Anberlin’s bassist, Deon Rexroat, recently caught up with Tone Deaf’s Brett Schewitz about the American band’s upcoming tour to Australia. He revealed details about the exciting new “An Evening With Anberlin” series of concept gigs including never-before-performed songs, a cover of an Australian song and a collaboration with an Aussie vocalist.
You’re heading to Aus for “An Evening With Anberlin”. This sounds intriguing. Tell us more.
It’s basically a really new thing for us. When we were brainstorming about what to do for the next headline tour of Australia, someone came up with an interesting idea of us just doing a long set and playing songs that we’d never played in Australia before. In fact, there’s a few songs that we’re playing that we’ve never even played live since they were released on albums. It’s going to be pretty interesting. We’ve been to Australia six times now, so we just wanted to do something a little more special rather than coming back and doing an ordinary tour. So we kinda figured doing a career-spanning show, from our first album to our most recent album; something a little more memorable for the fans.
Is this concept something you’ve wanted to do for a long time?
No, it actually came up when we were talking about this upcoming tour. We never even really thought about doing something like this before. Once the idea got into our heads we started talking and thinking about it more and it seemed like something that would be really fun to do. We really wanted to try and do something different other than playing a normal set. I think it was the promoter, Nigel, who mentioned it first. He mentioned possibly doing a 2 hour set and including some of the older, lesser explored songs.
Will you be reworking some of your more popular songs?
Yeah, we’ve taken songs that we’ve never played before [in Australia] and reworked new versions for this set. We’re hoping that everybody really likes them.
Apparently there’s going to be some special collaborations and some special things going on stage. Any special collaborations with Australian artists?
Umm, *long pause*, we have a guest singer; I don’t wanna spoil the surprise. We have a guest singer coming in to help us out with a couple of songs. It’s an Australian act and it’d be fun to do because we don’t get to do it that often. We’ve never done it in Australia with an Australian act, so we thought it would be fun to bring somebody in and try it out.
And apparently you’ll be performing some covers as well?
Yes, we, err; I’m trying to answer the question without giving away too many secrets. We’ve been working on a cover from an Australian band, a favourite song of ours and for the past few days we’ve really been putting the finishing touches on this song and the first time we play it live is when we hit Australia.
So, the song that you’re covering (without giving too much away), is it within the rock genre or are you going to be pushing the genre boundaries?
No, it’s an older song. I’m just gonna say this – it’s from the ‘80s. We went back a little farther so I hope everybody knows it. It’s a little more out of the rock range. It’s a little more pop but we hope that our version of it will be well received. We realised that we’ve done a lot of covers over the years but the way we’ve always approached it, is that when we do a cover, we want it to sound like Anberlin. We don’t want to play it exactly as the band we’re covering played it. We take it and make it sound like one of our own songs.
The concept of the show kinda reminds us of MTV Storytellers. Apparently you guys are going to be telling stories and taking questions from the audience.
Yeah, that’s a little bit of how we modelled the show. That was one of the attractive qualities about doing this kind of performance. We really get to break down that barrier between the stage and the crowd. We get to connect on a different level. Something different from the norm, where we actually get to talk to the audience and maybe tell some stories about how some songs came together and talk about some of the songs that people have never heard. We’ve been over there so many times and it’s always hard to feel like you’ve connected with an audience sometimes. Doing the storytellers thing is our way of getting past that barrier and making everything a little more personal to the crowd.
Will you be taking requests from the audience?
We’ve discussed doing requests but we’ve ruled it out as we’re trying to stay within a certain timeframe for the show. What we did, instead of taking the requests live at the show, is put the question out on Twitter about what the Australian fans wanted to hear. The songs that got the most tweets are the ones we’re going to play. There’s some songs that we’ve played here [in the USA] that we haven’t played there and a lot of people know that we’ve played those songs live before and they really want to hear us play them in Australia. We got a lot of a requests for a lot of songs and like I said, a couple of them we’ve never even played live before so we’re gonna come to Australia and perform all these songs that we’ve never before performed live just because so many people wanted to hear them.
How do you guys actually narrow it down? How do you decide on which songs you actually want to play?
Well, we have out staple songs that we play a lot that we like playing but we also have a lot of songs that we look at and say “well, that’s a fan favourite and that’s a song that that the crowd usually loves and have a lot of fun when we play”. Songs like ‘Feel Good Drag’; now that’s a song that’s undeniably one of our biggest songs, IF not our biggest song and any time we play that song the fans go crazy. They just sing so loud, so a song like that that gets that type of reaction is a song that we’re always going to play. There’s other songs that are like “we want to try this out live” or it’s a song that we like but it’s also fun to play musically. It’s a little bit like trial and error. A lot of times we vote when we’re putting together a setlist and if it’s a song we all want to play, we play it and if a couple of the guys aren’t really happy with playing a particular song we won’t put it in the set. A lot of the time, honestly, I take my songs on the computer and put them into a playlist on iTunes and I try to figure out a good order for the songs. It tells you the order of the set and it’s a pretty good way to arrange a setlist.
Do you think this concept is something you’d tour with to other countries?
We’ve talked about it. If it goes really well, we’ve talked about possibly doing some shows in the States but we’ll have to wait and see how it goes once we get over there.
What’s the feeling within you guys? How do you feel it will go?
We’re really excited. We just hit our last day of rehearsals today for the tour and everybody walked away feeling really good. We’re really having fun with the set because we’re doing so many things that we’ve never done as a band in the nine or ten years that we’ve been together. We’re just really hopeful that the crowd will enjoy what we’ve put together for them and that they’ll have as much fun as we’re going to have.
Will the show be completely unplugged or can fans expect your usual electric performance?
We’re gonna mix it up. We’re gonna try and go all over the place. We’re gonna do everything from the acoustic songs to electric songs. We’re gonna really fit as much as we can into this two-hour set.
You’ve got a bit of a love affair with Australia. How did Australia get picked for the first performances of these gigs?
We just have such a long history with Aus. We’ve been coming to Aus for six years now. It was the first country outside of the USA to really embrace our band. We’ve always been treated so well there so we wanted to bring something different this time and give the fans a bit of a special show. We really enjoy touring there so much.
Rumour has it that you’re already working on a new album? When can fans expect this?
We’re working on it. We don’t know when we’re going to start recording but we’ve already started writing songs and we’re doing really well. The ideas are definitely flowing. As soon as we know when we’re going to record it, we will definitely let you know!
Catch An Evening With Anberlin featuring special guests, Tonight Alive, at the following venues:
Friday 26 August – Capitol Theatre, Perth (18+)
Tickets from Moshtix on 1300 438 849 or www.moshtix.com.au,
www.heatseeker.com.au or 78’s records Perth and Mills Fremantle
Saturday 27 August – Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide (LIC/AA)
Tickets from Venuetix on (08) 8225 8888 or www.venuetix.com.au
Monday 29 August – Palace Theatre, Melbourne (18+)
Tickets from Ticketek on 132 849 or www.ticketek.com.au & Oztix on 1300 762 545 or www.oztix.com.au. All Oztix outlets including Greville, Polyester Fitzroy and Polyester City, Fist2Face, The Espy and the National Hotel Geelong
Thursday 1 September – Enmore Theatre, Sydney (LIC/AA)
Tickets from Ticketek on 132 849 or www.ticketek.com.au
Friday 2 September – The HiFi, Brisbane (18+)
Tickets from www.thehifi.com.au, 1300 The Hifi, Butterbeats CBD & Valley, Gooble Warming and Atlantis Music Southport
