Less Than Jake Returning To Australia On The ‘Circus Down Under’ Tour
Ska-punk mainstays Less Than Jake return to Australia and New Zealand this October and November for their ‘Circus Down Under’ tour, bringing their signature mix of brass, hooks and chaos back across the country. As a long time favourites of Australian audiences, the Floridian five piece has built a reputation that goes well beyond nostalgia. Every return visit to our shores sees full rooms, full singalongs and fun times and is a reminder of why they love to come back. Across more than three decades, Less Than Jake have carved out a catalogue that sits at the centre of ska-punk’s global story. From early staples through to later releases, their shows balance energy and precision, big choruses, sharp playing and just enough edgy unpredictability to keep things interesting. Chris DeMakes talks to Rob Lyon about “Circus Down Under” with The Aquabats and Suicide Machines.
Less Than Jake with the Aquabats and Suicide Machines, that one’s hell of a line up?
Yeah, we’re very excited. We fell in love with Australia in 1999, when we came for the first time. We were there on January 1, 1999. It’s the first time I was in Australia. We played the Warped Tour. It’s the only time it ever came to Oz, and gosh, we’ve been back twelve, thirteen times or so now, and every time I pinch myself, because I get to go on vacation and play music.
It must be even better having good friends in The Aquabats and Suicide Machines join the tour. Does the relationship with those bands go back quite a way, that you’ve toured with them lots of times before?
Suicide Machines, for sure. Aquabats, it’s been about the last ten years. You know, it’s interesting. They were a band that we should have done business and hung out with, but it always seemed like they were on the opposite ends or opposite years of Warped Tour than we were, and we’d get at festivals, and they’d be on the other day or something, but it seems like the last ten years or so, we’ve been doing more stuff. They did a full U.S. tour with us recently, as did the Suicide Machines, and they’re dear friends. It is like a holiday. It really is, and it’s gotten better, too. You know, when I was a younger man, I thought that having fun was staying up every night till four or five in the morning, which, you know, has its benefits, but now that I’m older, I’m enjoying this whole ride in a way different light, in a really good way. I’m not some prudish old man. I’ll still go out and have a good time, but I don’t close the bars down, we all take genuinely good care of ourselves, and I can get up and sightsee and not have a hangover. It’s a lovely thing. The fact that I get to come to your country at my age is… it’s fucking hilarious that someone wants me to come play music for them. I am beyond grateful.
Less Than Jake is going strong strong at thirty four years together, what’s the secret to tell younger bands about longevity?
Split the money evenly. Yeah, you got one guy living in the sweetest spot of Sydney, overlooking the harbour, and the rest of the guys are living in the trailer park in fuckin’ Canberra. They’re going to be pissed. So, split the money evenly. I’ve always said it, make your band even. Have everybody pull their weight and just be grateful for what you have, and for me, it’s really just been about taking stock of what’s important in my life, which is all about the show now. It used to be, what’s going on after the show? I fell in love with music again, and I think a lot of that goes back to COVID. That was the longest I had been offstage. I think the longest we ever went without playing a gig or practicing or anything was maybe two or three months up till that point. So, that was about eighteen, nineteen months before we had gotten in a room again after that.
With this tour, are you looking to focus on a particular album, or is it just going to be the greatest and the best of Less Than Jake?
I think that probably the greatest that we can come up with. We never had hits amongst our fans, so we’ll play the ones they want to hear, and we always throw in the odd B‑side, or the songs that we want to play. We’ve always said we got to keep it interesting for ourselves first, but at the same time I’ve went to those concerts. I saw the the Police when they reunited, and it’s just like, they don’t want to play that song. They don’t want to play this song. It’s like, come on, man! I don’t ever want to leave a fan feeling that way either, so we try to do a good balance.
Congratulations on the new single, Scatter the Ashes, it’s another ripper. You got to be thrilled about that one. What’s the story behind it?
Oh, wow, that’s a page of lyrics that I had stuffed away, and it’s amazing how they crawled back out. Last December, 2025, my kids went to sleep, I went down to my studio, and every once in a while, you’ll get this spark of creativity. I just turned my stuff on, and just started feeling out this riff, and had a pretty good melody line with it. I came back the next morning, I’m like, I got to start putting some words to this, and I kind of had a rough thing for the chorus, and I just started thumbing through these old notebooks that I had found, and there was a lyric in there from about fifteen years ago. I had gone through a breakup, and it killed me at the time. I never got around to putting it to song, and it just fit this mood of this track so brilliantly that I ended up using it.
Is this going to be part of another album, or an EP?
Yeah, so it’s an EP with a Japanese ska punk band called HEY-SMITH and so the EP’s called Unity, they’re doing three songs, and then we have three songs as well. There’s another song called Just Let Me Know, and there’s another song called 61 Seconds from us.
When you start bringing out new material, does it feel like the pressure valve’s kind of switched off a little bit? That you don’t have that pressure of “when are you going to come up with an album,” or “we haven’t heard from you for a little while, what’s the go?”
Well, I think that you have to create for yourself, first and foremost. You know, is anybody holding their breath for a new Rolling Stones record? Probably not! Those guys have the hits and the legacies, and I questioned as a younger musician, why do those bands still make albums? It’s because it’s in their blood, and that’s what you do and it’s funny, you’ll look at the Stones now, and there’s stuff in their set list from the 90s. No one was listening to the new Stones songs in the 90s. But at the time, I should say, no one wanted to hear them, but now that thirty years have eclipsed, there’s people that want to hear those songs. So I’ve always said the mark of your songs is the passage of time. That’s how it affects people.
Do you still believe in the concept of an album, or is it better for your band to keep rolling with EPs so you can keep new material out there more frequently?
I think for the last ten, fifteen years, we’ve been looking with wide eyes at what everyone else is doing and we’ve seen the bands go for just the singles, one single a month, and then, hey, we’re going to do just EP’s because the album’s dead, and we’ve went back and forth. We released a full length in 2020, we did a seven‑song which was considered an EP. If we would have put one or two more songs on there, it would have been an album called Uncharted in 2024. Now we got these three songs, and we have two left over that we’re going to be passing around. So it’s pretty much an EP this time, with our eyes on the prize of recording another record probably top of next year.
Do you think sonically there’ll be much of a subtle shift there, or is it going to be more of the Less Than Jake that we’ve grown to love?
That’s a good question. I think that we’re in discussions now of where we want to take our music, and certainly we’re not going to bring in a mariachi band or flute players or keyboardists. It’s gonna be Less Than Jake.
Yeah, you could!
It’s going to be Less Than Jake, but we always try to push a little bit. It’s the old adage, you’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t, and we just laugh at it at this point. It’s like, if we make an album that people want to be retro or sound exactly like our other stuff, it’s one of two things. Either, like, oh, they didn’t change, or this isn’t as good as the other stuff that sound like this, or… you make the album that’s radically different, it’s like, oh, they changed and they suck now. So, you just got to do what you feel.
Are you stoked about the generational shift in the fan base too that’s coming to shows now?
It’s amazing, it’s grandparents, the parents, down to the kids now. It’s spanning generations, and it’s all about the memories. When I go out to the merchandise booth and say hello to people, or we do meet and greets and stuff, it’s always, “Mate, I saw you at the Uni in 99,” and they go through the whole story. I’ve heard it all, man. Look what happens, a song of ours, my girlfriend and I fucked for the first time, she got pregnant, and here’s pictures of our baby. I’m like, okay. People have our tattoos, they have our lyrics tattooed on them. I mean, this is stuff that was way beyond anything any of us ever thought of when we started this. It was literally, like, where can we make noise with each other that the cops aren’t going to get called, and maybe get a case of beer thrown in? That was as high as it went, and here we are.
What do you look forward to most about touring Australia? Do you have any favourite spots or must‑go places when you’re here?
I just love to walk the cities. I love to get out anytime I’m in Sydney, I got to go to Sydney Harbour. You have beautiful nature trails throughout Australia, and now that I’m doing other things besides sleeping my day away, I get up and find those things. I love your food, I love the people. We’ve always had the red carpet rolled out there for us, and we have many, many dear Australian friends that we consider family.
Interview By Rob Lyon
Catch Less Than Jake on the ‘Circus Down Under’ tour with The Aquabats and Suicide Machines on the following dates. Tickets from Teamwrk Touring…
