Halloween All Year

Taking into account his affinity for schlocky horror flicks, theatrical rock'n'roll and overall ghoulish aesthetic presentation, there's one annual event whereby demand for glam-punker Wednesday 13's services must be at its zenith - Halloween. The American vocalist is surely inundated with invitations to perform on 31 October each year, which makes the band's decision to spend the occasion touring Australia, where said American institution has but a cult following, somewhat intriguing.

“We get offers all the time,” Wednesday (real name: Joseph Poole) explains, nearing the completion of a nine-hour tour van drive. “Everyone wants us to play their backyard; people plan their own private Halloween parties and offer us a tonne of money and stuff like that. But we just really worked on Australia the past couple of years and I think Australia deserved a Halloween show, so we couldn't deny that. I couldn't think of a better place to spend Halloween this year. [We want to] give them the best possible Halloween experience we can, without dying.”

The aforementioned visit includes a Sydney gig on Halloween night so expectations for the (ahem) spook-tacular event are high, as Wednesday and band will truly be in their element. “We played London last Halloween, and that probably set the bar as far as what we can expect from Halloween shows. I thought the only place that could even remotely, probably go head-to-head with what London brought would be Australia. So Australia, you've got something to prove – you've got London to beat.

“As far as like doing anything super crazy, out of the blue for Halloween, I don't think we're going to do anything too different. We're pretty much our own band that's Halloween, 365 days a year, so stepping up to make it even more crazy for Halloween, I don't know what we would do, besides set our heads on fire or something. We don't have the production to do that, so we just kinda rely on the whole spirit of Halloween; this is Halloween night for us. I think the vibe will be in the air. Australia seems to be the most rabid, crazy place for my fans right now.”

Down Under is indeed a hotspot for the sometime Murderdolls co-leader. “I've just seen it build and build every year, so I don't know if it's just people are starting to catch on to what I do, or what. I'm not going to complain about it; I love it and it's a good thing, it's a good problem to have. Our fans are insane… What we've created is a truly unique, amazing thing.”

Aside from maintaining a strong connection with his disciples via avenues such as social media, the frontman is reliably prolific, conditioning devotees to expect a new release of some description each year. Although a follow-up to latest solo disc, The Dixie Dead, is a little way off (“We won't start working on new stuff until March or April”), another venture should fill the void.

“I'm not on a major label right now, [so] I kinda gotta get my name out as much as I can. I get bored a lot, and a lot of my fans see me having to play a lot of the same places over and over, so a new release for them can get older quicker than it could to us. So to constantly be able to put out an EP or something else… The next thing we're doing right now is a DVD. We'll have a DVD out probably in March or April.

“We're still working on it, but it's going to basically cover our week-long tour that we did in the UK in March. Showing like a day in the life of Wednesday 13: what we do and how our fans are. It's more or less a behind-the-scenes, as opposed to being a DVD with surround sound. The live clips are going to be what they are: basically show the band, and show what we do. I think that's what fans want to see more of, as opposed to a 5.1 surround sound concert DVD. We're not doing that. I can post videos of us playing a song that I think is a great performance, then I'll post a video of us being stupid, throwing up and doing something dumb, and it'll get 5000 more views than the actual concert. It seems that the fans want to see us, being ourselves, behind what they can normally see.

“As far as the next musical thing Wednesday 13 does, I'm going to take my time on it… I'm hungry again, I want to feel like I'm in my youth again, when I first started writing music and had something to prove.”