Stone Gods: Festivals and Tours
Stone Gods' Ex-Darkness Members Aim for a Core Rock Audience
In an exclusive Stone Gods interview front man Richie Edwards discusses success, avoiding The Darkness pop crowd and promises that Stone Gods will tour, tour, tour...
With the Burn The Witch EP having sold out in a nanosecond and the as-yet untitled album not due out until June, Stone Gods have a little time to fill.
Stone Gods for Festivals?
Suite 101: So between now and then will you be putting yourselves out on the road?
Richie: “Yeah. I mean, we did a small tour in January which was fantastic. It went really well and we basically just want to continue in the same vein. We're hoping to squeeze in a support tour in March and then some more of our own dates in May and the June through September it's off around Europe doing the festivals. Maybe finish off the new year with another little run round the UK and get to some of the countries we haven't yet visited. It is going to be a case of touring, touring, touring and getting ourselves playing to as many people as we possibly can.”
Stone Gods Club Tour - So Close You Can Smell Them
Suite 101: Is it weird being back to, shall we say, more 'intimate' venues after all the arenas and flying white tigers?
Richie: “It's great, actually. I mean, don't get me wrong – playing an arena is great and playing a festival to 85,000 people all going nuts, that's pretty cool as well. But this tour we did in January, it really was fantastic to be playing these smaller venues. You've got the audience right in front of you, you can see the whites of their eyes and you can interact with them. You get a vibe of how things are going that you just don't get from the stage of an arena.
"If you're up there and there's a good twenty feet between the stage and the start of the audience, you have no idea what's going on out there. It's really difficult to get the vibe, whereas when you're onstage in a 200 or 300 capacity club, you can see everything that's going on, right to the back of the room. I think it's fantastic – you feed off the audience and they feed off you. It's a far more intense experience and we all absolutely loved it. Just getting hot and sweaty and really feeding off the vibe of the crowd, it's great.”
As Big as the Darkness? Who Cares?
Suite 101: Do you think Stone Gods can come close to the success of The Darkness? Does that even matter?
Richie: “It doesn't matter to be honest and it also depends on how you measure success. My idea of success for this band would be for us to be at a level where we can carry on touring and we can carry on making records and if we could maintain that I'd be immensely happy - if things get too big too quickly, things can start to go pear-shaped, y'know?
"I certainly don't think we'll appeal to the crossover pop audience that The Darkness did, the kinda Saturday morning kids' TV brigade. I don't think we'll pick up those fans at all, which to me is no bad thing really. Because once you start appealing to that audience, the only thing they're really interested in is the next thing that's coming along, whereas the core rock audience - which is hopefully what we'll appeal to - is more real fan-based. If they like you then they'll latch onto you and support you forever and that's really important to us. As long as we have that core audience that allows us to tour and make records, we'll be happy.”
Stone Gods are:
- Richie Edwards - vocals/guitar
- Dan Hawkins - guitar
- Toby MacFarlaine - bass
- Ed Graham - drums
Read more about Stone in Stone Gods interview: The Darkness and Stone Gods: Burn The Witch & Album
