Wednesday 13 The Rue Morgue Records Interview

What better way to spend Halloween than to sit down with Wednesday 13 himself. From his time with the legendary Murderdolls through to his stunning solo career – which has seen him create one of the best Halloween anthems of all time with I Walked With A Zombie – Wednesday 13 has been wowing Australian audiences for a long time now.

Now following his 2023 sellout tour of Australia he is returning to our shores with our very own Kim Dracula.

“I like the fact that I visit Australia almost constantly,” he says as he talks to me from what can only be described as a pop culture fan’s paradise. “Without the COVID years we have always tried to come to Australia once a year, it is always an important part of my touring schedule. Our fans in Australia in next year so we are very excited to be heading back there with our new album and getting to tour with Kim Dracula is a really cool package.”

“It all started with Murderdolls coming through Australia for the Big Day Out festival in 2003,” he says as we talk about the connection he has with his Australian fans. “That really opened up the whole all eyes on Murderdolls thing and everything Wednesday 13 related so when I released my solo album. Then when I was able to come and tour after that I saw all the buzz… and to be honest it has now been like that since that first tour and when I’ve been to Australia I’ve found that it has always been constantly good. I don’t know if it has got any bigger or if that even matters but it has always been killer there.”

As t he discussion goes on we laugh about the things that people seem to remember about the band – including the fact that they once had a guest appearance in hit television show Dawson’s Creek.

“It feels like we are one of those bands that people get into and you can’t get into us just a little bit,” he says laughing. “You are either full on into it or not into it at all. Some people go all in and they know everything about the band and they seem to know about everything that I have done and that is always a fun thing.”

Knowing how full on his fans can be lead us to start talking about how he keeps his live show fresh all the time, especially the set list.

“I think for Australia we will have a pretty similar set list to what we have in Europe,” he explains. “I’m hoping to have some stuff from our new album but I am really wanting to do a lot from my first album as well. I released that album twenty years ago this year so I am having a lot of fun going back and re-visiting those songs because I haven’t played them in years.”

“I love it,” he says when I ask him what it is like going back and re-visiting that debut album. “I look at all my records as periods in my life so there may be some albums that are great but I released them while I was having a shitty year and when I look at them I think ‘wow that was a great album but that wasn’t a great year’ but Transylvania was one of my best years. While I was writing and recording that album there was nothing bad going on – it was brand new. You know Murderdolls were taking a hiatus and I had to do something smart and it was exciting to try something different and see if people would pay attention or care about anything other than that.”

“So to me that was a really cool period,” he continues. “So being able to go back and play those songs is great because I have good feelings around those songs. There are some songs from that album that we have played over the years and there are some songs that we haven’t. I mean songs like Hot Me and Ghost Of Vincent Price we didn’t play them constantly back in the day so it is good to go back and re-visit them.  The goal is to make them sound the way they did on the record – either the same or better. We are really trying to make ourselves sound sonically perfect.”

That leads me to ask him how the tracks off his new – Mid Death Crisis – album have be going live.

“They fit right on,” he answers. “I think that is why I’ve been playing the tracks off the first album because this album and that album feel very similar. They both have the same spirit and I think that is because I enjoyed recording that first album so much. I had a great time writing this album and that is why that same vibe is there and now these tracks mix so well with the older music. These new songs don’t even feel like new songs because everybody is singing along to them like old songs. That is a great feeling and to be doing this for so long and have your fans happy is great. Most of my fans have been listening to the new album and saying that it is the best album that we have done since our first album so I feel like I have won. I wanted to do an album that would make me happy and my fans happy so I think we have both won this round.”

Wednesday 13 and Kim Dracula’s Australian tour kicks off on November 21^st.