Yeah, I’m sure we’re all sick of Hotline Bling at this point. But what we aren’t sick of is Hotline Spring, or the alternative spring tour of the year. With headliners Magic Man and support from The Griswolds and Panama Wedding, Hotline Spring is set to hit Seattle on May 4th at Neumos, and will have the entire city doing their best Drake dance interpretations. Magic Man and Panama Wedding both rep the upper East Coast, from Boston and New York City respectively, and The Griswolds add a little Australian flair to the mix. I’m pretty pumped to finally hear The Griswolds’ “Beware the Dog” live, as I vividly remember singing that song after my breakup in my junior year of high school… I’ve been waiting to sing it with them for a while now. Warning before you hit play though, prepare for this song to be in your head for the rest of the week, and it might make you buy your tickets for their show on Wednesday like, right now.
Magic Man has been one of my favorite new bands for just about as long as I’ve known The Griswolds, and I’ll finally be seeing them live for the first time as well this Wednesday. Last week I got to ask Sam Lee, guitarist of the alt-pop duo, a few questions about their Hotline Spring tour and upcoming album plans, but of course we got sidetracked and also talked dogs on tour, hugging Australians, and the Mall of America. Read the full interview below.
Anna Kaplan: So you’ve been on the Hotline Spring tour for about a month now, how’s that going?
Magic Man: It’s been great; it’s been really fun. All of the guys we have on tour, the other bands and crew are amazing- really good people, fun to tour with, great bands every night. Yeah it’s been awesome, one of my favorite tours so far.
AK: You recently went through a touring lineup change. Who are the new people performing with you?
MM: We certainly are friends now, but we didn’t really know them well before we started playing together. Fran, our new keyboard player, worked in a radio station in Columbus, Ohio, which is one of our favorite stations. We’ve done a bunch of sessions there, interviews there, so we kind of met her before. We didn’t know she played keys until she kind of said she was interested in joining the band when we had the ad for the opening. Austin and Pepe were both Berklee students and we posted an ad on the Berklee… sort of jobs board basically and they auditioned, just blew us away, and here we are now.
AK: Speaking of people who are on tour with you, you posted on Twitter that Rocket, a dog, is going on tour with you, is that true??
MM: Yeah definitely, 100% true.
AK: Really?
MM: No.
AK: Aww that’s so sad.
MM: Yeah it’s a bummer. Maybe we’ll bring him out for a few of the later dates.
AK: I’ll add that in there and I’m sure that will draw people in.
MM: Yeah, we’ll fly him out for some special shows.
This is Rocket, he’s coming to #HotlineSpring, are you?