Queens Of The Stone Age have officially announced an Australian tour for February 2024.
The End Is Nero Summer 2024 tour will be the band’s first appearance in Australia since 2018.
The far-reaching tour will see the band start at Red Hill Auditorium in Perth on Februaryruary 10 ahead of shows in Adelaide, Hobart, Torquay, Melbourne, Sydney, Gold Coast and Brisbane.
The tour comes in support of their acclaimed eighth studio album, ‘In Times New Roman…’ which debuted at #2 on the ARIA charts.
The End Is Nero tour is an invitation from Joshua Homme, Troy Van Leeuwen, Michael Shuman, Dean Fertita and Jon Theodore to “come to celebrate the end of the world, which we hear is in a month or two.”
They would like to encourage the obscene and the clean, the outcasts and the weirdos, and anyone and everyone in between to attend, this is where you belong. Leave your judgment at the door, bring anything and everything else.
To celebrate the announcement of the tour we caught up with Queens Of The Stone Age’s powerhouse drummer Jon Theodore, who let us peak behind the curtain of how these rock legends operate and let us in on why ten years into his career with the band he finally felt ready to let loose on In Times New Roman…
Jon Theodore of Queens Of The Stone Age Lets Loose On In Times New Roman...
The latest Queens Of The Stone Age album In Times New Roman… has been well-received by fans and critics alike. This far into your career is it still a nice feeling to see such excitement around a new record?
“It was, we talk about it all the time. The experience of making the record for us was so special and cathartic, and productive, and meaningful and, but you never know, you know? You never know how people are going to receive it when you put it out. We're just so pleased with the response.”
“I have never gotten more texts and calls from people randomly just being like ‘Man, I love the new record’, you know? So on that level, I felt like it was a total success. Having my friends and peers and people that I look up to be like ‘Man, I heard some cuts off the new record, you know, I love it’.That made us feel great.”
“To then get out there and start the tour in Europe, playing these big festivals and having people respond to the new songs was fantastic. We're all super pleased with how it's been received.”
Did the writing process for this record feel different? Was there something new or unusual that inspired the album and made it sound as fresh and alive as it does?
“We reset the scene. First, we created a global pandemic, in order to get everyone on their heels, completely mystify the masses, and make things really difficult. Then we threw in a couple of divorces and some general life strife, and we stirred it into a pot and all took a big drink of that Kool-Aid. We got ourselves into the crucible and found ourselves completely reaffirmed and invigorated by a feeling none of us had experienced in years. We got together and the inspiration just hit like a bolt of lightning straight from the sky.”
“We'd beat our heads against the wall for a little while, kind of pushing things around, but in the middle of the proceedings, there was just like this massive blinding flash of inspiration, where the majority of the songs came down in a very short amount of time, very few takes. On some of the songs, take Carnavoyeur for example, there are things on there that I’d never done before because I didn’t even know what I was going to do before we started recording it. So it felt fresh.”
“As far as the tones go, it felt really clear and present, tough and brutal. We rolled our sleeves up, balled our firsts and just started banging. It was all tracked live, with no clicks and very little overdubs, so it’s a very old-school record. Five of us sitting in a room, doing what we do best and finally reaching that gear, where we are all over each other, reacting in the moment, while the tape is recording. After 10 years as a band, it finally cracked open, so it felt special to us.”
It is interesting to hear you speaking about the creative process in this way because I think there is this misconception around Queens Of The Stone Age in the modern era, that it is Josh and some permanent hires, but this makes it seem like you’re a far more involved and intimately connected band than that?
“It’s certainly Josh’s band, he started it and we’re all here because he asked us to join, and he is the conceptual leader of the band for sure. But it is like a dog pack. We all sort of slot into our natural places. At this point, we’ve been together for ten years, so it really does feel like a band of brothers. We are all really synergistic in a way that doesn’t come from a band of rotating hires. We’re able to move together in a way that is real, and that only happens with time. So it’s kind of both. It’s this beautiful thing where we have a clear leader, but we are also encouraged to investigate our own autonomy and bring whatever we have to the table. It’s a mutual inspiration society. We’re there to turn each other on and create something awesome together.”
When you first joined the band, were there elements of the band’s previous work that you felt you had to maintain? Did it take a while to find that confidence to inject your own personal flavour into the QOTSA sound?
“It took me ten years. I joined the band in 2013, but at that point, the band had already existed for seventeen years or something and they’d released seven or eight records, and they almost all had different drummers on them, except for the three that Joey did. So in a way, it's almost like playing eight different bands, music. That’s the great thing about Queens is that you think you know what it is, but then when you look closely at it, it’s actually something totally different. That’s the band's whole MO. We make a song that sounds like a bunch of dum bros, just stomping around the room and it flies right by you, but when you stop and pay attention, you realize it’s complex and progressive. Each record has a totally different sound, different drums, and different drummer, so for me, it was lucky I had played in a lot of different bands and listened to a lot of different music and played a lot of different music.”
“So it was a real challenge for me to really figure out how I could fit into the legacy of drummers. What I was known for previously was wildness, and there are times when that’s necessary, you always have to be wild at heart, but with Queens, the thing that is powerful about it is how locked in everything is, it is controlled chaos. So for me, that was a massive transformation. I wasn’t used to needing to make people dance, but in Queens, it’s like a funk band. Everything has to be body-rockin’. So that was a real challenge for me to get, I had to do a bit of a reverse evolution. Most people start out simple, but I start out as crazy as I can. So I’m still learning how to simplify and strip things down to their essence so that you can make a concise hooky statement that is one piston in a motor that can redline for a long time”
So is this the record where you felt you nailed that dynamic?
"I think on this record I figured out what drums work the best for me. Like sonically, I figured out what cymbals work the best for me, I figured out my method of recording that works the best, I figured out, you know, my approach on stage, it's like, I find I feel like I finally on a personal level, like, I feel like it's mine. I feel like I'm comfortable. I’m not just playing everyone else's music, you know? I think the rest of the guys feel that way too. Because this is the first record in several years and we've been a band for ten years. So in this particular lineup, it really is ten years worth of hardcore touring and playing together. I feel like we’ve found our gear, you know?"
What are your favourite songs to perform live?
“I never have a bad time, there are some that are more challenging than others. I mean, I love playing the popular ones. Because, you know, people go crazy when they hear the first couple of notes. And I love playing the deep cuts because people are like, ‘What the fuck is this? I don't even know this! I don't even know what this was.’ So I can't say I have a favourite, they're all really strong for different reasons.”
So, as the drummer, typically sitting up the back, you have the most unique perspective of anyone in the room in terms of being able to see people's idiosyncrasies as performers. Is there anything that your bandmates do that just cracks you up?
“I mean, all night long. We take it dead serious, like dead serious, we’ll all die for it, but it does feel like every night there's some look or somebody blows it or stumbles, all kinds of shit has happened. People have fallen over before, which is hilarious. Sometimes bodies go flying through the drums. Sometimes a fan will do something insane and we’ll all see that and react. There is always something, so we have our heads up and our eyes open at all times looking out for it. Recently, I’ve been moved off to the side a little bit, in the side hatch, so it’s a bit of a different story, I’m more angled, which makes for a different vantage point. I can only see half of the crowd now.”
You thought they were doing it so that people could see you and you'd be more in the limelight, but really they are robbing you of the chance to see how much people love you. Are you sure it isn’t about Josh getting more attention?
“I mean, we have five people. So we have to skew it some way. And you know, to be honest, it's like, man, if it sounds good and feels good. I did what I needed to do. And that's the only the only recognition I really care about.”
Answered like a true pro. Before I let you go I’ve got a quintessential closing question for you. If you could have any song play as your ‘walk on song’, when you enter a room, what song would it be and why?
“That's tough I wish I had time to prepare for that. Because I mean, you know, what room is it? Who's in the room? You know, how old am I? Is it summer? Is it winter? I mean, you know? It's a really tough question to answer! I mean, I guess if push comes to shove it would probably have to be AC/DC Livewire.”
Queens Of The Stone Age - The End Is Nero
Australian Tour | Summer 2024
Saturday 10 February 2024 - Red Hill Auditorium, Perth *
Tuesday 13 February 2024 - The Drive, Adelaide *
Friday 16 February 2024 - Mona Lawns, Hobart *
Sunday 18 February 2024 – Lookout, Torquay Common, Torquay ^
Monday 19 February 2024 - Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne *
Wednesday 21st February 2024 - Hordern Pavilion, Sydney *
Saturday 24 February 2024 - Lookout, Broadwater Parklands, Gold Coast ^
Sunday 25 February 2024 - Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane *
Monday 26 February 2024 - Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane *
With Support From:
* Pond & Gut Health
^ The Chats, Spiderbait, Pond, Gut Health & Lola Scott
Tickets for all shows go on sale on Monday 30 October at 1 p.m. local time via Live Nation.
A Queens Of The Stone Age fan presale will begin at 11 a.m. local time on Wednesday 25 October, while a My Live Nation presale will begin on Wednesday 25 October at 11 a.m. local time for the MONA Lawns Hobart show and on Friday 27 October at 12 p.m. local time for all other shows. For complete tour and ticket information, fans are encouraged to visit qotsa.com, and livenation.com.au.
In Times New Roman... is out now.
