It was a truly special moment when The Getaway Plan graced the stage of UNIFY this January to play their seminal debut album ‘Other Voices, Other Rooms’ in its entirety. Performing songs such as ‘Streetlight’, ‘Shadows’ and ‘Where The City Meets The Sea’, it was hard not to get swept up by nostalgia, and now fans all over Australia will have an opportunity for a similar experience with The Getaway Plan hitting the road performing this album in full.
According to Matthew Wright, the bands softly spoken lead vocalist that show was the catalyst. “I guess that set [at UNIFY] kind of pushed us to make the decision sooner than we may have otherwise, because it’s only been like 9.7 years so we are jumping the gun a little bit,” he says, “but we didn’t want to wait too long to do this tour after how well that show went. We are really excited about it, we haven’t toured for about eight or nine months so we are absolutely itching to get out there!”
The near 10 years since the albums release has been a crazy journey for the boys, who have broken up, gotten back together, had line-up changes and released three albums – all to a very warm reception.
“We were just kids at that time, we didn’t really know what we were doing,” Wright says. “So it was a really haphazard process. We didn’t really expect that anything would happen with any of the songs; we were still just in the mindset that we were a pop-rock band and then things took off pretty quickly and unexpectedly for us.
“It’s all kind of a blur, it all happened so fast and so much happened in such a short amount of time that it was really hard to take it all in. The fact that things were moving way too fast was also kind of what inevitably brought about our demise … our initial demise obviously, as we are back now.”
The “demise” being the bands initial hiatus in 2009, which saw lead guitarist and founding member Clint Ellis briefly join The Amity Affliction.
“Things were just too overwhelming for us. We were 18 years old and within six months of finishing school, we were touring for eight out of 12 months in a year,” he says, “We really didn’t have a chance to live a normal life or balance our personal lives with the band. We kind of just pulled the plug before things got any crazier because it seemed inevitable that we were going to burn out.
“We totally intended to stay broken up, I think we gained some perspective after we left and learning new coping mechanisms to get through being on tour all time; I guess learning how to be human a bit.”
With new work being written constantly, The Getaway Plan is currently very happy with where they are at and the experience they have gained.
“We don’t do things that we don’t want to these days; we are just way more in control of everything,” Wright explains. “Also having the two new members in the band and the fact that they are a bit younger than Clint and myself helps massively as they have a bit of a fresh perspective on things, where at times Clint and myself can be a bit jaded. But we are just going to keep writing, we may have some tour plans later in the year but we will just have to wait and see.”
When & Where: Corner Hotel, Melbourne – September 9 & 10
Written by Alex Callan
