Music
Interview
A Q&A with Alex from Sweet Little Machine
The band are preparing to take to the stage as support on the Fireball Fuelling the Fire Tour this October.
As Sweet Little Machine prepare to take to the stage as support on the Fireball Fuelling the Fire Tour this October, we catch up with guitarist and vocalist, Alex Lantrua-Kissack to chat about epic tours, new music and why YOU should enter the battle for Fireball’s Hottest Band.
Hello and welcome BACK to O2 Academy Sweet Little Machine! In 2016 you made some serious waves, but 2017 looks to have been your busiest year to date! You recently wrapped up a tour with Boy Jumps Ship, Eternal Boy and Patent Pending on their Spring Break Tour. Tell us, how did that go for you?
It was so much fun; probably one of the best tours we’ve ever been on and the band were so welcoming. You turn up on the first day knowing that you’ll be spending the next two weeks of your life in quite close proximity with these guys and from the very first day, they were great. We’ve made some really good friends with Boy Jumps Ship, Eternal Boy and Patent Pending over the course of the tour.
That’s great, because we can imagine taking tension out of the equation just allows for a stress-free tour.
Tension isn’t normally an issue at all, but the tour gets so much better and more fun when you all get along.
So looking forward to the rest of the year, and being ‘Fireball’s Hottest Band 2017’. What’s going through your minds right now as you prepare to open the stage with some of the biggest names in the industry including the ska-punk legends Reel Big Fish?
It’s big for us. It follows on from the kind of venues we played when we supported Me First and the Gimme Gimmes back in February, so we’re really looking forward to getting back onto those bigger stages.
With regards to prepping for it; we’re just finishing off the last touches of our next EP at the moment and then we’ll get straight into practice and working out our setlist, so we can focus on making it the best show possible.
Are Reel Big Fish, Anti-Flag and Mad Caddies some of the bands that you’ve been influenced by?
Yeah, all the bands on the bill are. It’s been great, because they all make music we grew up listening to. On all three of our most recent tours, we’ve been around musicians who have inspired us throughout the years of playing music and it’s great to get out to support them on tour.
Take us back to the ‘Fireball Fuelling the Fire Tour’ competition last year. What did you guys do to prepare ahead of the final?
That was pretty crazy. It’s the main stage of our local O2 Academy and that for us, especially at the time, was a huge thing because we’ve watched all of our favourite bands play the venue.
Luckily, we had a tour prior to the ‘Fireball Fuelling the Fire Tour’, so we had a massive run up of shows before going into it, which allowed us to put together the best setlist possible. We then went out on stage and gave the best show we physically could with as much energy as we could and just tried to make it as entertaining for the audience as possible.
How did it feel knowing industry professionals like Kerrang! Radio’s Alex Baker and members of Less Than Jake thought you guys nailed it?
It was surreal, because we grew up listening to Alex’s radio show and bands like Less Than Jake, and to have them say that you’re good, is really cool to hear. It’s also great to see what they – along with O2 Academy and Fireball – have done to help to push us and bring this whole year on with all that we’ve been able to achieve.
Finally, how do you think the entire Fireball Fuelling the Fire Tour experience has impacted your career, and would you recommend other bands to enter?
I definitely recommend everyone to enter, because the platform that Fireball and O2 Academy have been able to offer us opened up all of these doors to get our music out to a wider audience. Not to mention all the people we’ve been able to speak to and got to meet – it’s been fantastic. It’s impacted us by opening up all these tours that have been a wonderful experience, and you can tell that your fan base is growing while you’re doing it, which is great.
Want more of Sweet Little Machine? Don’t miss them as they head out with Mad Caddies, Anti-Flag and Reel Big Fish on the Fireball Fuelling the Fire Tour this October. Here are those dates:
11 October – O2 Ritz, Manchester
12 October – O2 Academy, Bristol
13 October – O2 Academy, Leicester
15 October – O2 Academy, Leeds
16 October – O2 Forum Kentish Town, London
17 October – O2 Forum Kentish Town, London
18 October – O2 Academy, Newcastle
19 October – O2 Academy, Glasgow
20 October – O2 Academy, Liverpool
21 October – O2 Academy, Sheffield
Tickets are available now through Ticketmaster.co.uk.
Interview originally posted by our friends at the Academy Music Group