At the start of November, Villains hit the road for an intended 5 date tour with fellow UK upstarts Out For Tomorrow and Forever Can Wait. Touring material from their forthcoming self-titled debut, scheduled for the 24th February 2014, Villains scheduled to take in Ipswich, Birmingham, London, Southampton and Swansea. As they ventured between venues (some more successfully than others), the band wrote of their adventure. Here’s the lowdown on their short stretch across the UK.
2013 has been a busy year for us as we have spent the majority of it putting together the finishing touches to our debut album, so when we were first announced for this tour we were stoked to be getting out on the road again, especially with two quality bands in Out For Tomorrow and Forever Can Wait.
We’ve known the guys in Out For Tomorrow for a while and had heard great things about Forever Can Wait so were keen to get started. It’s safe to say the tour did not disappoint!
Out For Tomorrow – ‘World On Your Side’
Our first show was in Ipswich which has always been one of our favourite places to play. For a start, our guitarist Tom is from here so it’s practically a hometown show for us! We’ve had great support from the good people of Ipswich for some of our previous musical projects so to come back again with Villains is always good fun. We enjoyed a great reception and were pleased to see a number of familiar faces singing along. We also got to check out OFT and FCW and were blown away! It’s great to tour with bands that are making music for the right reasons so we were itching to get going to Birmingham for day two…
Unfortunately for us our trusty van (Rose) had other ideas and decided to break down on us as we were about to leave for the Roadhouse in Birmingham. Van breakdowns are the worst but even more so at the beginning of a tour! A quick trip to the mechanic soon made it clear we weren’t going to be able to get to Birmingham that night but we were assured that Rose would be back to her best for Wednesday’s trip to London. The gig went ahead without us and from what we gathered, Out for Tomorrow and Forever Can Wait smashed it as per!
Forever Can Wait – ‘Excuses’
Wednesday morning swung around and, true to form, Rose was back to her exquisite ex-Post Office best. We love London and we love this venue and to top it off, the show did not disappoint. We had a few interviews to do beforehand and met up with some friends who had come down to see us. This was our first time headlining in London and it was a lot of fun. The crowd seemed to enjoy it and we even sold some merch afterwards which is always a nice little bonus.
Thursday saw us head south to Southampton which is Forever Can Wait’s home town. We actually played our first ever Villains headline show in Southampton so it was good to be back. We always like the opportunity to play to new people and so tonight proved as we opened the show. It was great for us to play to some of their fans and gain some new ones ourselves so all in all another top night was had by all.
Villains – ‘Visions’
Before we knew it that horrible feeling of end-of-tour blues was upon us. We played in Swansea which, I believe, was a first for the whole tour package. It was a great way to end the tour with all of the bands putting on a great show for the crowd. We’ll be back in Wales as soon as possible, that’s for sure!
We couldn’t have asked for a better bunch of people to tour and have a laugh with. If you’ve got any sense at all you’ll check out Out For Tomorrow and Forever Can Wait on Facebook/Twitter/Youtube etc. They are great people and we had the best time.
Also, while you’re at it, feel free to check out our new single which is free. It’s called ‘Come Out and Play’ and you can get it at MusicGlue.
Consider it us an early Christmas present from us! See you in 2014.
Villains