The Strangers in Town sit down with us for a quick chat before they go on stage at The Espy in Melbourne on May 10th for round one of Emergenza Festival Australia. They’re gearing up to put on a killer set of pop punk and grunge inspired tunes. You won’t want to miss out. While you’re waiting for them to go on, check out what the band had to say in their own words.

HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH YOUR NAME THE STRANGERS IN TOWN?
We were first called Midnight Run and we wanted to change it up, so we re-named the band The Savage Misfits. We thought it sounded much too heavy for what we play so we kinda copied Green Day and renamed ourselves after one of our songs. But this all happened when it was just Joel and Shannan in the band out of the current line up.

WHO PLAYS WHAT IN THE BAND, AND HOW DID YOU FIRST GET TOGETHER?
Well for starters Shannan and Daniel both play bass. Brad and Joel play guitar and sing (Joel sings lead but plays rhythm, and Brad plays lead guitar and sings backing vocals), and Lucas plays drums. We started as a four-piece three years ago now, but most of the members dropped out, so with great struggle Shannan and Joel started getting new members in and when we were back to a four-piece we started jamming with Daniel and he fit in as a part of the group, so we kept him. Then we had some drummer problem (as everyone does, hahaha) so we got Lucas who knew Daniel and we clicked so after six months in the band we've started writing music again as a whole band.

HOW ARE YOU DIFFERENT FROM OTHER POP PUNK/GRUNGE BANDS?
Well the two bass players sets us apart, haha. We just have something different in our live sound because of it, which really sets us apart from most other bands these days.

WHAT'S YOUR REHEARSAL SPACE LIKE AND WHAT'S THE STRANGEST OBJECT IN IT?
Well the rehearsal space is Joel's garage and we have some outrageous crap in there. We have a big beanbag beagle, which we found on the side of the road. But we have a big TV to watch back past gigs, a really cool home made lighting rack and for the big boys we have a beer fridge for those hard long rehearsals. Hahaha.

WHERE HAVE YOU PLAYED BEFORE AND WHAT WOULD YOUR DREAM GIG BE?
We have played some cool venues The Espy at this stage will probably be the most well known. But we have played Musicland recently, we played Sound Bar last Easter, we had a lot of fun playing The Evelyn last year also. And dream gig we want to go all the way, we want a huge festival with every audience member screaming the words to our songs back at us. We want to rock hard and do it for a long time.

HOW ARE YOU PREPARING FOR THE SHOW AT THE ESPY?
Playing heaps of smaller shows to work out what the best songs are, and the most important thing to us, presence to the point we get off stage and collapse.

WITH OTHER BATTLE OF THE BANDS COMPETITIONS AROUND, WHAT MADE YOU CHOOSE EMERGENZA?
We chose Emergenza because it gave us such a huge opportunity that we otherwise would have to work for years and years to achieve.

For more details on the show at The Espy, May 10th, click here.