Following the release of their fantastic sophomore album, 'So When You Gonna', in 2020 and a run of festival performances across summer 2021 - Dream Wife are heading out on tour later this month.

Known for their passionate performances and high intensity stage antics, we caught up with the Brighton formed trio to discuss the importance of representation, what to expect from their forthcoming tour, and plenty more!

Firstly – your rescheduled tour finally takes place next month! How does it feel to be gearing up for life back on the road?

Yes! Finally! It feels exhilarating and I'm like a kid waiting for Christmas morning to open up the presents. To experience live music and be a part of a live concert is unlike any other feeling in the world. We’ve missed the energy, the raw emotion, the joy, the movements and the crowd so much. It’s a privilege to be able to get to experience this. To sum it up: we can’t wait!

You did manage to play a few shows last year across various festivals. What have you been up to between then and now?

We did - and it set a crackling fire underneath us. We took the energy from the live shows straight to our studio space and we’ve been writing a lot of new material. The best source of inspiration for us is community and the live music scene is one pretty amazing community. There’s more inspiration that comes from seeing live music performed, playing live music and reading the audience's reaction and dance moves. You remember who you are writing to.

Was there anything you realised you missed about life on the road that you never really thought about when touring?

Prior to and after the release of our debut album we were pretty much touring non-stop for two years until going back into the studio to record our second album. We try to keep the tours as healthy as possible and be kind to our minds and bodies. It was the sense of community that we missed the most; meeting other bands, meeting music lovers, going to festivals and being enthralled in the world of music 24/7. Nothing beats the live show.

Your latest album ‘So When You Gonna’ was released two years ago – does it feel so long ago from your point of view, or has not being able to tour it so much allowed it to remain recent in a way?

July 2020 maybe wasn’t the best time to release an album about our love of live music and then never get to play it live until well now. But we have a lot of love for this album and getting to play more songs from it on this tour is a great feeling. We’ve never done encores because the idea of it made us cringe so we always said ‘oh sorry we don’t have any more songs’ - but we’re two albums deep now and can’t use that excuse anymore. Maybe this the encore tour!

You worked with Marta Salogni for the record – what did you learn from working with one of the greatest producers of recent times?

Agree with that statement. Marta is an icon and we were thrilled she wanted to work with us. The process was chilled, encouraging and just a beautiful time to create. We spent a full month together in the studio recording with Marta throughout the autumn and became such good friends - it is that trust you need between everyone in a recording space and it was there from the start. She’s also just so funny and also so precise in her work. Having been an engineer and mixer previously she’s got every ear to the studio, so when she pushed the record button we often got that magical take in first take. It was such a good relationship.

The record as a whole was created with an all-femme personnel (except your drummer Alex) – would you say that it is difficult to highlight this as a ‘success story’ when it should be a ‘norm?’

We had such a great team working on this record. It is fucked up that that only three percent of albums released in 2020 had a female producer involved - so having an all femme team is an even lower percentage than that. It was important for us to talk about this in the recording sessions and also now because even ourselves did not realise it was this low of a percentage. It’s shocking. We need more platforms for womxn interested in working behind the scenes in music and have an opportunity to do so. We need to talk about this. Hire more womxn to produce, mix, master, engineer. Practice what you preach.

Some festivals are pledging to offer festival-goers a gender balanced line-up – why do you think that certain festivals are still slow to agree to this when bigger festivals like Primavera have showed it is possible?

Primavera was by far one of the best festivals we’ve ever played at and attended. Walking between each stage seeing these incredible and diverse performers come alive on stage, only to realise the next day that I saw a majority of femme and non binary acts BY CHANCE, should be how it is everywhere. Representation is important for our future generation. Humans need their stories told, not just one side to a story told by one group. Having diverse stories and gender balance present on stages around the world will just make a way more interesting and fun festival experience for all.

'So When You Gonna' followed your self-titled debut album which was really well received by fans. Do you find it a struggle sometimes to curate a setlist that balances what the fans want to hear and what you want to play?

This is the first time we’ll have that option so we will have to get back to you on that. Maybe someone will be pissed off that we didn’t play an unreleased demo from 2017 that you can only find on a vinyl compilation. Now that would be dedication!

Are there any set rituals you have, either pre-show or whilst on tour as a whole?

We did a few tours with Sleigh Bells and learned a lot from their pre shows rituals - they treated the rock show like an extreme sport and like they were athletes getting ready for the big game! Stretching is crucial, so 30 minutes of pre-show stretches and dancing lights that fire.

What else can we expect from Dream Wife across 2022?

Wild stage shows. Festivals. And who knows let’s see how far we get into our writing zone. So far it’s shaping up to be a collection of songs that would be a dream to tear up the stage with!