Tour rumours: Slash, SimplePlan, Fun, Flight of theConchords

Fri 17th Feb, 2012 in Local News

AJ Maddah loves to casually drop tour announcements and rumours on Twitter (perhaps that’s why some folk suspect him of being the mastermind behind the mysterious Miss Info character) and although his Soundwave festival is fast approaching he’s already thinking about other tours.

Answering a Twitter follower who suggested that he book American indie pop crew Fun for Soundwave 2013 Maddah has revealed that the band will “be here later this year”. The band has just released their second album Some Nights through Fueled by Ramen, the label that is home to other Soundwave favouries including Cobra Starship, Paramore and VersaEmerge.

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In other pop-punk news, Simple Plan, who were here as recently as September last year are already planning to make the long flight back Down Under (probably because chanting “jet-lag” over a pop hook has proven to be strangely successful career move for them). According to a recent web-chat the Canadian pop-punks are trying to get their current touring buddies All Time Low (another favourite of the underage pop-punk set) to join the Australian tour dates. Consider yourself forewarned.

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Another act that we’ve seen recently touring with Soundwave also has Australian in his sights. Slash is set to release his second solo album in May with Myles Kennedy providing all the vocals this time around. While chatting about the new album in a Q and A circulated by his label, Roadrunner Records, Slash says that he plans to launch the album “starting off with radio shows in the states and then we’ll do as much of Europe as possible. We’ll also tour in Asia and Australia, and try to hit South Africa this year as well as India and a couple other spots.”

So with American and European tours to get out of the way first it looks as though the top hatted guitar legend plans to sneak in a return to Australia sometime later this year.

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There’s also tour rumour news for a band that wouldn’t be at home on a Soundwave lineup, with – Bret McKenzie of your favourite NZ comedy-folk duo, The Flight of the Conchords, revealing in an interview with Billboard that he and Jermaine are “about to tour Australia and New Zealand. We haven’t toured there in years.”

Hopefully this time the tour does go head, cack in late 2010 Conchords cohort Arj Barker revealed that “Brett and Jemaine have talked about touring Australia and New Zealand maybe next year” but sadly 2011 passed by without a tour.