Not many bands can boast the continued success of Nickelback. Countless sell-out tours, Two American Music Awards, Six Billboard Music Awards, 12 Juno Awards, Six Grammy Award Nominations, over 50 million album sales worldwide including multi-platinum & diamond album awards and the list goes on. The Canadian rockers head back to Australia in February, for their eighth time since their very first appearance at The Metro Theatre in Sydney on 17th October 2001. The guys will play three shows in Brisbane, Sydney & Melbourne in support of their 2017 release ‘Feed the Machine’ which reached #3 in the ARIA charts. The Rockpit managed to secure some phone time with bass guitarist Mike Kroeger to talk about set lists, the pressure of success and how to get ejected from a restaurant in under three minutes…
Sean: Hey Mike, how are you doing?
Mike: Hello brother, I’m well. How are you?
Sean: All good here in sunny Perth but sadly we aren’t going to get to see you over in the west this time on the tour. Three dates squeezed in over four nights on the east coast – that sounds pretty hectic.
Mike: We’re really sorry we aren’t coming over this time… I think the best way I can describe it is a “logistical cluster fuck” – we just couldn’t find a venue to play in Perth or Adelaide that fitted in with the time frame we needed this time round. It’s a real bitch because we love playing in Western Australia & South Australia; it just didn’t come together this time. It’s really sad for us too because all the cities have such special meanings to us because we’ve been to them so many times.
Sean: You know what the say – ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’ so it will make us all look forward to your next visit even more.
Mike: Well I hope that ‘Absence makes the hearts go buy plane tickets to one of the other cities to come see us’ [laughs]
Sean: I’ve sneaked that one onto my Christmas list and hinted to my wife so fingers crossed…
Mike: [laughs] Good job!
Sean: So I was flicking through some facts and figures regarding Nickelback & Australia and found that this will be your 8th touring visit since 2001 and nearly 40 shows here in that time.
Mike: Wow man, those are very sobering numbers. That’s pretty awesome.
Sean: It is pretty cool because of all the big international acts that we get come to visit us here, you guys have been one of the more regular & consistent bands and the fans appreciate that by supporting your shows in big numbers, which is a testament to the high energy & quality that you put out there each & every night.
Mike: Ah, thank you. We were really looking forward to coming back and getting our dose and fix of Australia. It’s a special place for us. We love coming here.
Sean: Well, you’re kicking off in Brisbane on 13th Feb, then Sydney on 15th Feb and finally Melbourne on 16th Feb (tickets available through www.ticketek.com.au). Talking about the shows themselves, as you progress through your career as a band & produce another great album in the shape of ‘Feed the Machine’, how hard is it to put the set list together each tour, knowing some of the other crowd favourites are going to have to get left out?
Mike: Yeah, it kinda sucks. That’s been kind of a bit of a thorn in our side – unless we do a Bruce Springsteen-style five hour marathon, it’s just unfortunate that some songs have to come out. It does make it hard – and another thing is it makes it hard to represent the new material because it’s because of the older songs that a lot of the people are in the room. And sometimes those songs have to come out – you can’t play everything. It’s funny because I remember when we made our first album we had a song called ‘Leader of Men’ in the very beginning and we had to play it three times one night just to fill our show because we didn’t have enough songs [laughs]. We had forty five minutes of material and had to fill an hour – now, we have the opposite… too many songs [laughs].
Sean: But a nice luxury to have, I’m sure. You brought up about the early days – Are there times you look across at the guys and think back to when it all started in a bit of disbelief and wonder how it all went so completely right for you all?
Mike: Yeah, pretty much every night. We’ve always been very grateful for what we’ve been given and to the people who have made this all possible – to be able to get out there, get on a plane and to play music for the fans. It’s everywhere we go too – we just can’t believe we are out there getting to do this. It’s a really rare situation to find yourself in.
Sean: I’m going to take you back, if I may, to 10th June 2006 – the day I first got to see you guys live – it was at Milton Keynes in the UK and you were on the bill with Bon Jovi…
Mike: Oh wow…I remember that…
Sean: …they were on the road with their ‘Have a Nice Day’ tour and you were on your ‘All the Right Reason’ tour. I hadn’t seen you guys before but heard a few tracks from the album and liked what I’d heard – but you guys strode onstage and ripped into ‘Animals’ and I was gripped. I think you did a set of nine or ten songs and they were high energy, tight and sounded so good. As a huge Jovi fan at the time, I have to say you were the band of the day for me. Totally owned it out there.
Mike: Ah, thank you very much. I do remember that weekend, it was pretty special. But also I had this surreal situation happen – my wife came over with my two kids and flew into London that very same day from Vancouver! So they are all tired out and I remember both of my children at the side of the stage on top of one of the subwoofers from the P.A system… and both of them were asleep during our show! [laughs] This thing was pumping out, like 150 decibels and we’re in the middle of a full blown roaring rock show and they are sleeping.
Sean: It’s always good when people share memories of a great day and they are such different experiences…
Mike: One of the biggest parts of my life is being a good husband & father, so most of my memories revolve around my family.
Sean: Bringing us back to the present, by the time you get here to see us, your ninth studio album ‘Feed the Machine’ will be almost two years old. It’s a fantastic album and even though there are some very typical Nickelback tracks like ‘After the Rain’ & ‘Song on Fire’ to name but two, there are also some very different sides that we’ve not heard before like ‘The Betrayal – Act III’… but I have to ask about the closing instrumental track ‘The Betrayal – Act I’. Where did that one come from, because it’s so different?
Mike: Both the Betrayal tracks came from Ryan Peake (guitar/keyboards) and he pretty much wrote them both by himself. Chad came in and wrote and sang the lyrics to ‘Act III’ but that was essentially Ryan. He decided he wanted to create a two-part metal opera, so to speak.
Sean: Tell Ryan, I am waiting for ‘Betrayal Act II’ now.
Mike: [laughs] Yeah I wonder what that’s gonna sound like?
Sean: I guess he’s keeping it for himself…
Mike: Yeah, I haven’t seen anything yet. And part of it was to pick Act III & Act I to mess with people’s heads so they ask “where is Act II?” and it’s worked perfectly.
Sean: ‘Home’ is another cracking track but the album is full of big songs so again, tough for you guys to select tracks for the show. I was looking back though your previous albums and the release dates all seem fairly regimented –almost three years between every album. Is that just coincidental or a deliberate decision due to touring vs time off with families?
Mike: It is just a coincidence but I know it looks like it’s not, so I know what you mean. It’s just panned out that way.
Sean: I suppose with the fact that as a band you tour long & hard then take a break, then write & record it’s just the way it falls into place…
Mike: Exactly that. You’re on tour and as a rock group it takes a lot to get around the world. When you finally get to the end of the album tour, you look back and wonder where those last two or three years have gone – it doesn’t feel like it takes that long to burn through that much time.
Sean: When an album like ‘All the Right Reasons’ becomes as successful as it has done, not only financially due to album sales but also with all the accolades & awards it has received, does that ease or increase the pressure on you as a band?
Mike: To be honest the only real pressure we’ve ever felt is from within. Our expectations have never really involved other people or what they think. We are our worst critics and also our own most ruthless task masters. We drive ourselves crazy. So we’ve never really feel the pressure to perform so much for other people but we always made sure we put our best foot forward and went in there and gave it everything we had – and we still do that to this day. We need to feel we leave everything on the table and that goes for a live show & if we are making a record.
Sean: And that’s certainly evident with the live shows. It just seems to be a powerful energy filled rock show from start to finish – and if any of our readers haven’t been to see Nickelback live yet then I urge you to do so… you won’t be disappointed! On that note I’ll drop so more hints for Christmas for me [laughs]
Mike: [laughs] Keep hammerin’ away man. Even if it means doin’ the dishes for a month. You gotta do what you gotta do and figure a way to grab some extra brownie points [laughs]
Sean: [laugh] I’ll keep working at it and hopefully see you in February. So a question I like to ask, if I booked you table at a restaurant and you could invite three guests from the music world, dead or alive, who would you invite?
Mike: Ah, so you’re appealing to my sense of humour now and that is good… I think I would probably invite Keith Moon and um… who else… probably Lemmy Kilmister and maybe John Bonham. And I’ll explain my rationale here – I have invited these three so we could set a stopwatch to see how quickly we could get ejected from the restaurant [laughs] and I reckon with Keith Moon and the others we could be out of there within three minutes [laughs]… so we would be escorted outta there pretty quickly.
Sean: Unbelievably, they are three names I’ve not had before, so thank you for that. What was the last album you listened to?
Mike: The last thing I listened to was by a band called Toad the Wet Sprocket and it was their album ‘Dulcinea’ from around 1994 I think. It only came up because my phone was shuffling my music library and one of those songs came up so I put the album on. The tie in with this is that we listened to this album when we were driving relentlessly across Canada in the dead of winter and Ryan Peake brought this album along & we played it a lot. It’s definitely not a heavy metal record but we’d usually choose music that was stimulating enough to listen to and Toad the Wet Sprocket was a totally incredible band, it sounds so good and some of the best guitar tones ever on record in my opinion. Even if it was up loud, it was pleasing to the ear so everyone in the van could get some shut eye if necessary.
Sean: I’ll check it out. My final question, before we run out of time, if you could be credited with any song ever written, what song would you choose?
Mike: Your appealing to my sense of humour again so I’m going to go with… there’s a song called ‘My United States of Whatever’ by Liam Lynch. Don’t know if you’ve heard it but find that one… it’s like something you’ve never heard before. It’s hysterically funny [laughs] so I’ll take that one.
Sean: I’ll check it out. Mike, on behalf of all of us here at The Rockpit we’d like to wish you, Chad, Ryan & Daniel all the best for the rest of the tour and wish you and all your families a fantastic Christmas & a wonderful 2019.
Mike: Well, thank you very much, you too. It’s been really great. I hope to see you, as well as everybody else from Western Australia & South Australia for that matter, boarding a Qantas flight to come see some rock n roll in February.
Sean: I’m sure plenty will be trying to get there from all corners of the country. Thanks again Mike.
Mike: Thanks Sean.
Nickelback 2019 ‘Feed The Machine’ Australian Tour
Supported by Bad Wolves
Brisbane Entertainment Centre – February 13
Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney – February 15
Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne – February 16
Tickets on sale at LiveNation.com.au
