Moments after setting foot in Australia after competing in the Global Battle of the Bands final in Germany, in which they took away #1 crowd vote worldwide, we spoke to the band on the experience, what’s next and their much-awaited homecoming show.
Hi Guys, thanks for taking the time to chat with us, how are you and what are you up to at the moment?
Well, at the moment we’re sitting in different houses all over Melbourne and Geelong arguing on Facebook messenger of what is appropriate to tell Forte magazine, haha. But in general, we’re working on some new material and trying to craft our second EP!
How was the flight to Germany? Was it your first trip overseas?
It was pretty hectic!
Connor: It was my first trip overseas but the other two had already been to a few other places internationally. It was so crazy because I expected it to just be a longer domestic flight but it’s quite a bit different.
More importantly, congratulations on gaining audience favourite in the Global Battle of the Bands comp, how was the whole experience?
It was amazing. It’s a fairly unknown competition over here but it’s huge overseas. The room was just about packed, so to be playing to that many people was incredible in itself.
Back to the first moment you entered, did you have any idea you’d get this far?
Well when we first entered the competition in March 2015 we’d only been a band for about four months. Because of the lengthy process of going to every state in the 15 countries that were participating, it took up until a couple of weeks ago for the world final to actually take place. But no, we had no idea any of it was going to go as well as it did!
We saw in a post on Facebook you said you’d “found yourself” over in Germany, what did that entail and what affect do you think it will have on your music?
It’s actually quite a weird thing to explain because we’d been contemplating our whole sound and been thinking about the idea of actually trying to pursue the band further and what sort of music we’d want to be known for. We had a rapid fire conversation/argument that went on for hours and by the end of it we found ourselves ridiculously inspired and motivated to try and make it work. The only way we could really explain it was by saying ‘we found ourselves’.
The excitement of these competitions tends to be quite a rapid affair, how do you all plan on utilising it to solidify the band’s future?
It’s a hard one, isn’t it? Because at the end of the day, these competitions don’t really mean anything in the way of, well, anything. It’s one of those things where it was good to experience just where our music could take us, and what sort of inspiration we could draw from these foreign countries. That idea in itself was really appetising and I think that with that motivation and drive in mind, the band’s future will (hopefully) solidify itself.
Your homecoming show is days away, will it be quite a bit of a celebration for you all? Anything special lined up for the night?
It’s funny because we’ve done a couple of big shows in Geelong recently and each time we’ve brought something new to the table, something fan-dangled that will get the audiences excited. This time around we’re gonna strip it back a bit, play some of our new songs and maybe go a little bit deeper into where the songs came from. But the main idea was for it to be a bit of a celebration and a thank you to all the people that keep coming to our shows and supporting our music.
A little while ago you all announced you were to begin the process of your next EP, when can we expect for that to come out? Were there any notable differences between EPs?
We’re working on it now and all we can say is that it’s going to be pretty different. We’re trying to stay close to our poppy writing structure but we’re kind of trying to make a point of throwing a lot of things out and trying a lot of new things. We’re pretty excited about it actually.
We all know Germany is known for its beer, did you get to sample any? How do you think it compares to what we’ve got on offer in Aus?
Given none of the band drink beer we will leave this one to our manager Stu to answer!
Stu: I drank lots of magnificent German beers, predominantly Pilsners – couldn’t find a bad one. The band was blown away by the fact that you can buy a bottle of Vodka in Aldi for 5euro. Nobody was prepared to try it tho.
Given you’ve performed overseas now, has it sparked the ambition to continue developing your overseas audience? Where would you like to take the band next?
Tell you what: travelling overseas really highlights how bigger the music scene is outside of Australia at the moment. Didn’t matter what club we were in, if it had live music it was absolutely packed (even if the acts were sub-par). Europe looks like it’s definitely on our radar of where to look at when thinking about taking the band outside of Aus!
When & Where: The Run will perform a special ‘homecoming show’ at the Workers Club in Geelong on June 4.
Image: Lucinda Goodwin
