By Ben Doy

Dave Baxter, aka Avalanche City, is set to embark on his largest tour to date. The ten date 'Little Fire' tour kicks off in Blenheim on May 27th and finishes up in Wellington on June 18th (full dates and venues below). 

I caught up with Dave to see how the preparations for the tour were going.

So the Little Fire tour is to be your largest NZ tour to date, are you all set?

The planning took a little while to get done, but it's been good. It's quite an extensive tour, which I'm pretty pleased about because we weren't able to do that on the last tour. I'm really looking forward to it, pretty much one of the best things about being a musician in this country is you get to drive around New Zealand and I can't wait to get back on the road here. 

And you've got a pretty awesome support act in Ciaran McMeeken...

Yeah pretty stoked to have him on board. 

Have you done much with him before?

No I haven't. I just kind of liked his music and heard he's a nice bloke so looking forward to sharing a tour with him.

By the time the tour starts it'll be coming up almost a year since We Are For The Wild Places was released. How are you finding performing those songs live? 

I love performing them live. It's really fun; on the last tour I had played new songs for a really long time so it was just kind of a bit strange. But once we settled in to them it was so much fun. The new songs are written with the live band in mind so they come across really well. We're pretty excited to play them all again, and to new people in different cities. 

Will you be road testing any new songs? 

I was thinking about that... but I'm not sure. I've got a couple of songs that I may pull out but... I don't know. The funny thing is that I was in America before I released 'Sunset' and I had a new song. We were in a smallish venue in San Francisco and we thought let's just play the song. So we played it live and a couple of people filmed it on their crappy phone. A week later I checked online and someone had posted it and it had 10,000 views. We'd played it badly, was bad quality and I just couldn't believe it. 

But I do have one I'm working on, and if I get it finished before the tour I might play it live. We'll see. 

Are you planning on heading back to the studio following the tour? 

Yeah, I don't want to leave it for another 4 years like I did the last one. I'm hoping to bang the next one out in like a timely fashion. Although after the tour I'll be back on the road... maybe in Germany? I'm not sure. We're going to head over to Europe and play some shows over there. 

Do you do much writing on the road? 

Yeah, I do a fair amount of writing. And some of the songs on the latest album were written on the road, but I don't tend to keep a lot of them... I don't know why. There is something about being at home and keeping still... not having the chaos on being on the road. 

How was the experience opening for Robbie Williams at the Basin Reserve in Wellington last year? 

That was pretty crazy! I don't often get to play to that many people and I remember thinking before I went on stage that I'm either going to crap my pants or I'm going to totally love it. And I'm glad to say I totally loved it. It was amazing... such a nice crowd, they just received me so well. You're never quite sure when you are playing to someone else's audience what is going to go down, but it went down really well. 

So what can we expect to experience from Avalanche City for the tour? 

I'm bringing the band along with me again, so it's going to be a good fun show. I'm going to be playing more songs of my old album that I did last tour. It's also good that it'll be in theatres, and I often come away from theatre shows feeling that they were really special. I always feel that I connect with the audience a lot more, and bond a little bit better. 

Avalanche City - The Little Fire Tour

Blenheim – ASB Theatre Marlborough – Fri May 27

Christchurch – Isaac Theatre Royal – Sat May 28

Auckland – Powerstation – Fri June 3

Hamilton – Clarence St Theatre – Sat June 4

Tauranga – Baycourt Theatre – Thurs June 9

Taupo – Great Lake Centre Theatre – Fri June 10

Napier – MTG Century Theatre – Sat June 11

New Plymouth – Theatre Royal – Thurs June 16

Palmerston North – The Regent On Broadway – Fri June 17

Wellington – Opera House – Sat June 18

Tickets via http://www.avalanchecity.com/