Simone Dow – Voyager

Voyager are about to embark on a co-headliner tour with the prog maestros in Leprous (Norway). I phoned up guitarist Simone Dow the other week to have a talk about the new album, their busy live schedule and Legion (before it was postponed until 2017).

At the end of last year Voyager, finally, won a WAMi (West Australian Music Industry) award. It’s been a long time coming to say the least.

“It was quite a massive deal for us because we’ve been nominated for a WAMi nearly every year for the past ten years. We were shocked, we didn’t expect to win it. It was just really cool to be recognised by the WA music industry. It is obviously not just for metal, it’s across the board in every genre. It was really awesome, they make it a really special event, they book out a big venue and with a proper award ceremony, a band playing, it is basically the WA equivalent of the ARIAs, but with a smaller stage! It was a big surprise, but really cool to be recognised.”

Voyager’s last album, V, was released almost two years ago now. I knew beforehand that the band is working on new material, but I wasn’t quite sure how far they’ve actually come. I was curious about the progress, and if we will get to hear a new song anytime soon.

 “We’ve been writing since… we’re shocking! As soon as we’ve released an album, we start writing again. I guess you’ve got to grab the opportunity, when you feel inspired, you just do it. Same thing happened with the last album, when we did The Meaning of I. We actually wrote Hyperventilating as Meaning of I was being released! We’ve got maybe four or five kind of partially written songs. We’re obviously not rushing it, we want it to be organic and a very natural process, which it always is. We’re all firm believers that forcibly writing things is not cool, and you tend to write very crap music when you do that. So we won’t force it. We’re kind of finishing up one of the songs, and it’ll be a bit of a surprise, well we were wanting to surprise people! We’re meant be releasing a new song possibly soon, I won’t be saying any more than that, but it’s freaking awesome! Really, really loving the direction we’re going in. It’s still kind of following where we were going with the last album.”

Danny Estrin (vocals) told me last year that Voyager were aiming for a late 2016 release for the new record. Is this still what the band is aiming for?

 “We haven’t actually locked in anything yet, but you want to go with two/three years max between releases, and we released the last one in July 2014, so if we can get it out for the middle to end of this year that would be awesome, but we’re not going to rush it, but it’s what we’re aiming for! But don’t lock it in Eddie!”

The first half of 2016 will be a busy time for Voyager indeed. They have already played two support shows for Nightwish and the aforementioned co-headliner tour with Leprous will take place over the next couple weeks. After that they will be supporting Epica on their Australian/New Zealand tour, and as if that wasn’t enough, they are then heading overseas for their first proper European tour ever, again with Leprous, a band we discussed a fair bit. 

“Well, we are absolutely stoked about this tour! I am an ashamedly massive Leprous fan! Slightly fangirling a little bit too hard! I’m emailing them and I’m like: “I’m emailing one of my favourite bands!” So, it’s really, really cool! They’re lovely guys as well. I’m looking forward to playing the shows with them, and hanging out with them and showing them a bit of the Aussie culture! But yeah, they’re a band that I discovered last year. They absolutely blew me away. When the opportunity arose to do a tour swap, it was a no-brainer. It’s going to be great, we’ve got some great venues, and some really awesome opening bands as well. And then you’ll get an hour each of both Voyager and Leprous, so it’ll be a very entertaining evening!”

Earthside are also joining the two bands in Europe. 

“I’ve only heard a couple tracks. But what I’ve heard has been really awesome, so I’m really looking forward to meeting the guys, and to check them out more in depth as well. Someone shared me a track, I can’t remember who it was and it was really, really cool. We’re looking forward to sitting down and actually absorb it more before heading over to Europe. Obviously, taking in their live show as well!”

But before the voyage (…) to Europe, a first ever New Zealand show is happening.

“Yeah, that’s in the middle of March. It’s Aukland, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. We’ve played with Epica before. We actually ended up becoming quite good friends with the guys as well. We ended up playing volleyball with them in the pool at the hotel! That was really cool. This is one instance where I do know that they actually know us and our music, they like what we do, they wanted us on-board with the Aussie tour, and playing Auckland! We’ve never done New Zealand before. It will be really cool to get over there, if it goes well we might actually book some of our shows over there at some point!”

Voyager have done setlist polls in the past, I was curious about if they will be doing this again in the future.

“I’m not sure, the reason why we did it for the ProgPower shows, the thing with ProgPower USA, it is a very special festival that Glenn and Jennifer Harveston, you know, it’s very family niche oriented. They really make it a cool festival, you get to chill and have beers with people. Fans get additional access and hang out with you. It’s a really relaxed vibe. They like to have exclusive things when they do the festival. So they might get a band to play the fans’ favourite album or they’ll get bands that reunite. We came up with the idea that we would get the fans to pick an album. And I don’t know how it happened, because we never really agreed to pick the setlist. It suddenly changed into: one show, pick the album, one show, pick the setlist and we just went: “we’ll just roll with it! Did we say that we were going to do that?! I don’t think we did!” But whatever, that’s cool, it actually shows that we generally pick the right songs to play live anyway, because the songs they did pick are the songs we normally play. That was the reason we did that, I think we will do it again, it’s nice to get the fans involved, they’re the reason we do what we do, and can continue to do it. They keep buying our music and coming down to our shows. It’s nice to let them have a choice every now and then, so I’m sure it’ll pop up again.”

It wasn’t really a question I had prepared for Simone at the time, but we somehow ended up talking about Soundwave, and subsequently Legion. People should also note that despite the fact that Legion has been postponed until 2017, you can still pledge over at Pozible. 

“I’m very sad to see Soundwave go. We’re losing festivals and venues way too often. It’s concerning. I’ll do a plug and say: make a pledge for the Legion Music Festival. I think it’s a really great incentive. A lot of people are really weird about crowd-funding, I think it’s the way, not permanent way for the future, but it’s definitely going to assist in a lot of arts events in the future. When you can reach your hand out and say: “we love you guys, we just need your help”, I think it’s a really great thing. When things like that pop up you should definitely put your hand in your pocket, even if it’s just ten bucks or whatever.”

As we’re nearing the end of our interview, I asked Simone to share a random or crazy moment from their extensive US tour together with Evergrey last year. 

“One of the weirder moments, Cleveland. That’s a really interesting place to go to, that’s all I’m saying! It was a great show and great fans, but very interesting place. One of the crazy things that happened there, we were on the bus drinking and partying in the car park. There was a bang on the door, our driver Justin opens the door, and there’s this crazy looking woman looking like a crack addict version of Macy Grey trying to sell a pot plant at 3am. She was like: “Do you want to buy one of my pot plants?!”

For 2016, I have come up with a new signature question, that I will most likely ask every artist that I interview over the course of this year. Simone was my first victim. The question goes: “Would you rather play one hundred 1 minute long songs, or one 100 minute long song?”

“One hundred 1 minute long songs?! What, am I now in a grindcore band?! Well, I’m of the opinion that it’s better to keep people’s attention rather than bore them with tedious, I mean, I know I love Opeth, but you know, after 15 minutes… If you’re going to play one 100 minute song it’d have to be something like Meshuggah did, it actually sounds like 10 different songs. Why not, let’s be a grindcore band! One hundred 1 minute songs, that’s going to be entertaining, right?!”

Voyager goes grindcore.

“Oh god, I couldn’t think of anything more horrific. What a way to end this interview!”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImtGIvaTpBg&w=560&h=315]

Tickets for both Leprous / Voyager and Epica’s tour (with special guest, Voyager) are on sale now!

Leprous / Voyager

Friday, 29 January 2016 :: The Factory Floor, Sydney
Tickets: http://www.factorytheatre.com.au/events/2016/01/29/leprous-norway-voyager-aus

Saturday, 30 January 2016 :: Amplifier Bar, Perth
Tickets: http://tickets.amplifiercapitol.com.au/Default.aspx?Event=56927

Friday, 5 February 2016 :: The Brightside, Brisbane
Tickets: http://thebrightsidebrisbane.oztix.com.au/Default.aspx?Event=56925

Saturday, 6 February 2016 :: The Evelyn Hotel, Melbourne
Tickets: http://evelynhotel.oztix.com.au/Default.aspx?Event=56928

Epica, with special guest Voyager

Tickets available via www.soundworkstouring.com, the usual outlets and the venues.

March 16th @ The Studio, Auckland 18+
March 18th @ Max Watts, Brisbane 18+
March 19th @ Max Watts, Sydney 18+
March 20th @ 170 Russell, Melbourne 18+

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