Interview with Jasmine Marceau.
We caught up with George Hunt in As Everything Unfolds before they played the Neu stage.
You’re playing in a couple of hours, do you have any pre-show rituals before you hit the stage?
George: We’ve never had rituals as such. We always forget to take a bluetooth speaker, so there’s what we’d like our ritual to be rather than what it actually is. What normally happens is us having a couple of drinks before we go on, so we’ll relax and set up, and then when we get ready to go, we normally have gin or rum on the rider, so we’ll have a shot of something to give us a ‘ready to go’ high. We’d normally hype ourselves up a bit, do some fist bumping, if we feel like we’re taking the piss we do the whole hand thing, ironically. We’ve done it ironically so many times that it’s not ironic anymore.
What normally happens is Jon and Jamie will go on stage to start, and then me, Charlie and Adam will come on – we’ll just do a little fist bump and we’ll go on! We try and relax mostly, until about half an hour before, and then we just build up the party vibe so at least we’re not going on cold.
Makes sense! Do each of you have your own separate warm ups?
George: Yeah all individual! Charlie will do her vocal warm ups, Jamie will do his warm ups, Adam will play a bit of guitar, I tend to just do some stretching – I don’t do any bass warm ups, just stretch and limber up. I’m not sure what Jon does! Everyone has there own separate thing before we get together for the party.
You released your album Ultraviolet earlier in the year, do you have a favourite song to play live?
George: Slow Down. The bass is easy and the song is fun, so I can just dance around! Yeah, the breakdown is really fun as well, so I’m looking forward to playing that later.
So you’ve got some headline shows later in the year?
George: Yeah, super excited. We haven’t done a headliner, a proper run since April 2022. So very excited to do our UV one. It’s our first proper run of European shows as well, we did a couple in May but these are proper Ultraviolet ones, so super excited. We’ve got Eat Your Heart Out coming over from Australia to support, no idea how that’s happening, but we’ll have some Australians to party with!
The Manchester and London shows are going to be great, unfortunately they’re the only UK ones. But the reason is good! Our UK tour was going to be a long string of UK dates, but we had to lose most of them because of the Electric Callboy tour in October. We asked ourselves, do we ‘do those headliners or do Electric Callboy?’ It was not a hard choice.
Is the set list ready to go?
George: The set list is done! Unless we try it and don’t like it, but we planned it because we were so excited.
So when you’re on tour, do you have any must-haves you need to bring with you?
George: Yeah we actually get really bored easily. We’re normally very lucky that we’ve got our van with a games console in it. We always say we’re going to watch loads of films, but we never do. We’ll watch Peep Show if we can, anything stupid like that. We’ll normally play games, but one of the main things is having a football, or American football, because you’re just not doing anything for so long, so just kicking or throwing something around. And other than that, just being comfortable.
We were on tour with Callejon in Germany, and the opening band The Oklahomad Kid – the nicest guys – they just had so much drip. They’d rock up to the show wearing the coolest clothes, and I was like ‘Yeah you look amazing, but surely for tour that’s inconvenient.’ I’m just in the same trackies everyday for three weeks. They put in effort. We’re a comfort band, we look like we just rolled out of bed. We’ll change for stage. But they look amazing, put on black emo clothes for stage, then change again afterwards!
Comfort is key. Where do you see As Everything Unfolds within the next three years?
George: If everything goes to plan, we will hopefully have album 3 out. So hopefully we’re touring album 3 and it’s all amazing! I’m going to America and Tokyo… I want to get out the continent. I think that’s the next thing. We’re very fortunate to play our UK shows, and incredible European shows, it’s the rest of the world next surely, so fingers crossed it keeps going in that trajectory!
Catch As Everything Unfolds on their headline shows in September, tickets available here.