The Place We Call Home: Tonight Alive & With Confidence

Tonight Alive and With Confidence are no strangers to these shores. Having toured the United Kingdom numerous times in recent years, you could we’ve adopted them as our own. Nevertheless, for both bands Sydney, Australia will always be home.

The New South Wales state capital is considered Australia’s most famous city and has a thriving historical and cultural background with the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Harbour Bridge and Bondi Beach are just some of the world-known, recognisable landmarks you can find in the city.

Later this month, both Tonight Alive and With Confidence will be returning to the Slam Dunk Festival. They will be sharing the Key Club stage alongside Set It Off, Seaway, Waterparks and more. As they both prepare to visit the UK once again, we spoke to Tonight Alive’s and With Confidence’s drummers and “Sydneysiders”’ Matt Best (TA) and Joshua Brozzesi (WC) about their hometown of Sydney.

The City:

Matt: I’m from Ulladulla NSW (New South Wales), a small coastal town 4 hours south of Sydney, but the band is based in Sydney.

Joshua: I’m from Sydney, Australia. I love a lot about Sydney, it’s one of the most multicultural cities in the world. A lot of Australians are first or second generation immigrants, so there’s loads of different foods and cultures all throughout the city! I’m proud to be Australian, I think every country has its issues but Australia generally gets a lot of things right.

Its People and Culture:

Matt: Sydney’s is mostly famous for the Bridge and Opera House, hosting the Olympics. It’s a beautiful part of the world mostly known for its beaches and vast landscapes.

Joshua: I think it’s seen as a fun city and as a whole Australians are seen as easy going. It’s a big place for tourism so there’s loads going on, everyone recognises the Opera House and Harbour Bridge!

The Music It Inspires:

Matt: Being one of the major cities in Australia, it provides a pretty diverse selection of music, catering to the needs of techno heads to folk to metal and so on.

Joshua: All kinds of music come out of Australia because so many people have different backgrounds. It’s produced some of Australia’s biggest bands alongside Melbourne as I’d say they’re the two biggest cities for music back home.

The Local Music Scene:

Joshua: I think there’s loads of great pop-punk coming out of Sydney right now. Over the past four years, we’ve got to know so many bands in our city and throughout Australia as a whole. There’s only about 25M people and it’s quite isolated, so you get to know everyone in the industry!

Its Most Famous Musical Sons and Daughters:

Matt: Examples of heavy bands that are coming through the scene are Hellions, Thy Art is Murder. On the other side, there are a bunch of pop-punk bands as well who have come out of Sydney like ourselves, With Confidence and 5 Seconds of Summer.

Joshua: Sydney has produced bands like AC/DC, Midnight Oil and INXS, I’m definitely a fan of INXS. All bands that every Australian dad would no doubt love and still get played on our rock radio station daily haha.

Its Unsung Heroes:

Matt: One that comes to mind would be Mission in Motion.

Joshua: Luke (Rockets – With Confidence guitarist) will kill me if I don’t say Heroes for Hire.

The Bands To Watch Out For:

Matt: With Confidence is definitely a band that are starting to make waves outside of Sydney. Endless Heights, Trophy Eyes, Hellions to name a few more.

Joshua: Stand Atlantic, Undercast, and Dear Seattle;

The Venues We Visited:

Matt: Local community centres were the main venues we cut our teeth at. It also provided us with a good foundation to work our way onto bigger tours, bigger venues etc. We started when we were all under 18, so these youth centres provided a perfect environment for us and our friends to grow.

Joshua: The Roundhouse and the Metro Theatre were two really big ones. I’ve seen a lot of my favourite bands there growing up. It’s so weird how quickly we transitioned to supporting bands there including some I’d grown up listening to like Motion City Soundtrack, The Maine and You Me At Six.

The Venues We Played:

Matt: Metro Theatre on George St would be our most played venue. We climbed the bill there over a number of years supporting and now headlining.

Joshua: The Metro Lair – it’s a small room at the Metro Theatre. It’s where we did our first ever headline show back in 2014, and we’ve probably played the room six or seven times as a band. I’ve got a lot of memories there and it’s a great little room for 350 people.