The alt-rock legends from Florida, Anberlin are no strangers to playing Australian audiences. Only having just toured here as part of this year's Soundwave Festival, the band are getting ready to return with a new and unique tour: An Evening With Anberlin. One of Anberlin's guitarists, Christian McAlhaney calls through to dish some details on the shows, which will be hitting up most major cities throughout late August/early September.

The upcoming Anberlin tour is one that Australian fans can’t wait for, there’s considerable hype revolving around the structure of the shows as well as what we can expect. How did the idea for “An Evening With Anberlin” come about?

I think… we knew we were coming back over to Australia; you know we’ve been coming there pretty strong for awhile. This’ll be like, our seventh time, our second time this year. We come once or twice a year and I think we were just trying to think of how we could make it fresh and I guess, worth everyone’s while. Just to do something new, we were just trying to think outside the box. We’d never done this before, so we thought, ‘What better country to do it in, than Australia?’.

It seems like a really unique and individual concept, I don’t think I’ve heard of many bands, much less alternative rock bands, who’ve taken this sort of path.

Yeah for sure.

Anberlin was last in Australia for Soundwave this year, that’s going to be a big difference – how would you differ between the vibe of playing to such an intense festival crowd and an Anberlin headlining crowd?

You know, I think both things have good aspects. The festival shows are great you know. I mean, Soundwave – there’s however many thousands of people there, so you’re playing in front of a huge fan base and possibly new people, people who’ve never seen you before. Those people who’ve heard your name, they might go check you out there. So it’s fun playing those big shows, on those scales. But it’s also really nice to play your own shows in a club, with people who are really pumped to see you and they’re there specifically to see you. So there’s good things on both sides.

Anberlin have almost become honorary Australians with the amount of times you’ve been over here. Do you find there’s a sense of familiarity with the Australian shows you do?

Yeah. Touring around the States as much as we do, we can get to a city and know what’s going on, know what restaurants we like or what the cool part of town is and where our favourite coffee shop is. I think Australia’s getting to that point now as well! The fact that we come over there so much, that’s pretty crazy. I remember when I thought, ‘Man that’d be awesome!’ if at some point in my life I could go to Australia and now it’s like I feel so familiar with every city, it sort of feels like home.

The information I was sent in the lead up to this interview highlights a Q & A section with the audience. Is that going to be something that will run throughout the gig, in between performances, or will it be something set aside on its own?

I’m not sure, I think we’re all just kind of playing it… we’ve never done it before. We’re getting together in about a week to start rehearsing and really planning and figuring it out so I think we’ll have a better idea then. At this point now, I don’t know how we’re going to organise the show.

The acoustic and B-side performances are elements I’m particularly keen on. Are we going to be seeing Anberlin dig right into the back catalogue for these performances?

Yeah I think so – right now we’ve actually posted multiple times on both our Facebook and Twitter and asked for our fans in Australia to reply with their requests to our Twitter, and we’ll keep tabs on what we feel like everybody’s asking for. You know, if there are things that we haven’t been playing and it seems like everybody wants to hear, then we’ll definitely play it. I think, as a band, there’s some songs that we’ve never played, at least since I’ve been in the band, that we might pull out and see how everybody feels about it.

Can you tell me a bit about these advertised ‘guest vocalists’, or is it all hush hush?

That’s so funny. We just announced a tour in the States with Switchfoot in the fall and we did a chat and Stephen and I were talking after the chat and he goes ‘What is all this talk about guest vocalists?!’ I’m totally down with that, I mean, I’m not sure. I think we’ll figure something out but I think that was just sent out in the press release!

The band has been one of the more enduring alternative rock acts of the 2000s – surely the band’s success and cultivation of such a strong fanbase is going to be captured and displayed by this interesting and new type of show format? It seems like the band are setting out to not only appeal to the newer fans, say who’ve come onboard with the last few records, but also to provide a really special gig for the long-time followers.

I think we’re really going to try and push ourselves. I think there’s been a wall that’s been set which says that this is the way a band tours, this is how they interact with fans, you know?

If we can talk a little bit about the latest Anberlin record, Dark Is The Way, Light Is A Place – is this upcoming tour as much about touring the album as it is about presenting a more stripped back gig?

Yeah, I mean, I think we’ll play a good amount of songs off it. We did a few Sidewave shows, not enough, but we played a few shows where we played a handful of songs off the new record. But I definitely think we’ll play a lot of songs off the new record; we’re still definitely touring and trying to showcase what we did on that record.

Anberlin haven’t really stopped or slowed down since the album’s release back in late 2010, I’d assume this tour could act as more of a chilled out run of dates than some of the more hectic slots you’ve had lined up in the past?

Oh definitely, I think we specifically asked for it. I think a lot of times we come to Australia and just play every city back to back. We rarely get time off to hang. We’re going to be playing so long each night…I think we asked specifically for some time off here to rest and to actually enjoy touring in Australia.

Are there going to be any local or US support acts along for the tour or is it just you guys?

As far as I know, it’s just us. I think I heard something about, legally, we can’t just tour by ourselves. There has to be an opener. I don’t know if we’ve announced who it is, but I think there is some band opening, I can’t remember what their name was. Or maybe it’s a surprise, I can’t actually remember.

We’ll say it’s a surprise and keep that illusion going.
[laughs] It’s Kylie Minogue!

Where are you guys off to after the Australian tour? Will you be touring this new concept back in the States, or have you already done it?

Yeah, well we’ve just come back from Europe. It’ll be about a month off by the time we get to Australia and then we’ll have a couple of weeks off before we start a U.S tour with Switchfoot, which will go until about October. After that, we’re taking off for the rest of the year to really focus on writing and hopefully recording another record.