After conquering their native New Zealand, Kiwi act Midnight Youth have their sights set on Oz. The band are currently in Australia preparing to support Birds of Tokyo and release their album The Brave Don’t Run, which debuted at number one in NZ. Today I caught up with the band’s lead singer Jeremy Redmore to talk about the album, life on the road, and why he loves to tour Australia.
You’re here to tour with Birds of Tokyo. Are you looking forward to that?
Yeah, it’s huge for us really. We didn’t really expect this, and it’s come at a really good time with the album coming out this week as well. To get on a tour like this, out of nowhere, was a big score for us so we’re really excited.
You’re regular visitors to our shores, having played last year’s Come Together festival and four Aussie tours. What keeps you coming back?
It just feels like a real place to tour. You tour New Zealand and it’s all over in a week. You feel like a real band touring for a month or six weeks. And you can drive for eight hours to a gig. It just feels like you’re really working and you feel like a real band and you can have those stupid bonding moments where you’re fighting or totally going crazy over something, so it’s cool.
What’s life like on the Midnight Youth tour bus?
It’s pretty sweet actually. We actually prefer driving to flying. We get to play our own playlists; we kind of pass the iPod round. I think it goes in waves of taking the piss out of each other to being fast asleep. We tend to have a lot of little stops here and there for pies. We like the odd mince pie.
After you supported INXS in New Zealand, they called you one of the best band they’ve played with in Australasia. What’s it like to hear compliments like that from such music legends?
That was crazy actually because we’d only been together, in the line-up that we played with, for about three or four months. So that was pretty crazy. It was the first time we’d played in front of a decent crowd, a couple of thousand people, and you’re totally in a way out of your depth because you don’t know what you’re doing really. But to come out of it with people saying that you did a good job is pretty cool.
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