Will Gould's horror-punks Salem are heading off the beaten track for 19 nights of mayhem…
Goth-punk outfit Salem have announced a lengthy UK tour for October, including a Halloween spooktacular in their hometown of Southampton. The band, featuring Creeper frontman Will Gould, will hit the road for 19 dates, purposefully taking in small venues and towns many tours don’t usually head to.
“You know that every time you look at tours and people go, ‘That’s shit, you're not playing near me in this place,’” says Will. “People can't really say that this time.”
Read this: Will Gould: The 10 songs that changed my life
Taking in venues like The Cheese And Grain in Frome and The Vic in Swindon, he does not lie. Partly, he says he wanted to do a long tour because “nobody does them anymore”. But he also wants to get out to support small rooms after a tough year of COVID shutdown.
“Smaller venues have been really, really struggling,” he says. “The Joiners [in Southampton] is obviously my local where I grew up, I'm sure you have one for you that was your venue. And watching those venues struggle and some closing down, I've been really irate about it. It's been really bothering me. I’ve had loads of argument with family members and things about the politics of whether the government is supporting the arts, and I just decided, ‘Well, we can help support them by doing a tour of just those places.'
“Matt [Reynolds, guitar] was in a band on [UK punk label] Household Name Records, where the bands would do, like, 25-date tours of the UK,” he continues. “Nobody does that shit anymore, so we sad to our booking agent we wanted to do that. I think she came back with two weeks of shows, and I was like, 'No, no, we want it to be one of those tours that never ends.’”
For Will, the return to small rooms will be a different bag to his day job fronting Creeper. But then, that’s half the point.
“One of the venues is at a 100-cap room, and I haven't got to do that sort of thing in a long, long time,” he says. “Obviously, before Creeper I was playing to nobody in 100-cap venues. I haven't been back and done that sort of thing and ages. So it's gonna be really, really, really fun to go in everywhere.”
Catch the band at the following dates, and get their new EP, Salem II, out this Friday via Roadrunner.
October 2021
10 Milton Keynes The Craufurd Arms
12 Cardiff Clwb Ifor Bach (downstairs)
13 Birmingham Asylum 2
14 Nottingham Rescue Rooms
15 Oxford The Bullingdon
16 Swindon The Vic
17 Frome Cheese and Grain
18 Bristol Exchange
21 Leeds The Key Club
22 Huddersfield The Parish
24 Newcastle Think Tank? Underground
25 Glasgow Stereo
26 Sheffield Sidney and Matilda
27 Manchester The Deaf Institute
28 Guildford Boileroom
29 Tunbridge Wells Forum
30 London The Dome
31 Southampton The Joiners
If you want a taste of what to expect, what Salem hit the socially-distanced K! Pit:
