On the eve of the debut album release, and just after they finished up touring with Avenged Sevenfold, Larry Heath caught up with Michael McLeod of Melbourne’s Dream On Dreamer. Here’s what went down…
Hey there Michael, how are you going there mate?
Good, man. Yourself?
Yeah, very well. Sounds like you’ve got a bit of a busy day there.
Oh dude, we just got back from an overnight drive from Adelaide, so I’m pretty haggard.
You had the last show last night, the Avenged Sevenfold Tour, I understand?
We sure did, yeah.
How did the tour go?
It was insane, like it was mind-blowing to play the venues that we got to play and see that amount of kids come to the show. Whether it’d be not so much for us but for Avenged [Sevenfold] but to leave with a lot of new fans as well, which is a big thing for us because we may not reach out that sort of crowd anywhere else and to play those venues was just insane and we just got treated like kings and the catering and basic crew are just awesome and they just really helped us out and it was an overall experience we’ll never forget.
Well hopefully it’s a taste of what to expect in the future.
If that is what’s expected, we’ll look forward to it [laughs].
[Laughs] And you say you left with quite a few new fans and…
[Interjects] Yeah, definitely! We got a really good response from each of the shows and a lot of people came up to us after the show and said ‘We’d never heard of you’ and they really enjoyed the set, so hopefully we’ll leave with a lot of new fans and just getting that name out there as well to a different audience.
Well, you’ve got 1000 new likes in the last 30 hours on Facebook, so something’s going right.
Yeah, we’ve definitely been noticing that. It sort of just boomed and even after just one show, it jumped up [sort of within 20 minutes] 200 people, so we’re like ‘Woah! This has happening!’
Well you couldn’t have picked a better time to do it. You’ve got your debut album being released tomorrow!
Definitely, yeah, our album comes out tomorrow, so it fitted in perfectly. Like we were talking about it in the tour van how this tour was the piece of the puzzle we needed just before everything dropped. Yeah, it’s been good for us.
And what can we expect from the record? I imagine it was quite a while in the making.
We sort of laughed about how it was almost like the Mother and we just had this baby in the last nine months ‘cause it is such a long process before we hit the studio and like little exhausted little kids … just came out of nowhere, but it’s been nine months in the making and a lot of hard work and taking the time off work and stressful but fun times. All in all, to get it out and to finally have a copy in our hands is pretty surreal.
I imagine you’ve been playing most of the songs on the road for a while though so I think there should be some songs that the fans are familiar with?
Yeah, yeah, definitely! We’re madly in the rehearsal studios gearing up for the album tour and getting all those songs. We’ve tried to be a better live band than on CD. We don’t want people to say ‘They’re better on CD.’ We want to be able to say ‘Hey, we’re a live band’ and we’d like to hopefully do it as best as we can and be an experience that people will remember.
Well you’re playing next tonight in Melbourne. What’s the rest of the next few months holding for you guys?
I’m not sure. Just a lot of things still might be under wraps. What I can tell you is we’ve got a busy weekend. Next is tonight. We’re playing at the Castle tomorrow night and then we’ve got a signing at a store in Melbourne on Saturday and then Sunday is at the Phoenix Youth Centre with The Brides playing and a couple of other bands and then the album tour is pretty much two weeks after that. So starting in Brisbane on 16th August until the 28th August, we finish in Adelaide and then I think we’ve got two weeks off and then we fly over for our first international tour over in Europe, which we’re all like little school kids crazy about, crazy excited, so… big things to come.
Well, I couldn’t be happier for you guys. It seems like things are just going through the roof and I mean, for the people that have been supporting you and helped get you to the point where you’ve got this album coming out. Not only here but in America as well…
Definitely!
What can you say to all the fans that have supported you over the years?
A massive group hug! [Laughs] It’s been great how far we’ve come in such a little amount of time and I never really thought it would sort of ever be like this in the amount of time we’ve done it. We’ve got so many people to thank. I could probably start rattling off their names but I’m surely to forget just because I’m so tired but we’re so grateful of everything that everyone’s done for us and all the labels, like Unified and having Rise and Triple Vision a part of the family now is something that’s really exciting.
Well… again, congratulations and wish you all the best for what sounds to be like an exciting few months ahead.
Thank you so much Larry!
Dream On Dreamer’s debut album Heartbound is available now…
