Call them what you will – Stoner rock, heavy metal, hard rock. Whichever it is, Red Fang know how to hammer out some truly great riff oriented rock n’ roll and this May sees the Portland quartet return to Australia for a headline tour supporting their latest album “Only Ghosts”. We talk to guitarist/vocalist Bryan Giles about the upcoming shows and what fans can expect.
Andrew: So hows things with and the band?
Bryan: We just got home from a month long Canada and US tour last Monday and then we have about a month here at home before we go back out again.
Andrew: Nice and obviously in May we will see you in Australia as well, it’s always great to see you in the country again.
Bryan: Yeah it’s excited, I’m glad that we get to go.
Andrew: Yeah definitely! I guess we saw you last time a couple of years ago from the last time you were here, it was a great tour. This time around you have the last album out “Only Ghosts” which came out a couple of years ago so I assume you will be playing a lot of stuff from that album?
Bryan: Yeah we try to put songs from every record in the set so playing some old ones and new ones too. I would probably say pretty evenly dispersed so probably 20-25 percent of the set will be new stuff.
Andrew: How is that process of picking out setlists? Especially now with a fourth album in there, it must be getting slightly more difficult these days?
Bryan: Well definitely there’s more to choose from that’s for sure! But I think it’s harder to put together a setlist when you have an opening slot where you have less time, on the last tour about half of the shows were opening for Corrosion Of Conformity and Black Label Society and we had 40 minutes which is great but that’s when it becomes difficult. Because with 40 minutes if you blaze through it you can do maybe 10 songs but that’s on the outside so maybe more like a 9 song set, I mean you want to play a bunch more songs but you can’t so you try to pick your strongest ones and see how it goes. But headlining we do an hour and 10min, hour and 15min so it’s about 15-16 songs and we like to mix it up but that’s much easier because we can relax and say, ‘Hey what else would you want to play’.
Andrew: Yeah and have a bit more fun with the show as that’s the idea I guess because you guys seem to be quite jovial on stage and have a fun sort of banter at live shows.
Bryan: Well thanks for saying so! I think Aaron and I, the ones with the microphones, we will say anything of interest. Our banter is terrible so anyway I guess we revert to being the nerds that we are and I think a lot of times people scratch their heads like, ‘What are they talking about?’ So I glad you think it is jovial, we are happy just to be playing so I guess there is that.
Andrew: Yeah and I’ve seen a bunch of your videos and I remember the first time I saw you when you played the Soundwave Festival a few years back and being blown away not just from the performance but it seems like you guys don’t take things too seriously.
Bryan: That’s definitely true. I like to mention that we do take our songs very seriously and the band very seriously but I don’t think we need to be all doom and gloom just because you’re in a hard rock band. We’re serious about our music but we’re dorks.
Andrew: [laughs] As mentioned before “Only Ghosts” came out in 2016 and they were a great set of songs, how are those songs fitting with the older material?
Bryan: I think it’s good! We’ve been at it long enough that we’ve figured out what songs are working the best within a headline set or even a shorter set but some of them we tried and it just didn’t quite feel right live. I’ve mentioned “I Am A Ghost”, that song is one of my favorite songs off the record but I think it’s tempo…I guess I’m too hypo and I want to play really fast songs so it’s more of a subdued number and I rather have people freak out than play some of the slower ones. That’s not to say I don’t love some of those songs, it’s just some of them function better in a live setting.
Andrew: As far as the democracy of the band, do you guys ever argue or fight over which songs to take out on the road?
Bryan: Oh yes sometimes we do. I have a terrible habit of coming over vocal parts that are just about as far out of my range, I can perform but it’s just really difficult to my voice. So sometimes I will put in two cents about not wanting to have my vocals suffer for the rest of the set for the sake of one song and sometimes I win and sometimes I nut up and sing! But we all listen to each other, everybody’s voice gets heard. Not all the time but we take turns, we’re pretty democratic for sure.
Andrew: So you are coming back to Australia in May, you’ve been here I guess 2 or 3 times right?
Bryan: This will be our third trip, yeah.
Andrew: Yeah I remember seeing you a couple of times before, how have your experiences been like on past tours? Do you do a lot of things during your off time?
Bryan: I don’t know if there are any off days [laughs]. Especially going out as far as Australia which I’m assuming there will be almost no days off, last time we were there we got to go through a park and look at kangaroos and koala bears and stuff. It sounds nice, it was one of the few touristy things we got to do but generally the thing with being in a band is you go to exotic places and see the inside of a bar. I’m not complaining! I love touring, sometimes people think it’s glamorous like, ‘Oh you’re in Paris’, and it’s like, ‘Yeah I’m in an underground bar that hasn’t been cleaned in a while’. It could be anywhere but it just so happens that people are speaking French.
Andrew: [laughs] Well that’s the reality of touring and some people don’t realize that, is that disappointing to be able to go to all these exotic places and not see some of the things that you would like to see?
Bryan: It can be especially when you’re really close to some monument or something, it took us a couple of trips to Paris before we ever got to the Eiffel Tower. For economics sake it’s two miles away but it might as well be a million miles because of our schedule but we make time for it. I think maybe a tour a we did a couple of years ago in Turkey, Istanbul and we decided to end the tour but then delay our flights home by spending an extra week there just travelling around so every once in a while we get a chance to do fun stuff.
Andrew: What’s the most interesting place you’ve played at?
Bryan: Geez I don’t know! We played in Iceland, we played at this very small town on the farthest most eastern part of the island and the town has a population of something like a thousand and then they have this festival where a thousand people show up and it’s like the one thing that happens. So anyway that was pretty impressive as far as being in a far flung place. We’re planning on going back to South America next month so I look forward to that, playing Chile, Argentina, Mexico. We’ve never really played Mexico other than border towns so I’m looking forward to that.
Andrew: I’ve heard the South Americans are quite crazy, they really get into their music over there.
Bryan: They are definitely metal fans, it’s true, they’re pretty rabid. We posted something on the internet and it seemed like the comments where they say, ‘Come to here, or there’ and the most comments of that nature by far as from Brazilians. So I’m glad that we get to go so we can go, ‘We’re there, you don’t have to post that anymore’. Ha!
Andrew: [laughs] How do you find the Aussie crowds? What’s your comparison to other countries around the world?
Bryan: The shows were great! The first time we were there was for Soundwave and we played early in the day like 11.30 in the morning so I was amazed that anybody would come out that early, I guess they had their coffee but anyway the fans were really fantastic. I remember one of the shows we set up and were about ready to play and literally noone was there, there was 10 minutes before we were to go on and there was noone there so we were like, ‘I guess do we play to the sound guy? I guess we play’ [laughs]. And we plugged in and started playing and it was pretty cinematic, it was awesome, at least the way that I remembered it. I was looking up at this grass field and see one or two people in the distance running over the hill and by the end of our first song there was a huge crowd and there was a stampede of people running over the hill. I think they had held the doors for some reason and didn’t push our set back which I get because it was a massive festival. But anyway that felt really good because, ‘God wow noone cares about us here, literally noone’ but that wasn’t the case.
Andrew: Well it’s obviously going to be a different experience doing the headline shows in clubs around Australia come May so we are definitely excited to see you guys again. Thanks for your time, really appreciated!
Bryan: Awesome!
TOUR DATES:
Thursday 10 May – The Brightside, Brisbane – 18+
Friday 11 May – Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle – 18+
Saturday 12 May – Manning Bar, Sydney – 18+
Sunday 13 May – Corner Hotel, Melbourne – 18+
Tuesday 15 May – The Barwon Club, Geelong – 18+
Wednesday 16 May – Fowlers Live, Adelaide – 18+
www.tickets.destroyalllines.com
