INTERVIEW: Alex Wall of Bleeding Knees Club

An elevator reaches my floor, and a girl dressed like a news reporter steps around me to collect a document from the nearby printer. Alex Wall of Gold Coast surf-garage band BLEEDING KNEES CLUB is humbly telling me "we're not that interesting".

I beg to differ. BLEEDING KNEES CLUB have become one of the most successful Australian bands of 2012. Beginning with casual jam sessions, Alex Wall and Jordan Malane have quickly become indie superstars in a very short space of time with Triple J picking up a little demo called 'Have Fun'.

Since then BLEEDING KNEES CLUB have played major festivals like Splendour, and  SXSW , and now with their Let It Go Tour kicking off in November, we had a chat with Alex Wall about tours, and BLT's.

How would you describe your live shows?

Um, fire breathers, dragons, and heaps of cocaine, and ladies.

Sounds like one of the craziest live shows ever

Yeah, it’s kind of like Cirque du Soleil!

How would you rate playing at festivals over small gigs?

I like doing festivals a lot more than I used to. I used to not like them because [I was] really, really bad at playing on stages but now I’m kind of getting better at it, so it’s way more fun. But those little shows, lately we haven’t even been able to play because everyone just gets on stage and stuff and you can’t even play your instrument. It’s cooler playing on big kinda stages that people can’t climb up on.

Who’s been your favourite band to tour with so far?

Probably Blink 182

Why them?

Well they’re everyone’s favourite band as a teenager I reckon and I just reckon they’re sick and cool, and they kind of have the same attitude towards music as us, like they don’t really care and like, don’t take it too seriously. I dunno, it was just really cool.

What would be your dream gig?

It would be cool to play Coachella. I think that would be the coolest place to play, yeah, I think that would be the dream.

How do you pass the time on tour?

We play iPhone games. We play Temple Run and we listen to music, we skateboard, and go on Facebook chat and talk to people.

What’s your favourite thing to eat on tour?

I like BLT’s, really good sandwiches and BLT’s are probably the best food because they have lettuce and tomato, so I get vegetables and meat so yeah, probably BLT’s. I like Thai food as well. On tour we don’t really eat very well, we eat a lot of Japanese food on tour…

Like sushi?

Yeah! Lots of sushi, noodles and rice. There’s always Japanese food in every town, there always pretty standard.

How would you sum up the Gold Coast in three words?

Does a spray tan count as two words?

Why not!

Okay, spray…tan…dolphins

You’ve known Jordan since you were practically born, what’s your favourite memory?

I think, our best memories together would be like, when we first started the band. None of us had a car, I had this scooter and we would just go surfing all day and just ride my scooter with all our band equipment to my university and jam all night. They were my best memories I reckon, because we were just doing nothing at all and it was just for fun, and nothing was serious. It was really good.

So if you weren’t in Bleeding Knees club, what would you be doing?

I’d probably be traveling I reckon, I’d probably be in America. I was born there and I’ve always wanted to go back and live there for a while. I studied advertising as well so I might be doing that.

With traveling, is there anywhere you’d really like to go besides America?

I wouldn’t mind going to Japan, it just looks like a really cool place and I wanna go to Egypt!

What made you decide to start your clothing line 100 Per Cent Zero?

I kind of thought it would be a cool idea to do because I wanted to make clothes that I really wanted to wear. I was just bored with the time off we were having. I wanted to do more photography so it was cool to shoot and because we have a pretty good fan base so I thought it would be an easy market to sell to.

Will there be a fashion show anytime soon?

I don’t know if I’ll do a fashion show. With a fashion show i really always think the worst of the brand after I go to them, so I don’t know, fashion shows seem weird to me.

A lot of good ideas seem to come about when you’re bored, do you think that’s when you get your best ideas?

Yeah, yeah I definitely get my best ideas when I’m bored. When I’m bored, it’s just feels like the thing to do, I don’t know, you just think of stupid things to do.

Tickets for BLEEDING KNEES CLUB's Let It Go Tour are on sale now! (MORE INFO HERE)

Words by Lauren Payne, check out her street on POSSE.COM

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