Clowns Vs American Sharks: Spliffs, Dragons & Chillis With Gwar

https://soundcloud.com/poisoncityrecords/clowns-figure-it-out

American Sharks vs Clowns

Mike Hardin: You guys are releasing a brand-new album. Tell me a little about the writing process for Clowns?

James Ahern: Yep, we’ve got a new album dropping on the first day of the first show of the tour, which is pretty exciting.

Our writing process is pretty similar to a lot of bands, where one guy will bring in what he thinks is about 90% of a song, then the four of us will pick and poke at it until it’s brought back down to about 10% then we’ll all start working its way back up again to a fully finished song.

This particular album we took a strong stance on communal writing, nothing was finalised outside of our practice space and everything from drum fills, to lyrics, guitar solos, bass lines were all decided upon communally, which at the time seemed extremely painful, but listening back to what we managed to create on record, it certainly paid off.

MH: You guys just toured China. It looked amazing! How did that come about and what was your favorite show?

JA: A few of our friends’ bands had done the circuit over in China recently, and us being tour junkies jumped at the idea of being able to take our music over to a place as ridiculous as China. The tour itself was completely mental and with so many experiences I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to experience anywhere else. It’s a beautiful country, but it’s also bat-shit crazy at the same time.

It’s pretty hard to look past playing on a main stage at an open-air festival to 10,000 people as a favourite show of the tour, but the show in Zhuhai where we played in front of 30 chain-smoking, drunk Chinese suit-and-tie types who stormed the stage and trashed everything while we still had two songs left, including jumping through the venue’s house drum kit, stealing the microphones and pouring drinks over themselves, all from the overexcitement of being at a punk show, was something pretty awesome as well.

MH: What do you guys expect from a touring American band and what do you suppose our tour is gonna entail, party-wise.

JA: Hearing you guys pronounce our Australian towns in funny accents, lots of beers, very little sleep and a whole lot of other things that should remain off Tony Abbott’s internet surveillance and metadata files.

The last American band we toured with was Samiam, and for a bunch of guys in their late 40s they went hard, very hard, so you do have a reputation to uphold, especially for a bunch of guys whose website URL is americansharkspartyhard.com.

MH: Do you guys eat Vegemite? What food are you looking forward to trying when you get to the States?

JA: I don’t know about the other guys, but I can’t stand Vegemite. Just the smell of it makes me dry retch. Very un-Australian, I know. I’m looking forward to all the soft drinks, or “sodas” as you call them, as I am a fizzy drink junkie. Oh! And curly fries with every meal, please. It’s a scientific fact that fries taste better when they are curly.

MH: You guys are gonna head to the U.S. of A. after we destroy Oz. Is it your first time over?

JA: Yeah, it’s our first time over and, apart from New Zealand, it’ll be our first time touring another western country, which is exciting in its own way as well.

MH: What is something you really MUST see while you’re in the States?

JA: I really want to see the Daniel Johnston mural while I’m in Austin, and I’d love to get real drunk and go to the baseball. I’ve learned all the chants from years of watching crappy baseball movies; time to put them to use finally. I’m also really looking forward to skating all the spots I’ve seen on various skate movies growing up as a kid, and levels I played on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.

MH: Have you every heard the New Zealand musician, Alastair Riddell, and his amazing project, Space Waltz?

JA: No, but I just quickly YouTubed them so I could answer this question, and they kinda sound like a Kiwi Ziggy Stardust. Terrifying…

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Clowns release ‘Bad Blood’ on Friday, 20th February via Poison City Records. Their Australian tour with American Sharks kicks off on the same day — details below.