Universities all down the east coast will be playing host to some energetic sets this winter as Bluejuice take their "Winter Of Our Discotheque" tour through campus after campus. Coinciding with the release of the Styalz Fuego-remixed single "The Recession", this latest Bluejuice tour will be a welcome break from study for all those Semester 2-hating students and all those other punters who are happy to crash at their local unibar for a party. Jake Stone gives me a ring to chat about it all.

How're you doing, Jake?

I'm alright, I mean I'm okay. Nothing really exciting to tell. Just doing stuff at home, trying to produce some stuff... Nothing's really changed, but I feel better about things because I am fooling myself, again.

If anything, it sounds like you're keeping yourself busy.

Well yeah, trying to! Not always succeeding, but not always failing either. I'm just doing stuff, you know! [Laughs] I don't know how to answer that question because I don't know what I really feel. How are you doing?

Well that's okay, it's all good. Yeah I'm okay, just keeping busy like you! Now, we’re supposed to be talking about the university tour you’re heading out on with Deep Sea Arcade and The Preachers. It's a novel idea, was it a collective decision to tour the univerisities?

Did you say it was a novel idea?

Yeah, well coming from a former uni student’s perspective, I’d have loved it if more bands did these sorts of tours.

I’m amazed that people don’t, I don’t think it’s a novel idea at all. It seems like something that should be happening and if it isn’t happening, then…it’s sort of amazing that people aren’t doing that. It’s a really, really lazy thing not to do in this country, when there are a lot of uni students. I mean, that’s all they want to do, is go out!

Well yeah, when this tour was announced I was a bit miffed it wasn’t coming through Adelaide! Like you say, there are a lot of unibar settings which could provide great settings for live gigs that aren’t getting utilised enough.

Yeah, I just think it’s incredible that people aren’t doing that, if they aren’t; I think it’s remarkable that people aren’t doing it. I guess though, if they aren’t, we’ll fill in the gaps!

It’s a perfect time to be taking a tour through the various unibars down the east coast; there’ll be a lot of students wanting to blow off steam, I’m sure!

I would think so!

I took a look at the list of tour dates… as usual, it’s looking like you’re going to be playing one show a night for the bulk of the tour. Would you say you all work better together as performers if you’re constantly on the go?

Yeah, definitely.

Do you think you’ll be taking the extended band line up with you on this tour?

We won’t take the singers because it’s just too expensive to have everyone. I think that there’ll certainly be enough people in the band; Henry Eastham from Sparkadia is doing the shows, so that’ll be good. We don’t really need anyone else once he’s on there, you know?

Going off the last tour, like I’ve said to you in the past, the quality of the Bluejuice shows seems to have gone up so much but with Henry also onstage, people just seem to love him.

Yeah, he’s good! He’s definitely good at what he does and he’s a charming dude and I don’t know, I’ve been writing some music with him outside of it all too and that’s all really good too.

I think it’s safe to say that a decent part of Bluejuice’s fan demographic would be those student/uni types, so I don’t really think it’s a tour you can lose on! All of these shows are 18+ aren’t they? At least you won’t have to deal with the politics of getting all-ages gigs on the bill like you seemed to be dealing with on the last Bluejuice tour!

Not this time, it’s just quite expensive to do those; you have to plan for them a fair way out. We just can’t afford to do it this time because it does actually cost a lot to do all-ages shows; you have to pay a $3000 set up fee for a gig. Some places will let you do it cheaper, but yeah, it’s not always the easiest thing to do. We enjoy doing all-ages shows and we want to do them more, but it’s definitely a financial risk to do them and you have to choose our moments.

Definitely. Like I said before, Bluejuice will be playing alongside Deep Sea Arcade and The Preachers on this tour…in terms of support acts, you guys have had some pretty awesome local acts along with you this year! Have you had much to do with these two before?

Oh yeah, we’re really good friends with Deep Sea Arcade; I know them really well and they’ve supported us before. We’ve spent a lot of time with that band, generally. I’m really into that band and I just think this tour is going to be exciting. I don’t know The Preachers really well, but I’ve seen them before and yeah, other than that, I think it’s going to be a really good bill. It seems like that it’s going to be something that will work without too much fuss – people are getting quite a different set of bands there. Through us, they’re getting straight-forward pop music; from Deep Sea Arcade, they’re getting more of a classy kind of indie-pop and rock, they’re a bit more rock and roll. The Preachers are a rock and roll band too, so I think it’ll just be a good mixture. We don’t know yet though, we’ll find out! I don’t know if anyone cares! I haven’t been a uni student for a long time, so I don’t know if they give a shit about it! [Laughs]

The track was reworked by Styalz Fuego to make it more ‘dancefloor’ friendly – can you tell me what he brought to it and what it was like to work alongside someone putting their own spin on an original of yours?

It was good actually; we’ve got a few things that are floating around that are either remixed or re-envisioned versions of the song, and I think that’s going to be something that we focus on for the next six months, trying to get a few different ones out there. To me, they seem like pretty good songs, they’re interesting! One of them is by Miracle, who is this rapper from Melbourne, who’s really good. There are another couple…there’s one by M-Phazes that hasn’t come out yet and yeah, there’s just a few different remixes and I just want to try and get them out because I don’t know, just for something different.

Seeing all these different takes on the same song, did you ever think there could be so many versions produced from this one track?

No, not really; I don’t think, ‘Oh it’s impossible to do a different version of this song’, but I don’t consider what they’re going to be like until I hear them, and then I’m like, ‘Oh wow, that’s interesting’. I don’t really work from a sample base up to having a different version of a tune, I generally work from the tune itself and then just build in drums and that sort of stuff. I don’t really borrow hooks that much, but it’s interesting to see the different ways it’s been done.

Well I’m very keen to hear it. I thought that record as a whole, had a lot of high moments, so it’ll be interesting to see what the reworks are like.

I’ll send you something. The single’s alright and that one is good but I think the Miracle mix is my favourite, but that’s just me.

Awesome, very intriguing! This tour’s going to be taking up pretty much the whole of August; are you guys going to get a break period once it wraps up or are more projects on the go?

I think I’m just going to keep working because I don’t think I’ve had enough to do over the last little while. I’ve been doing stuff with other people and that’s been good and I want to keep doing that, basically. I want to keep recording with people and doing those sorts of things…it seems like a good thing.

It definitely does. I guess, on the tour front, I’ve asked you pretty much all I had! I’ve got some mates up in Brisbane who are particularly keen for their scheduled gigs, so it’s definitely a tour to be looking forward too!

Oh cool, I’m excited.

Well thanks for taking time out today Jake, what’s the rest of your day looking like?

Busy-ish. I’m going to do a bit of editing on this song I’m trying to do with Andy Bull and then I’m going to do another couple of interviews and then I’ve got to go and see Stav’s Mum and that’s about all I think!

Cool stuff. Have a great day, and we’ll catch up soon.

You too. That would be nice.

Details for "The Winter of Our Discotheque" tour can be found at http://bluejuice.info.