"I've found when touring, even a couple of girls can make the guys behave a whole lot better."
THEREDSUNBAND like touring. A lot. They must think Canberra's a bit of alright too, as barely four months have elapsed since the pint-sized purveyors of broody dream pop last graced the beer-soaked stage of the ANU Bar. This time the Sydney-based trio – combining sisters Sarah (guitar/vocals) and Lizzie Kelly (keys), with recent addition, drummer Jasper Fenton – are bringing they of Forever Young fame, Youth Group, along for a co-headlining tour around the nation. I spoke with Sarah straight from the heart of the action: the tour bus.
One of the first things Sarah tells me about her surroundings is the noticeable gender imbalance within the vehicle. "There are two girls and ten boys in this van," she laments, admitting that she and Lizzie did have some minor concerns about being outnumbered by blokes on tour. "We purposefully asked to get a girl [Laura Imbruglia] to support us for the second half of the tour, just to try and even it up a little bit more," she adds. "I've found when touring, even a couple of girls can make the guys behave a whole lot better. So I think our influence will be fairly positive and hopefully the van won't smell too much!"
If, like me, you think pairing the glittery pop songs of Youth Group with the dark and distorted tones of theredsunband seems a strange choice, well, you'd be wrong. "I think our two bands are more similar than maybe is immediately obvious," Sarah argues. "When we've played shows together in the past it's really worked because we are both very melodic bands."
She also notes that the two bands share a history dating back to the early days of the millennium. "The first show that Lizzie played with theredsunband was a Youth Group support at the Hopetoun Hotel back in 2002," she recalls. "And Toby has this awesome story of being given an early copy of 'Sleep Forever' – which was our second single – and he gave it five stars in a magazine review. I wish I could find that, because I think that's pretty nice."
Pleasantries and praise are fine and dandy within the confines of the tour bus, but will the claws be out when it comes time to decide which of the bands will headline each night? "We staged a coin toss. We went out to Erskineville Oval one afternoon, got an old Australian penny and just flipped it a few times," she explains. "But it was organised so it would be fairly even, even if one person won all the coin tosses which, I would like to point out, I did!", she exclaims with a cheeky sense of pride.
Coin tosses aside, Sarah assures me that the quality of the Youth Group/theredsunband bill is definitely not a gamble and neither is her passion for touring. "We like being on the road," she admits, with the prospect of traversing hundreds of kilometres across five states and territories clearly not troubling her. "We really like touring because we like the travelling and we like going back to all the places we've been and visiting our friends. We really love doing it," she reiterates. "I don't think we'll ever stop." The gig-going public of the nation's capital implore you, Miss Kelly: please don't!
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