim: Yeah, but I wouldn’t say it’s the worst experience that you could ever have.
Sam: I had a kidney stone on this tour. I pissed a little diamond and there was blood.
Tim: The thing is that we come to exotic places and stuff, but we don’t get to sightsee. Most of the time it’s the dirty club that we are playing in – that’s what we see of the town. Luckily tomorrow we only have a two hour drive to Brno in Czech so we maybe get to actually go see the sights
Sam: Or go to McDonalds.
So, it’s fast food all the time?
Sam: I wouldn’t even say fast food.
Tim: Delicious curry!
Sam: He got some curry tonight and that’s disgusting, but in the van we have our staples: we have salami, we have bread, we have cheese.
Tim: We always have mustard.
Sam: And water and Fanta.
Tim: That’s the menu. It’s that everyday – day in, day out. Sometimes we treat ourselves to fast food.
Sam: Yeah, when we have the time we stop at McDonalds, because we are big fans of the BigMac. We actually ate really good in Portugal. The promoters took us out to a really nice restaurant at the beach. It was like a five star restaurant. There was sangria, cocktails and fish.
Tim: It was delicious, but that was a rare opportunity. That hardly ever happens.
On tour you guys are spending so much time together. What annoying bad habits do you have, that sometimes piss off your band mates while being on tour?
Tim: When Sam opens his mouth I get really upset.
Sam: Yeah, pretty much when this guy speaks or I see his dick I get very upset.
That happens a lot?
Tim: Yeah, I show it to him as much as I can.
Sam: That’s his thing – like “check this out!”
Tim: No, all the little things. They get amplified on tour, you know, little things that piss you off basically. For example, when Mikey gets to drunk.
Sam: Yeah, when Mikey gets to drunk and he likes to stare up in space when you talk to him. “Hey Mikey, we need to go on stage!” and he’s just starring. No, the thing with the band is that we are all like a family. We are all brothers, so we fight and we laugh and it’s all good. You just have to keep in mind on the road – anybody who is reading this – you’re gone for one month, you’re not sleeping properly, you’re not eating properly, you are fucking uncomfortable from being in the van all day so just the little things like “hey, can you hand me my phone charger” and that doesn’t happen quick enough you are like “fucking aaaarrrgh”. You just have to try to keep that in mind.
So, you have your good and bad times on tour?
Tim: Absolutely.
Sam: I would say more bad news.
(‘Bad News’ is name of their debut album that was released in July 2013.)
You just said it, you’re spending a lot a time in the van on the road and I assume you’re listening to music while driving. So what does the Get Dead Tour-Soundtrack sound like?
Sam: We’ve been listening a lot to ‘The Kings of Nuthin’’. They are from Boston.
Tim: We listen to bands we play with. We get their CD, but we listened to the pop station all the way here. It’s good to change it up, because we listen to a lot of punk rock. On my phone I don’t even have any punk rock any more – just a couple of bands.
Sam: We are big fans of Justin Timberlake.
Really? You’re listening to Justin Timberlake on the road?
Tim: Seriously! You can put that in writing!
Sam: Hey Justin, if you’re listening …
In general, do you have any kind of ritual, you do before you go on stage?
Sam: We show up at the bar. We start having beers, because we’ve been in the van all day. So, basically I think our main ritual is finding each other.
Tim: Where is Mikey?
Sam: Yeah, that’s our ritual: where is Mikey? I think that might be the name of our next album.
He is the one who’s always late?
Tim: With him it’s like hurting a kitten.
Sam: It’s like trying to play fetch with a kitten. You can throw the ball, it will chase it, but it’s not coming back.
When you found Mikey and you go on stage. What’s your favorite song to play live?
Tim: I like playing the song ‘Battlelines’. It’s our last song on ‘Bad News’. I like it because it’s sort of a different song – it’s dynamic and I like to see how the crowd reacts to it. Plus it’s a fun song to play on bass.
Sam: This tour I really like to play ‘Coma State’. We never had a recording of it. It’s just a song we made long ago, but we still keep it in the set and it’s one of the songs with crowd participation. So, it’s good to see how much people are paying attention and stuff. When it’s on, it’s really good, but when they’re not, it’s really embarrassing.
Have you heard of your support bands of tonight. Tommy Gun or Deadends – they are both from Austria.
Sam: Not Deadends, but we played last night with Tommy Gun at Bart. Sometimes when you play with bands you never met you don’t know what you gonna get, but they were really good. We really enjoyed it! It’s nice to be able to play with a band even just two nights in a row because you met them and you get to see them again. It’s familiar and you can be like “hey, how are you guys doing?” – there is a camaraderie that comes with it.
This tour is almost over, so what’s next for you guys? Going home and relax?
Tim: We’re home for a week and then we go on the road with ‘A Wilhelm Scream’. Just a few dates with them and then we’re gonna start writing a new album. That’s what’s next.
So, we can expect new stuff soon?
Sam: Yeah, we also have a 7inch coming out on Fat – June 27th. It’s a four song 7inch record that they’re only gonna do a limited lineup, but the Tony Sly tribute song ‘Pre-Medicated Murder’ is on it and a new song that we did call ‘Bygones’ and a song called ‘No High Road’ that was on ‘Tall Cans & Loose Ends’ and ‘Cousin Marvin’. That’s coming out and we hope people pick that up. We were supposed to have it for this tour.
Tim: It just didn’t work out in time.
Sam: They couldn’t get it to press and we got the test press back. Just to make a record, you have to make the songs and give them to the people that need to press the record about three months in advance. That’s just for them to get the artwork and everything done and then they send it back and you got to make sure that it works and then you can get duplicated it. It’s a process and we were just shy releasing it, but they’re gonna release it when we get home so we can do a CD-release-show.
One last question: what can Vienna expect tonight?
Tim: A good time. A party.
Sam: Handsome gentlemen.
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