The Saints Announce Trio Of Exclusive Melbourne Shows

The songs of legendary Australian band The Saints will ring out in Melbourne this October when founding member Chris Bailey leads a renewed line-up to three intimate performances at the Gasometer Hotel.

Joining Bailey for the outings will be veteran drummer Iain Shedden, who has enjoyed multiple sporadic stints of varying length with the band — impressively, dating back to the early 1980s — alongside former Dallas Crane bassist Pat Bourke and You Am I guitarist Davey Lane.

The less-familiar faces backing up Bailey for these upcoming shows shouldn't faze long-time fans of the band (nor new ones, for that matter, because how would they know?), not least of all because this is far from the first time we've seen an altered membership for the seminal punk-rock group over its storied, nigh mythical history. For example, this is a much smaller roster of musicians than the overall ensemble who played on 2012 album King Of The Sun, but only a little bigger than the band that played on 2006's Imperious Delirium. That album was preceded by a marginally larger line-up again, though it did consist of three-quarters the same members, and — you get the drift. 

Despite (or because of?) that, the band's spirit, with Bailey at its centre, remains unflagging even as time marches onward; to a lot of Australian music lovers, the name 'The Saints' still inspires the kind of reverence and awe that leaves even icons such as Nick Cave using descriptors like "god-like" when talking about the band. They even had a repeat merch cameo in Foxtel original drama The Kettering Incident, which we hope somebody got some money for.

Tickets for all three of The Saints' impending shows will be available following a Frontier Touring members' pre-sale from 2pm AEST this Thursday, 25 August, running for 24 hours or until the allocation is exhausted. General public will get their turn from 10am local time on Monday 29 August.

For dates, venues and booking information, see theGuide.