Bryce Parr
Returning stateside from back to back tours in China and Australia, the members of melodic hardcore band Conveyer are glad to be back on home soil in the Chippewa Valley. They kicked off the first show of their U.S. tour at the Memorial Student Center last Thursday, Oct 5.
“I love playing Stout. This is my favorite place to play,” said Conveyer bassist and University of Wisconsin–Stout alumni Jake Smith. “There aren’t a whole lot of places outside of this area that we can go to and always pick back up with people where we left off like it was the day before,” Vocalist Daniel Adams added, “We really appreciate you guys.”
The band’s Chinese tour spanned 1,331 miles from Beijing to Guangzhou over the course of five days in August. “They were super stoked on everything. Even kids who didn’t speak any English were just stoked on an American hardcore band being there,” Smith said.
“The schedule we had to keep with China was insane,” Adams said. “7 p.m. load in, walk down the street to the hotel to drop off our stuff, go back to play the show, sleep for five hours, and board a plane or train the next morning to do it again,” Adams added.
“Culturally those kids out there (China) are not as spoiled as we are. [Chinese fans] don’t have a show happening every day, ” Adams said. American culture tends to give way to a cool kid cliché and sometimes fans feel like they are too “cool” to let loose at a show. “They are definitely still cliquey in the way that we are, but they don’t care about it,” Adams said. “Everyone was just there having a good time,” Smith added.
In China, the only way for most consumers to get American music is through piracy and proxy servers. “From what I’ve heard, if someone comes here they just buy a bunch of music to throw up on a piracy website,” Smith commented.
Conveyer discovered their album, “When Given Time to Grow,” was trending on Chinese file sharing sites. “Two years ago, we were playing Indianapolis and Skip (a friend) pulls me aside and said ‘I just want you to know your record is the biggest hardcore metal record in China.’ I said ‘what are you talking about?’ He pulls up the file sharing site and shows me the statistics and I was like ‘Whoa dude, sick!’” Adams said.
The Australian tour was longer, but had a more relaxed schedule than China. The tour was part of a tour trade with Australian band Vices. “Our second day in Australia, the drummer of Vices hooked up a koala sanctuary visit. I remember being sixteen and seeing all these [pictures of] metalcore bands going to Australia holding koalas and I thought ‘man, one day—one day I’ll hold a koala,’” Adams said.
Vices will be joining Conveyer during the third week of the 5-week U.S. tour in New Hampshire. The tour will conclude with a show Nov. 1 in Nashville, the ‘Music City.’