Send In The Clowns

"If you want the real, I have not slept. And not in that party-raging way,” he says, sounding a little worse for wear. Not one to shy away from taking on extracurricular activities even when the group is flat out, his latest venture still might come as a bit of a surprise to his fans. A good surprise.

“I was down in Canberra performing in my first role in a movie,” he says, like he can barely believe it himself. “No shit! Do you know Alex 'Shooter' Williamson? I did a YouTube video with him called You Can't Say This Word and it's about the word 'cunt'. He's put together this full budget motion picture called Me And My Mates Vs The Zombie Apocalypse and it's him, Greg Fleet and Jim Jefferies, and I played a small part in it last night. It was like a night time shoot from 6pm to 6am so a got a flight at 7am and they said 'Alright, you've got to do some interviews!' so I said 'Alright, give me a Red Bull,' and here I am.”

Since the release of Circus In The Sky, which hit number one on the national ARIA charts, Bliss N Eso decided to put on the biggest production yet for their live shows.

“It's been amazing,” he says. “We're not just a DJ and two MCs anymore, we've sort of amped it up to another level. We've got a crazy drummer, a guy called Darren (Mathiassen) from Shapeshifter, we've got a great pianist, we've got Ceekay Jones over on guitar, he was on our single My Life, and so yeah it's been amazing watching the tracks come to life from the CD versions to this roaring sound – it's like riding a fucking huge wave. The lyrics – I don't know what it is about natural drums and the timing – but the lyrics feel you can play with them a little bit more, so you can do different, extra melodies and stuff which keeps it fresh for us as well. I find when I freestyle to real drums my flow is more like liquid than the [drum machine sound]. Then I've got to be the flow because the beat is so stop and start.”

Having already treated the capital cities and major centres around Australia to a live rendition of Circus In The Sky, they decided they wanted to take things up to the next level for a run of shows around the country which has turned into the behemoth, 15-date Circus Under The Stars tour.

“We've done so many shows that were little pub gigs all around Australia when we first started, we've all really liked playing outdoors, having that nature vibes happening,” he says. “We started off going to all of these small towns all around Australia, that's how we saw this beautiful country. As we've grown in success we haven't really been able to hit all those places. We've hit the big cities and then a couple of other places so we thought it was definitely time to give back to the people and remember how we started. And how we started was as a live act and hitting up 'your' town when the town was thirsty for anything to come along and say hello. That's a real big part of why we wanted to do this tour. And it's not a small show, you know? I mean we've got a huge production on this, we've got a band – what we had at the Big Day Out we're bringing on tour. We've got fucking Seth Sentry, we've got Horrorshow, and that's a mini-festival in itself.”

As they take Circus In The Sky to its ultimate conclusion, you would forgive the guys if they hadn't had time to pursue many activities outside the promotion of that record, but of course that's not the case. 

“We've just recently come from playing for the troops in Afghanistan,” he says. “We were over there for eight days and we did six shows at six different bases, in September last year. That was an absolute eye-opener. I mean the closest I want to get to war is in my lounge room in my flip flops playing Call Of Duty. With the amount of soldiers – guys and girls over there – that were hitting our social media and saying 'You have to come over here' we had to do it Bliss N Eso are not for war at all, but it's happening and there's people over there that are risking their lives so you know, to be able to give them that break and supply them with a smile and a reason to jump around and have some fun, that was amazing.

“We were basically in the bases, in the war zone, up in the Hercules with a bulletproof vest on, I heard SAS stories that I wouldn't even be allowed to tell you, mate. I didn't want to go at first, but it was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

“From there we went to Canada and did a tour from the west coast to the east coast over three weeks, and during that time I actually stopped drinking. The industry supplies the artist with quite a bit of booze at the end of the show as I'm sure you know, and I was one that kind of fell victim to drinking a little bit too much, so I am now four months and eight days off the piss. Everything has been a life-changer this last six months. At the end of the Canada tour I got married in Vegas so it's this whole new intergalactic world which has opened up for me.”