Six cities in six days, six gigs and a crap load of awesome. That was just the first leg of Johannesburg alternative rock band Dead Alphabet’s manic US tour this year.
Lead singer and guitarist Adam Edward says ‘yikes’ just thinking about the tour. “We played our way up the coast starting in San Diego, before hitting stages in Anaheim, North Hollywood, Santa Monica, Ventura and Santa Barbara. From San Francisco we flew across the big gap in the middle to the East Coast, playing Cleveland and Brooklyn.
“We made the tour van our home, covering over 3 200 kilometres and complained about it most of the way. It was a window tinted den of beer cans, mix tapes and parking tickets…
“We were glad to get rid of it in New York. And considered burning it more than once.”
But they did it – not burn the van, but the tour – almost a month across the States and back to South Africa, they seem to be unstoppable.
Edwards and guitarist Phil Klawansky say the band runs on independent thought, and that’s why they’re open to slogging to get where they want.
Both agree that they’re not your average band that can be tied down to any specific idea but instead, is always evolving.
Edwards says their initial thought was to flood the market and make it big as soon as possible, but they realised that they were just not ready.
“We were young, hopeful, somewhat stupid, and we had big ideas, but now we’ve realised that we needed to grow up a bit.
“Now we’re in a space where we can decide what we want on our album cover, what we want to sound like and what we are rather than a record label telling us what to do, and that’s good.”
Read the full interview at http://www.timeslive.co.za/entertainment/music/2012/08/01/dead-alphabet
