eGigs talks to Travis Clark

lead singer of Florida based We The Kings, about touring the UK, meeting new fans, and great gigs on Tue 23rd Sep 2008

We The Kings hail from Bradenton, Florida and eGigs spoke to Travis Clark their four piece's lead singer whilst they were over in the UK on tour.

Hi what are the band up to at the moment?
We are in London right now, and we are waiting to get ready to soundcheck at Academy.

And how many gigs have you done so far?
This is out fifth show we've done one in Cardiff in Wales, Leeds in England, Glasgow in Scotland, and one other one Manchester.

How are you finding the UK?
We love it, last time the weather was a little indifferent, but right now it's been pretty consistent, only raining while we play and being pretty clear while we load our gear or walk around the city, it's pretty awesome. The kids are treating us very well, I guess the first time, when we came before with 'Boys Like Girls', and 'Cute Is What Aim For' they kind of get an initial taste of what We The Kings are all about and now its very cool everyone knows the words and stuff now it's very cool.

How did you get together?
We all met in Middle School in Elementary School, I know what you guys cal school over hear is a little different but over in the States middle school and Elementary school is ages from six to fourteen. We all met when we were kids and the school we all went to was called King Middle School. When we were naming the band we wanted to show everyone how long we'd been friends, and that we weren't put together as a band or anything like that, we were just friends who played music together, so we chose We The kings. We played together all through School, and bought ourselves our first van and made our own trailer and started touring just around Florida, which is where we are from, and then kind of expanded it into other States, and then we got signed and then ended up here in London.

Can you tell me a little about the other band members?
Hunter and Drew Thomsen are brothers, Drew is the younger brother and he plays bass, the Hunter is our guitarist. Danny Duncan is a year younger than me. We all met when we were playing little league baseball we were aged nine to twelve and three of us were on the same team and Danny was on another team, and we've been friends so long it's like we're all brothers.

How would you describe your music to people who have never heard it before?
we try to be an uplifting band that will put a smile on your face, and it's very feel good music and it's one of the things you will listen to at a party and our songs are also pretty deep in terms of the lyrics being about friends and family and our hometown, stuff that we love and we care about. The entire record is a love, party, fun record, and I think people are digging it. But it's kind of up to the people to judge what they think we sound like or what they hear out of the record.

So is the new album title 'Skyway Avenue' somewhere in Florida?
Yes, it's actually a bridge that connects our home town city to St Petersburg in Florida.

The song 'This Is Our Town' is featured in commercials for the new season of One Tree Hill.
Yeah, it was debuted, and it was one of the things we didn't even know it was going to be on there. We were watching it just because our parents and some of our friends were fans of the show, and it came on and we were all flipping out and jumping up and down and it was kind of a surreal moment too to witness our song being on national television.

Did you not know it would be on?
No, that's because our label likes to keep things pretty discrete, so that if it doesn't come on, if they don't air our song no one gets let down or anything. So it's always a surprising thing and it's nice to have that, to be surprised every once in a while.

You also came up with the idea of the video competition for 'This Is Our Town'?
Yeah we were playing at a national televised baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Baltimore Orioles and they wheeled this giant stage out on centre stage and we played in front of 35,000 people in Florida in our home town. We had this meet and greet which we held before the game played and before the concert and we wanted people to design their own videos to show us their own town, to win a pair of tickets, and their video would be broadcast on the telly prompter of the actual game. It was a cool thing that us and the team had come up with, and the people who won were very cool and it was very nice to meet them.

You got anything else planned like that?
yeah, we're holding a contest right now, our song 'Check Yes Juliet' which is pretty big in the States right now, we're holding a competition where if you put it as your profile song on myspace we're going to be choosing winners who win tickets to our fall headlining tour, do the meet and greet and stuff like that. We're constantly just looking at ways that we can meet new people, and fans, and reach out.

You've were asked to throw out the first pitch at the Tampa Bay Rays game and the mayor of Bradenton gave you the key to the city.
Yeah, to our hometown which was a huge honour for us, it's always been one of our goals to receive the keys to the city, because it's sort of like Paul McCartney when he was knighted, it's kind of like the same honour, in a much smaller spectrum of course. It doesn't allow us our own house, but people have had the keys, and we're part of an elite list which is nice.

So what does that mean? So if you can get in anywhere where would you most like to go?
There's this Ringling Museum Of Art in Serasota, Florida which is about five minutes away from our houses and I'd definitely say it a cool place to chill at. That would be where I'd like to hang out and use our key.

What's been your most memorable gig so far and why?
The Tampa Bay Ray Show is close to being the most memorable, we got the key to the city and stuff like that, but really our first show overin England was the Slam Dunk festival over in Leeds, and it was one of those things, we probably had two thousand kids watching us and we had absolutely no idea that anybody had even heard of us over here. So the whole time we were so nervous playing, we had no idea, we were almost forgetting words, it was crazy but very memorable all at the same time.

And what's been the best band you've ever been to see live?
I went to see Blink 182, and Jimmy Eat World, and Green Day when I was a kid and it was the best concert I ever went to. It was the concert that made me decide I wanted to play in a band and do stuff like that.

Have you got anything you'd like to tell our readers?
Just that we're really nice guys, and we'd love to meet anybody who decided to come up to us, and talk to us and get to know us, especially over here in the United Kingdom, obviously we're not from here, so we love meeting new people and getting to know everybody that comes to the shows. Hope that everybody enjoys our new record, and just know that there's more to come I promise.

Thanks Travis have a good gig, take care.
Thanks we will bye bye.

article by: Scott Williams

published: 23/09/2008 09:31



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