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The Drones.
 Gareth Liddiard, vocalist/guitarist for The Drones has a thousand things to do organising their upcoming relocation to Europe. It is something that has been on the books since they toured Europe two years ago. Touring recently with Mudhoney on the back of their second album 'Wait Long By The River And Your Enemies Will Float By', , The Drones future is looking ever more rosy. Of course, with these exciting prospects comes the time constraints of getting everything done.
"We are hugely busy trying to get our record out in Spain, one out in England and Europe, gotta do all the covers for them all and all the singles over there," he sighs. "Just a bazillion and one things, all at the time and mix the new record we did in Tassie, get the cover for that happening, trying to book the tour. Fuck, there's a lot of stuff."
He sounds daunted at the prospect of touring again. "Yeah, it's gonna be madness. The longest tour I've done is a six week tour and that was hard enough, but this ones gonna be six months. It's gonna be pretty full on but it'll be good fun. We going to go down to Serbia and Croatia too, places like that, that'll be pretty cool, rather than just the general UK sort of stuff. We're just going over there to get set up properly, you know, see if we can add on to what small popularity we have over there, just get set up properly. We'll go over to the US after that and do the same thing there, then back to Australia to tour with the Tassie album which will hopefully be out by then.
"They have a different set of rules over there as well, the way they ask for encores, they just bang drinks on anything, it's quite full on, three hundred people banging stuff, its crazy. They're pretty wild, they go off, but I mean now Australia's taken off a bit it's similar but it's a bit more frenzied in Europe. They're not spun out at all by freaky, loud music, you know, they really get into it, they understand it. Over here you can push the uncomfortable button and people are cool but you don't know if they are enjoying it, in Europe they don't care, they just wanna go off," Liddiard laughs.
While he's not pinning himself and the band there permanently things are left open a bit. "I'd rather be on the move than be based anywhere because whenever you get based anywhere you sort off get bogged down. You find yourself in rut, I done that enough times, I don't want to get stuck anywhere, but hopefully we'll be in America next year. I don't know what the future holds, right now everything's just up in the air, everyone's trying to get all the work done. No-one's thinking about settling or anything like that."With a new album not being released for another six months they won't be witholding any tracks from it on the upcoming tours. "I think we'll have to [play new tracks]. I get so sick of what we're playing now," he says laughing. "I mean, we'll have to do that otherwise everyone will quit, but yeah, I'm hanging to get into it. It'll be different too because its pretty laid back compared to everything else we've done. So it's a matter of getting in there. It's better now we're headlining because its easier to mix it up, you've got more time, if you're a support you're only got 45 minutes. There's not a lot of time for light and shade, but we've got more time we can fit 'em in and eventually see how they work".
While Liddiard is daunted by the tour, he is equally excited. "Its amazing, its gonna be cool, it's gonna be a good old time, pretty wild but daunting. Probably kill my liver, I'm expecting to shit it out any day."
Blake Lewis
 | The Drones play at Jive on sat 20 Aug with Southpaw and The Unspoken Things |
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