Green Day Planning Australian Tour Early 2013, Looking Into Club Shows

As the world gears up for Green Day‘s triple album release, Australia has been somewhat left out of all the tour news, that is until today. In an interview with Adelaide Now, Billy Joe Armstrong, fresh from a brief hospital stint, has confirmed that the punk rock trio will be in town early next year, but plan on doing things differently.

Armstrong was quick to drop the dates February and March into the mix, which will put the band off any festival’s radar and suggests a run of stadium performances, much like their previous tours Down Under in 2005 and 2009. But this time round, the band will be looking into some more intimate performances also: “We’d like to do some clubs as well as playing in the bigger places,” the frontman explained. “That’s an experience we haven’t had in Australia since the first time we have been there, playing the 300 to 500 seaters. Australian crowds go off – so being in that small a room would be a lot of fun.”

The band has recently had a lot of success with the idea of playing small shows, often with short to little notice, surprising fans with their presence. As Armstrong explained, the band road-tested much of their new material from Uno! (which is out this Friday) Dos! (released in November) and Tres!(released in January). “For us it was treating ourselves like we were a brand new band again,” Armstrong says. “We did a show at Costa Mesa where we played 18 brand new songs and surprised the audience.”

Revisiting their club show days has instilled a feeling in the frontman that he hasn’t experienced for a number of years: “We also did it in New York and it was really scary. It was the first time in a long time that I felt like people were listening to brand new stuff and were looking at us like a foreign object. It was frightening and exciting at the same time – I wanted to throw up.”

Not all the surprise shows went to plan with one in LA, advertised with “Green Day Surprise rock n roll sex party show meaning ‘secret show’ coming soon in LA AREA. Stay tuned…And it’s FREE.” It resulted in police shutting the idea down, for fear of fans getting too rowdy.

So stay tuned for updates on the upcoming tour, as well as news on which, if any, clubs or bars will be hosting the boys. With the albums being released over the coming months, you will have plenty of time to learn all the words.

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