John Watson Management
August 22, 1997
More than three years after first coming to national prominence, silverchair today announced dates for their first ever truly national Australian tour.
"Summer Freak Shows - 1997" will see the Newcastle band playing all sorts of venues throughout Australia, from the North Queensland rainforests to an aircraft hanger in Dubbo! The tour will visit at least 17 Australian cities starting in Cairns on November 23 and ending in Perth on December 20.
The tour will be presented by Triple J and every single date on the "Summer Freak Shows" tour will be open to people of all ages.
Due to silverchair's schooling commitments their previous Australian concerts have always been conducted in short bursts over weekends or during holidays. However with all three members of the group set to graduate from High School in early November the band can finally do a 'proper' Australian tour which includes regional centers and not just capital cities.
"Daniel, Chris and I are really hanging out for this tour", said silverchair's drummer Ben Gillies. "We'll all be 18 by the time it starts and we'll have just finished our final school exams. It'll be summer and we get to drive around the whole of Australia which we've never done before so it should be heaps of fun."
silverchair's most recent Australian dates (in Brisbane and Darwin several months ago) both sold out in a matter of hours so demand is expected to be high for tickets to the "Summer Freak Shows" when they go on sale throughout Australia on Saturday September 6.
The band is currently in the middle of their final overseas tour for this year in support of their most recent album Freak Show which has now sold almost 1.5 million copies around the world.
In Australia Freak Show has yielded three consecutive top 10 singles (Freak, Abuse Me and Cemetery) and has been certified double platinum (more than 140,000 copies). It has also gone platinum in Canada and is well past gold in the U.S..
Once silverchair complete their "Summer Freak Shows" tour they will take an indefinite break before regrouping
some time later in 1998 to start recording a new album.
