The Spill Canvas On Route To Australia

A musical endeavour born on the Great Plains of South Dakota, THE SPILL CANVAS has endured for over two decades because of the fans who provide the lifeblood to keep this machine running. Tales of love, loss and yearning are THE SPILL CANVAS’ calling card. Armed with vividly smart lyrics, indie rock melodies and emo sensibilities, the band have cultivated a following that puts the “fan” back into “fanatic”. The Spill Canvas are touring Australia for the first time celebrating the twentieth anniversary of landmark second release, One Fell Swoop. Landon Heil (bass) talks to Hi Fi Way about touring Australia for the first time with The Juliana Theory.

You must be feeling really excited with the Australian tour is about a week away now?
Yes! We’re taking off on Saturday, heading to Pennsylvania to rehearse for a few days, and then we’re going to head on over.

Does anything prepare you for that long-haul flight to Australia?
No, I don’t think I’ve ever taken a flight this long, this’ll probably be a record for me. Hopefully I can find stuff to do onboard. Maybe watch a few movies, maybe try to sleep a little bit.

Have the logistics of this tour been tricky to coordinate?
Yeah, especially now that we’re diving into all the details, getting gear on the carnet, coordinating flights for everyone. Just a lot of moving parts. But I feel like it’s going to be worth it once we’re there playing. It’s always been a goal of ours to get over there. We’ve got fans in Australia, judging by Spotify numbers and merch shipments, I’ve sent a ton of packages there. Hopefully that translates to people showing up.

Touring with Juliana Theory makes for a pretty awesome double bill?
Totally. They were one of my biggest influences when I first started playing guitar. It’s always cool seeing and playing with those guys.

Does it feel surreal touring with a band you grew up loving?
For sure. I was maybe fourteen or fifteen when I discovered them, and they quickly became one of my favorites. Now, all these years later, going on tour with them, it’s definitely a pinch-me moment.

Celebrating twenty years of One Fell Swoop. How does that milestone sit with you?
We did a ten-year anniversary tour for it, so this feels familiar, but it’s wild to think it’s been twenty years. That’s definitely one of my favorite records from our catalog. It’s a fan favorite too. It’s always a good one to celebrate.

Are you surprised by the lasting legacy that album continues to have?
Yeah, especially over the past four or five years, post-COVID. The nostalgia boom is strong. One Fell Swoop, along with some tracks from Sunsets and Car Crashes, really still connect with our fans. I think if you fall in love with a band or album between sixteen and twenty years old, that sticks with you. We definitely picked up fans in that age range when it came out, and they’ve stuck around. It reminds them of the good old days.

Do you ever go back and listen to the album as a fan would?
Sort of. There are four tracks we don’t normally play, so just yesterday I pulled those up and practiced them. But I don’t listen like a fan, I’m way more analytical. You hear all the parts and wish you’d done things differently. But every once in a while, I’ll put it on to revisit some older songs we haven’t touched in a while.

Can you remember what it was like when that album came out?
Yeah. I was still in South Dakota and also playing in another band called The Glass Atlantic. One Fell Swoop was our first full-band rock record, it really propelled us. Fans connected with it, and it gave us momentum. It also helped set us up for the follow-up album, No Really, I’m Fine, which was released through Sire/Warner Brothers. Definitely a key stepping stone.

Are younger audiences discovering your older albums for the first time?
A little bit, yeah. We’re seeing some fans’ kids like eleven or twelve years old getting into it because their parents loved our music. That’s been cool, seeing it span generations. But reaching entirely new fans is tough. We released a new album a couple years ago and tried our best to push it, but the market’s a different beast than it was in 2008–09. We’re still learning how to adapt.

Are you actively trying to engage younger fans?
Yeah, we’re working on that. Exploring strategies, staying more active on social media, figuring out TikTok… that sort of stuff. Hopefully we’ll find new ways to bring people in.

Do you still have faith in the full-length album format?
Absolutely, that’s what we’re used to and what we love doing. But we’ve experimented with releasing singles, two over the past year, to see if that model works better now. It’s been a mixed bag. Our hope is to pull together a full new album in the next year or so, get it recorded, and release it on vinyl. That seems to be how people are buying music now.

With the Australian tour, are you planning to play the album start to finish, or mix it up with other fan favourites, considering it’s not often you get down here?
The last time we did the anniversary of this album, I believe we played it start to finish. But we’ve done other anniversary tours where we mix it up a little, especially with acoustic songs like the one on One Fell Swoop. That usually works best in the middle of the set, so the rest of the guys can walk off stage and Nick just plays solo acoustic. It always feels a bit odd to end the set with just a solo song, so we’re getting into rehearsals this weekend to run through those scenarios and come up with a game plan.

It’s a whirlwind tour, but is there anything you’re looking forward to about touring Australia?
I really wish we had three or four more days to explore the country a little bit. I’ve never been there and I’ve heard amazing things. But it sounds like we’ll get there, play the show, sleep a few hours, fly to the next city, and repeat. I worry we won’t get much time to actually see the country, but hopefully after soundcheck and merch setup, we’ll have a little time to check out the local areas and get some food. I hear it’s winter there now, too?

Yeah, it is, freezing cold! Hopefully this sets the scene for a return visit, maybe sooner rather than later.
If we’d had more time to plan, I think we probably would’ve scheduled a day off between shows or extended the tour three or four days just to turn it into a mini vacation. That way, we could’ve done some sightseeing. As it stands, I guess I’ll be seeing a lot of it from the air.

Are there plans for new music, or is it more about getting through this run of tour dates and seeing what happens?
We’ve got some exciting tours to finish the year. Nick probably has fifteen to twenty songs that are close to finished. He’s been showing us those ideas, and we’re itching to get in the studio and hammer them out, probably sometime in 2026, now that this year is filling up with dates. But 2026 is definitely my goal: to get solid studio time and start putting a full-length together.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch The Spill Canvas on tour with The Juliana Theory on the following dates, tickets from The Phoenix…