Chris Cheney never wanted The Living End to play in front of the same sort of crowds all the time. That’s not his style. 

As he told Rolling Stone AU/NZ in a new interview, “[W]e didn’t want to play to 200 people at the Tote for the rest of our career. We wanted to branch out.”

Cheney and his bandmates will get to “branch out” properly this weekend (May 9th), when the evergreen Aussie rock band head to Tamworth to play Great Southern Nights’ Live Fest, sharing a varied bill that also includes Lime Cordiale, Jet, Thelma Plum, and Kita Alexander.

Getting to play in front of attendees who might be, say, much more interested in seeing pop star Kita Alexander is something Cheney relishes.

“I think there’s probably going to be a lot of people that haven’t seen The Living End before,” he told Rolling Stone AU/NZ ahead of the event. “It’s probably going to be a younger crowd. And that’s what happened on Good Things a couple of years ago. We’ve noticed there’s a lot of young people at our shows. That’s the coolest thing ever, to not just be playing to the same people that were there in ’98.”

Following their Live Fest appearance, The Living End will set their sights on a massive tour of regional Australia, which will take them to Newcastle, Hobart, Cairns, Townsville, Canberra, and many more places between July and August.

“The hunger we had when The Living End first began still drives our energy on stage every time we play,” Cheney said when the tour was announced.

The Living End are touring in support of latest album I Only Trust Rock n Roll, which Cheney also discussed in the same Rolling Stone AU/NZ interview.

“This last record that we put out, it was a rebirth,” he said. “After the 25th anniversary of our first album, we did some big shows.

It doesn’t end there for The Living End in 2026: they were recently announced as one of this year’s ARIA Hall of Fame inductees.

“It’s unreal,” Cheney confessed to Rolling Stone AU/NZ. “It’s hard to put into words. You start out as kids with a dream and our dream was pretty left field, combining the musical influences that we did, trying to create this band that didn’t necessarily exist.

“To get a career out of it, to get records and airplay and an audience, and then to win an ARIA and then to get the Hall of Fame, it’s just great that other people bought our idea.”

Tickets to The Living End’s Great Southern Nights show are available here.