GODSMACK Are Not Sure If They Can Afford To Tour Outside America

Godsmack
Photo credit: Kamal Asar

During a recent interview with Metal-Roos, Shannon Larkin, the drummer of GODSMACK, was questioned about the possibility of touring Australia to promote their latest album, Lighting Up The Sky.

“Not yet,” he responded. “And the honest truth is, can we afford to come? It sucks for us because we’re here. We’re big in America. We’re an American band. The radio loves us here. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t be a big band. And we didn’t really have the success worldwide that we have here.

“We don’t run a bunch of tapes; we don’t do that sh*t. We’re a live band. But what we do like to do is people pay these exorbitant ticket prices and when they come to see us, we have a big show. And we blow sh*t up with pyro and we have video screens. And there might be lasers that night. We have moving drum risers — all this sh*t that’s part of us and it’s been us. Then we go to England and play, or Australia and play, and we’ve got a rag behind us and a drum set. And it’s not a crutch — we still went and we do it — but we never had the growth to where we were big enough, say in Australia, to come there and present what we do, like us live, this badass show that we’ve always done and that’s as much a part of us as our instruments.

“We perform and we love to do it. And so we’re proud of it and we have a lot of pride there. And so sometimes it feels like they’re not getting what we are because we can’t afford to bring all that sh*t.

“It’s just crazy, man, this business,” Shannon continued. “We’ve got 20-some people on the road crew. It’s rooms and flights — it’s crazy how much it costs to tour the world, especially now after all this bullsh*t pandemic bullsh*t. Touring Europe, man, was just… You’re literally losing money. And we did it. We’d do it anyway. We’ve never — I’ll say this right here — we’ve never made money in Europe ever. Period. And we’ve been there 15 times or whatever. We keep going back because we have a cult following where we can draw a couple of thousand people in these rooms, and we love to play for ’em, but there’s never been a moment where we can say, ‘Here’s what we are.'”

GODSMACK recently announced the cancellation of their spring tour in South America due to insufficient ticket sales. The tour was supposed to take place in Santiago, Chile on April 21, Buenos Aires, Argentina on April 25, and São Paulo, Brazil on April 27.