Interview: Dean Lewis can’t wait
Dean Lewis plays at The Great Escape in Brighton this week and has just released details of his first ever Australian headline shows. We had a chat with him:
Hey Dean. We last spoke to you back in October. What have you been up to since then? How has 2017 treated you so far?
So much has happened. Well this TV show on Netflix called Riverdale came along and put ‘Waves’ in an episode. It just blew everything up! I put my EP last week and just been seeing the reaction to it, its been mindblowing!
Tell us about your debut EP…
It’s just five songs I’d written over a period of time that I loved! I called it ‘Same Kind of Different’ because for me it’s my of saying I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel or claim I’m the coolest thing around – I’m just writing songs that I like and doing what I want to do!
You just played at Groovin The Moo. How was it?
It was incredible – it was my first Australian festival – so my manager and I rocked up three hours early. I was supposed to be first on playing at 11am or something like that, but we got a call saying Tash Sultana was really sick and couldn’t make the show. They told us they were going to move Amy Shark to Tash’s spot and asked if I wanted to do Amy’s spot. Which was mental because I thought I was going to play to 10 people and it ended up being 3000! I also had to go out and tell all these people who were there to watch amy that she wasn’t coming out “BUT I’M DEAN LEWIS and this is my song,” to audible disappointment! But I totally understood because I’d be disappointed and be like “Who is this guy? I’m here for someone else”! Anyway when I got to singing Waves I had 3000 people singing it back to me. It was just epic.
And you’re playing at The Great Escape in Brighton…
I just got to Brighton now! I’m so pumped – I’ve been touring recently with Boo Seeka and it just finished up so I’m rehearsed up. I usually spend a lot of time preparing and getting back into it if I have a little break, so this is great! Really excited.
Any other acts you are hoping to see while you are there?
I was really hoping to see Middle Kids but I believe they are playing the same time as me unfortunately. And I really want to check out Wrabel from the US. To be honest I haven’t had much time to look at the line-up, its been so crazy and so much stuff happening.
Do you have any other plans while you are over in the UK?
Well we haven’t announced it or anything but I’m actually over here to start recording my album as well. The songs are done. I’ve held some of the bigger ones back for the album because I want there to be a progression – kinda like “Starting here and ending here” – I didn’t want to give too much away to early! So I’m recording some of those songs while I’m here.
What do you have lined up for the rest of 2017?
There’s a bunch of festivals I’ll be doing! My first headline shows just got announced in Australia for late July/early August! An album – and in between that start planning the second album! There’s some new songs and ideas that I’ve been working on that have really excited me so I can’t wait to get onto those ones too!
DEAN LEWIS SAME KIND OF DIFFERENT TOUR JULY/AUGUST
Thursday 27 July – Oxford Arts Factory – Sydney
Saturday 5 August – Howler – Melbourne
Friday 11 August – Blackbear Lodge – Brisbane
Tickets: www.deanlewismusic.com
You can catch Dean at The Great Escape tonight (Fri 19th May). He’s playing at 7.45pm at St Mary’s Church. We saw him yesterday and he was brilliant so don’t miss him! Details here: http://greatescapefestival.com/artists/dean-lewis/
Interview by Bobby Townsend.
