Interviews (243)

• October 10, 2025
• Colleen Johnson
• 400
• 0

Last week, I headed out to one of my personal favorite spots in the city to catch the dreamy surf rock energy that is Sydney’s Sons of the East when they took on the Royale in Boston. And so did a lot of veteran music listeners, creating the perfect setting for a performance from the longtime three-piece. Fresh off the release of their latest album SONS, big moments were present from the album like popular tracks, “Pour the Wine,” and “Recognize,”  but it was an incredibly balanced set, with moments from all across the band’s established catalogue included. The curation made sense considering something keyboardist/vocalist Nic Johnston shared with me in our interview just an hour or so before the band took the stage. Johnston said, “Because we all know what it’s like to go to a show of a band that you love, and they only play their new stuff,” when it comes to curating a set. 

You can find my chat below with Nic, where we discuss set curation, the recording process for Sons, and much more! The band will continue their North American tour through the last date in Vancouver, which falls on Halloween. If you haven’t picked up a ticket yet, all remaining dates and tickets can be found here! Don’t miss out on these Aussies!

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New England Sounds: I think you had like three days off between Europe and Canada. You just came down from Montreal; you’ve been in Montreal before. Was there anything you had to eat up there, if you had time? 

Nic Johnston: You know, it’s not particularly Montreal sort of cuisine, but we had some amazing Middle Eastern food, like some of the best I’ve ever had, which I wasn’t expecting to get in Montreal. But didn’t even get poutine, didn’t have time to get any, which is unfortunate. But we are going to Vancouver at the end of the tour, so we’ll get some then. 

NES: That’s where my mom’s from, and I know you did Jazz Fest last year, you’re familiar. 

NJ: It’s a great city. I really like it, and the crowds are awesome. Yeah, some really nice people. 

NES: Then maybe, like I said, you had like three days, but of course, you were traveling from London, England, to Canada. How do you feel the shows have been going so far? I know last night was sold out in Montreal, so that has to feel good. But with Sons coming out (the band’s newest album, released last June), how do you feel the shows have been going so far? 

NJ: Really good! I feel like we’re sort of hitting our stride, well, we’ve been hitting our stride for the last couple of weeks. We’ve been on tour for probably all in all five or six weeks now. And those first couple of shows are always like testing the waters, figuring out the set-list, and that kind of thing. But we’ve settled into a bit of a cruising altitude of the show. And it feels great, we’re playing a couple of new songs, a bunch of the new songs from Sons, but also making sure not to overwhelm the audience with too much new. Because we all know what it’s like to go to a show of a band that you love, and they only play their new stuff. Didn’t tell me that you just knew the new stuff. 

NES: I know your album came out in June, but sometimes it’s like legit from an album that came out two weeks ago.

NJ: Yeah, exactly. 

NES: Then maybe, being Sons of the East and choosing Sons for the name of this record, how was it to make it a self-titled? Maybe what does this album mean to you —like, why is this the self-titled album for the band? 

NJ: So we’ve been a band for quite a while now, over a decade, which is scary to think about. But over the years, people have begun shortening our name; a lot of people just say Sons. Like, how’s Sons going? And it’s kind of become a little bit of a colloquial term, so that’s kind of why we liked the idea of it. Because it feels like a term of endearment, a little bit, to us, but then this album, particularly, I think we sort of, in some respects, that reference to Sons has quite often been a life reference. Like a reference to the band live, and what we tried to do on this record was to bring a bit more of that into the recording space. Like we’ve quite often gotten feedback, like, “Love your recorded stuff, but the live stuff is a more exciting experience.” And so we kind of wanted to replicate that a little bit more on record this time. So that meant bringing a bit more energy into it, doing a lot more sort of sitting around, just the three of us, and putting microphones up and just playing off each other. As opposed to what we’ve done in the past, which is lay down a drum track, lay down a bass track, individual stuff. And it really changes the feel of the music when you start to do that again. So, yeah, that’s kind of why it’s this sort of slight reference to the live side of the band. 

NES: That must have been a little bit of an interesting ride, just with the microphones and balancing that.

NJ: Yeah, totally, it’s a double-edged sword because for some songs, it really doesn’t work very well, some songs you still need to be able to do piece-by-piece. But for some of the others, it was really liberating just to be able to sit and just play as opposed to overthinking what you have to bring to a song. So we ended up with heaps of tape, like heaps of recordings of us just playing, and a lot of it was garbage. But there were also some real gems in there, like some great moments where we were able to sort of piece it together. So it was fun, I enjoyed that aspect of making the record. 

NES: And then considering how long the band has been a unit, I know you have two extra live members with you, right, with the three of you. When it comes to the writing process, do you all bring your own ideas? Is it something where you kind of like sit in a room together? How do you kind of go about that process? 

NJ: Yeah, yeah, it can differ. We all tend to write relatively collaboratively. Every now and then, one of us will come in and bring in a more fully finished song into the group. But more often than not, it’s someone has this melody idea or verse idea or main chorus idea, and then we’ll sit around and work on that together and finish it as a group. And we’ve done that for basically most of our careers. Just sit in a room and play each other’s ideas and see what works. So it’s relatively democraticized, which is good. 

NES: Considering a lot of Australian touring involves flying to each city, the US is very different. Maybe a soft one to end. What three things did you have to bring with you on tour in the US? 

NJ: Three things we had to bring with us to the US. Visas (laughs).

NES: You don’t just try to raw-dog it. You want to be able to come back. 

NJ: I think probably the other stuff is, it’s more of an attitude thing. You have to be prepared to rough it for quite a while. Like we’ve done our fair share of touring now, and the first shows that we were playing. Like, there was one show that we did, the green room was in a broom closet in the kitchen behind the stage. And we’ve done stuff like that heaps, so I know this is not a specific thing to bring with you, but I guess it’s an attitude to bring with you. Which is like, don’t expect to be given it on a silver platter. You really need to work for it, and staid and still now, we’re under no illusions. We sort of scraped the floor to make sure that we have a budget that works for us. Yeah, try to get as much out of it as we possibly can. 

But in terms of like fun items to bring with you, what have we brought? I actually have a MIDI cable that I brought with me this time, which has been great, because I can make stuff on the road. In Europe, recently, we did a remix competition. Because a bunch of us also do production as well, we were all randomly assigned one of our songs and then had to remix it, and then in Berlin, we did a big reveal. And everyone showed everyone their remix, which was hilarious. It was really funny. So that’s the other thing, bringing good people. People who are good at what they do are a baseline, but really, the more I do it, the more I think it’s about surrounding yourself with nice people.

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(Interview edited for clarity)