Train Australian Tour Kicks Off Next Month…

Multi-GRAMMY Award-winning, diamond-selling band TRAIN is fresh off the heels of an epic summer tour that took in nearly fifty U.S. cities, and today, announces their long-awaited return to Australia in May 2025. The national tour kicks off Sunday 18 May in Perth, which marks Train’s first Australian show in eight years, and will travel through Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney before concluding in Brisbane on Sunday 25 May.

Train’s highly anticipated 2025 Australian Tour will bring fans across the globe an epic night of music filled with the band’s most iconic, chart-topping hits including ARIA 15x platinum certified, #1 best-selling smash Hey, Soul Sister, ARIA 12x platinum certified, double-GRAMMY-winning breakout song Drops of Jupiter, ARIA 2x platinum certified tracks Drive By and Play That Song, and many more from their critically-acclaimed catalog spanning three decades. Pat Monahan talks to Hi Fi Way about the tour.

May can’t come around fast enough. You must be looking forward to returning to Australia for your first tour in eight years?
Yeah, I think it’s been about eight years. It’s funny, I was just with Delta Goodrem over the Christmas break and it was just like I got to get back to Australia. Australian people are just too cool to not be around. Hopefully I’ll be gifted some beautiful Australian red wine while I’m there and we’ll make up for all of the lost time.

I guess you’ll be heading to Penfolds when you’re here in Adelaide?
I would love that. Is that where they are? [Yep, not far!] That’s world renowned. I love Penfolds.

What is it about Australia that keeps you coming back?
You know, over the years I’ve ended up becoming really close friends with a lot of Australian golfers, and I think I understand Australian people a little more that because everyone’s so polite, but the Australian guys that I know are really sick human beings, and I’m just like this is so fun. I say that kiddingly, they’re super funny, but they’re warm and lovely, very funny and interesting, and it just makes me want to be around Australians more and more instead of less and less. I just have to figure out how to be there more often. It’s not as convenient as you would like it to be, but when you get there, it’s absolutely beautiful and the people are lovely.

That long flight must make it a pretty tough start to any tour?
It’s not, it’s far worse for us to go to Europe because it’s basically a nine hour difference. But with Australia it’s almost an entire day. It’s like twenty hours. So, when we get there, we’re on the West coast when we get there, it’ll be the next day, but only four hours behind where we would be, or maybe it’s ahead, I don’t know. That four hours is not nearly as painful.

A lot has happened for Train since the last tour and now with eleven albums how do you fit that into two hours without playing for four or five hours?
I always like to hit up countries before we go there and ask them how they want us to fill their time. What would be a way that would make it fun for you since you haven’t seen us in several years? What are the songs we haven’t played for you and what are the ones that are important? Maybe we’d be able to put a set list together for each city that we come to based on that.

Did you handpick the supports for the tour yourself? KT Tunstall and Jason Wade are big name guests.
Jason’s been a friend for many years, and we do a cruise every other year. We host a cruise and KT was on there, so it was our first meeting, and she is just lovely. After years of being in music, you want to surround yourself with people that you love and admire instead of the alternative. I think we’ll have a lot of fun on stage together and make it a lot of fun. That camaraderie is sometimes infectious from a crowd viewpoint.

Last year that we had a bit of a taste from a what might be a new album with the single Long Yellow Dress. Is that a bit of a glimpse into what might be the direction of the next album?
I don’t know, I’ve been writing since then constantly. A couple of band mates and I have been working on a musical, a Broadway musical for five and a half years. In April it finally showcases to go to a theatre, whether it’s off Broadway or on Broadway. I think once that’s done, I can really focus on this next album, but we’ve written sixty songs and there’s a few that really stick out as this is what the album should sound like. That’s how anything worth listening to starts, when you write a particular song. It doesn’t have to be the hit or the single, but it definitely has to be the trend. Like, this is what I want it to be like, this is what I want it to sound like. So, “Save Me, San Francisco” was one of the final songs written to name the album, but the first song that made sense for the album was a song called “I Got You”. It was never a hit or on the radio, but it trended the album. I wrote that trending song, so we can work off of that.

Approaching a new album do you feel the pressure to have to have a hit single or do you go with whatever happens?
I don’t think there are hit singles anymore. They’re TikTok hits, they’re internet captions that blow up somehow and become viral, whether it’s a fraction of a moment or thirty seconds. I’m not really under pressure for that. The pressure I have is I’m always trying to prove train fans right, that you chose the right band to love and follow and we’ll keep making music for you.

That’s what I love about Train is that belief in the concept of an album and that’s still very an important thing to hang onto.
Yeah, it’s a thing of a certain era and the people who like what I do, they, they want an entire thought or an entire album.

Was that a bit of a buzz when you see your debut album pressed on vinyl for the first time?
That was pretty cool. My son was a super excited about it. He’s thirteen, he’s got a record player and we go to record stores sometimes. He just picked up an album from Pantera and I think Black Sabbath, or maybe it was Van Halen, but he’s really into that world and that’s exciting when he gets excited about that.

Are there any Aussie bands that are on the list when you go to the record store and rummage through for vinyl?
I was just talking about INXS, I’m going reach out to Andrew and those guys and see if they can come out and join us. INXS are one of the all time greats. I think Gotye’s great. I really miss him. I wish that he would, maybe he is still making music and I haven’t heard it. I went and saw him one time when we were in Germany and he was there and he’s got such a great show, but there’s a lot.

Are there any new projects coming up?
Well, other than this musical, we’ll have a new album. We’ll go to Europe after Australia and then come back to the States for sixty days or something and then I really have to make sure that this album sounds like I would dream of it sounding. There’s got to be some important moments in there. I’ve gotten too old to put out nonsense.

Is there anywhere left uncharted musically that you would like to head?
There’s so much uncharted, I was just talking to my manager yesterday about new music is leaning towards reference where it’s all like pointing to the past, whether it’s disco or rock or metal or certain hip hop sounds. My manager was like, you have a singular voice, like you’ve always been Train and so why don’t you just refer to you? I thought that that was a pretty cool thing.

Would that mean there is a possibility of a solo album at some point?
No, I mean, at this point, Train is, it’s me and four close friends. So, I think making anything other than that just wouldn’t make sense for me.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Train on the following dates, tickets from Destroy All Lines…