After support slots with Stereophonics and Cobra Starship, Amy Meredith are stepping into the spotlight. Following the success of singles “Pornstar” and “Lying,” the band is preparing to release its debut album Restless on June 4. Today lead singer and keyboardist Christian Lo Russo took time out from the band’s current tour to chat to me about the forthcoming album, their big name support slots, and their loyal fans.
You’re in the middle of your Lying tour. How’s that going?
Really good actually. We’ve been on tour since the end of February actually, so it’s been like a massive rollercoaster road: very exhausting and very fun and exciting at the same time.
You clearly love touring, because as you mentioned you’ve done a couple of tours back to back. What do you love most about being on stage?
I guess I love being in the spotlight and being the centre of attention, ever since I was a kid. No, I’m kidding. You know what? The best thing about being on tour, especially back-to-back tours, is you kind of become tighter as a band. You become tighter than you’ve ever been and you don’t lose touch, it’s almost like practicing continuously for months and months. You become a super-band, so to speak. You don’t even need to have a set list on stage any more and it becomes very intuitive.
The tour before this saw you supporting Stereophonics. What was it like to be a part of that?
It was fun actually. It was really funny because obviously, as you know, that band is massive in the UK. Like on stage levels they sell out Wembleys and Milleniums and 70, 000 people on their own tours. So when we played Brisbane it was really funny, because we played a 1100 capac. in the Hi-Fi Bar. And when we got in there the first thing they said was “Oh, this looks a little smaller than our rehearsal stage.” I go “Yeah, same here.” So that was kind of funny.
But it was definitely an experience to watch a band so professional in everything they do, and obviously they’ve been around for a long time.
You’ve done a few large-scale tours now with Stereophonics, and Cobra Starship. What did you learn being a part of these big productions and watching those shows?
I guess they were such different shows, from seeing Cobra Starship to seeing Stereophonics it was such a different vibe. You definitely learn how different different bands are on tour. Cobra were a party band, and Stereophonics were a much more chilled out band. And I think their performances definitely rung true of those personalities.
I think on tour with Cobra it was really interesting. One thing I really enjoyed was Gabe [Saporta], the lead singer of Cobra, was very humble. You could learn a lot from him. He was willing to guide you along the way and put you in contact with all his contacts. And when we went into their dressing room after the show and hung out, the first thing he’d ask us was did we want any food, did we want any beer, and then we’d sit down and have a chat. And I asked him one day, “How come the first thing you say before you even say hello is do we want food or beer?” And he said “I just remember what it was like to be the support band and get like one beer to share between six people.” And I thought that was kind of admirable that nature. Because a lot of bands, they get very bitter because it’s almost like when they’re the support they’ve seen so much crap, that when they become the headlining band they do the same thing because it’s now their turn. So I found that really professional of Gabe to kind of go, “I don’t need all this food and drink, come party.” Life lessons on the road are really fun as well, rather than just the performance aspect of things.
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