Dodgy parks, tropical storms and rating loos: Life on the road with Kids In Glass Houses

Over 15 years since the release of their brilliant debut album Smart Casual, Kids In Glass Houses are heading back out on tour. And while frontman Aled Phillips will be taking care of his voice and getting his eight hours every day, it wasn’t always like that…

“Vocalzone. I’m a major hypochondriac on tour. I’m constantly thinking I’m gonna lose my voice, so I take Vocalzone religiously. Recently I got into Throat Coat as well, which is American tea for singing. We had it in the early days when we recorded in Texas, but this was pre-Amazon so I couldn’t get hold of it in this country. But now I can buy it freely, so I just chug that before, during and after the show. I’ve also got a vaporiser, every kind of flu medicine…”

“On Warped Tour in Australia in 2013. It was us, The Offspring, New Found Glory, Hatebreed and a load more bands. We did the first show in Brisbane, which sold quite well, but the rest of the shows did not. We were supposed to fly between all these venues, but then they downgraded all the bands to be on a bus together. Not a tour bus, a bus-bus. The next show had sold, like, 1,500 tickets, and being the band that nobody knew, we played to about four people in the midst of a tropical storm. I think we made about six fans in eight shows. We lost a shit-ton of money. But we got to see the bits of Australia that nobody wants to see.”

“At a place called AJZ Gaskessel, near Biel in Switzerland. We were on tour with Simple Plan and Zebrahead. It was big venues, but there were stretches with no shows for three or four days, so Zebrahead booked a bunch of headline shows to ease the financial burden of paying for a bus. This venue was a metal dome in this self-governing park where the normal laws don’t apply. It wasn’t safe to park the bus there. Straight off the bat, I saw two people shagging on a bench outside the front door to this place. One of the staff went, ‘If you want any drugs, I can get whatever you want. There’s no rules here.’ Our bus call was 4am, and as we were leaving, he goes, ‘Yeah, I’ve got to go, too, I’ve got to go do my day job.’ And I go, ‘What do you do?’ ‘I work for the police!’”

“I think nowadays, it’s sleep. I’m pretty useless if I don’t get eight hours. Back in the day, I wouldn’t really say we were match-fit! I’m not going to drink on our next tour, unless we’ve got a day off. So yeah, get eight hours, and don’t do any of the fun rock’n’roll stuff you’re supposed to do on tour.”

“Camden Underworld, but this was in like 2006. I remember going for a pee and they were flies everywhere. I just couldn’t understand it. And when I say flies, I don’t mean there were three or four; there were, like, 20, 30 flies in the toilet cubicle. Iain [Mahanty, guitar] wanted to start an app for bands to rate toilets. Not just in venues, but public toilets, service stations, to help people on buses. It’d be pretty handy.”

“Tebay, on the M6. It’s basically like Soho Farmhouse for lorry drivers. They’ve got ducks, a farm shop, a pond – it’s stunning. I think there might even be a butcher’s. It puts Ginsters in the dirt, for sure.”

“I don’t know. We’ve played there twice but we didn’t have a dressing room, we had a hospitality box. Pretty nondescript and a bit bland – basically a cheap leather sofa, a TV on the wall and a kitchenette. When we played there with Bon Jovi, the whole stage was like the ass of a Cadillac. It absolutely dumped it down and the Cadillac did not actually shield us onstage. Everything was wet. It was miserable, absolutely miserable. There wasn’t even a bar in the box, just a sad little rider in a sad little room for a sad little band. Catering was alright, though.”

“When you’re able to stop thinking you’re doing a gig and enjoy it. I always focus on the minutiae, so when I’m able to get past that and get into the show, it just becomes an event. Which sounds really lame, I know.”

“We did a show for Jack Daniel’s and Channel 4 in Belfast. It was with [legendary British punk filmmaker and musician] Don Letts. At the time, I didn’t really know who Don Letts was, even though he’s this seminal figure in culture. We did Fisticuffs, and he wrote a verse for it and would rap on it. He came on, we played the song together, and at the end I just could not remember the guy’s name for love nor money. I went, ‘Everybody give it up for…’ I just blanked and went, ‘…The man!’ The man! I fucking think about it all the time.”

Kids In Glass Houses tour the UK from October 15. This article originally appeared in the autumn 2023 issue of the magazine.

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