If you haven't yet heard of X Ambassadors, you will. Their new song, “Jungle” with Jamie N Commons is featured in the new Beats by Dre campaign for the 2014 Fife World Cup. The same song was also featured in the second season trailer of the Netflix drama series, “Orange is the New Black”. The band was supposed to play last year at Bunbury Music Festival but got into some car trouble. X Ambassadors tours with some heavy hitters such as Imagine Dragons, Jimmy Eat World and Panic! At the Disco. Recently they have broke out on their own headlining tour and are selling out venues!
We were excited to see what X Ambassadors have been up to since last year!
You have had quite the year! Last we spoke (last summer before Bunbury) you were about to hit the road with Imagine Dragons. How have things changed since last summer for the band?
We've been on the road a lot more, building our fan-base city by city, town by town. The biggest difference now is that we are finally at a point where we're doing our own shows and selling them out. The last tour we did was a headline club tour and more than half those dates sold out. It was a proud moment for us in our career. Touring is a huge part of what we do obviously, so to know that we can actually sell tickets on our own is a big step. We've also been writing a ton on and off the road. At this point I'd say we have around two full album's worth of material.
We missed you last year at Bunbury Music Festival! Do you recall why you missed the festival?
That was a rough one for us.. We were in the middle of nowhere on tour with Jimmy Eat World and our car had broken down for the second time that week. Casey also had a wicked sinus infection and we had to take him to the hospital the night before. It was a perfect storm of road misfortunes.
Any new albums or LPs in the works?
As I said before, we have a ton of new material. Right now there are around 20-22 songs, with 5-10 more in the works. That's what we got to choose from for our debut LP. We want every track to feel important, to be able to stand alone as well as fit in the context of an album.
Are you going to be able to hang out at Bunbury to see any music? If so, what bands are you looking forward to?
We have a bunch of friends who'll be down there.. New Politics, Royal Teeth, Panama Wedding.. Looking forward to seeing those dudes the most.
Tell us about the craziest thing to happen on tour so far.
The craziest thing that's happened on tour so far was probably selling out Bowery Ballroom in New York. That's another milestone for us. I used to walk by that place when I first moved to NYC and think, "Someday my band will headline there and that's when I'll know we've made it." It's funny though, cuz now that we've done it, we feel like we're only just getting started.
Don't miss X Ambassadors at Bunbury Music Festival Friday July 11th on the Main Stage at 2:45!
Enter to win a 3 day pass to Bunbury Music Festival HERE.
