Midnight Juggernauts: Conquer Australia then the world!

Midnight Juggernauts have had a gradual climb to the top of indie electro dance scene in Australia. Like most local bands, they gigged over many years, opening for bigger bands until crowds warmed to their then unique brand of music. When they were established enough to headline their own shows, crowds swelled, to the point of now selling out Melbourne’s 1000+ capacity Forum Theatre. Now Midnight Juggernauts are reliving this process, only this time with an international focus. 2008 will be all about the international live circuit for Melbourne’s likeable and popular synth duo. The year began with a stellar performance at Big Day Out shows across Australia and in the coming weeks they’ll be headlining yet another tour across Australia: a farewell show before heading overseas for the remainder of the year.

Their Big Day Out performances more than prepared the band for the long life on the road. Traveling from location to location, enduring varying and extreme weather conditions and being in each other’s company for days on end are some memories that Andy Juggernaut has of Juggers’ first ever BDO appearance. “It was a lot of fun, really cool. Playing on the main stage is pretty exciting, having three day gaps between each show is not too hectic and everyone would hang out afterwards, which was really good. The Perth show was almost 40 degrees, it was so hot. We were getting ready to play and we were looking out at the crowd and thought ‘oh shit, someone’s gonna … not die but pass out, they’re just sitting in the sun…’ Seeing people all day in that heat is pretty grueling but everyone has such fun. We always wanted to play at the BDO and we got out chance this year.”

There are many different beliefs as to when is the right time for a band to incorporate the overseas market into their schedule, but one can’t deny that Midnight Juggernauts’ approach is a smart one. First conquer your home town and country. In the meantime, make only a handful of trips to Europe and the US, to warm these places of your existence. Thus the band is now in a position to take a break from the local scene and spend a large amount of time capturing new and already converted territories.Andy says the idea on an extensive international tour can be daunting and exciting. “We’re pretty excited, we’ve been doing a lot of touring in the last year and have been overseas three times just trying to raise our profile and things are really building now for us overseas. We look at the schedule we’ve got from March onwards, it’s just constant touring. It’s a little daunting if you think about it because you think ‘my God I’m gonna be away from home, it’s a long time to be on the road touring’ but on the other hand it’s pretty amazing that we’ve got this opportunity to tour around pretty much every country in the world.”

Andy says that France, a country with a history of producing electro-synth DJs and performers, was one of the first countries where they built a fan base. The US followed, where they toured in 2007 with Justice. Their itinerary this time around has Germany as a definite destination; a place where the band has not yet been and is whispered to do big things.

As any band will tell you, touring isn’t all hard work, and there are plenty of road stories to share once a tour is over. Midnight Juggernauts found the US to be a place of memorable activity, and one where a lot more can occur, if you get the chance to travel the entire country. “In America there was a lot of really crazy stuff. When we drove from Vancouver to Chicago, that was a pretty interesting experience. Driving through the middle of America, stopping at the middle of nowhere, karaoke bars… bizarre sights like an old lady getting up and she’s doing an Eminem song. We were just sitting there thinking ‘what the hell is going on, where are we’. We went to some funny places! America is such an amazing place. It’s so big, and takes so long to drive across and so many parts there are so different. LA and New York are so different and the middle is like the big unknown.”

“We didn’t go to Las Vegas, we really wanted to go, we thought it would be hilarious. We’d go from this hot weather and the next thing we know we’re in Scandinavia and it was freezing but beautiful. But that’s what its like with touring, from day to day you’d be in such different places, you kinda lose sense of where you’re from and what you’re doing. It’s like being teleported to different places. It’s kinda weird.”

Fortunately for the band, the members all get along well they can withstand the ‘weirder’ experiences. But they also have a plan in place to handle the craziness and monotony associated with traveling and being with the same folks for long periods of time. “This time when we travel we’ll try to do a lot of writing on the road. There’s lots of things you can do to take your mind off things. Daniel’s got lots of video games and things. You just try to do anything to take your mind off those long travel days…”. Good luck, boys!

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