It’s a beautiful day in Austin, Texas.
Jason Reece is taking it all in before he heads back out on the road.
Lately, his days have been filled with preparing a set for the tour.
“It’s needed because we haven’t really performed in nearly two years,” he says. “We’re also brushing up because we have a lot of material.”
Reece and Conrad Keely formed … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead in 1994. The band is also known by its abbreviated name Trail of Dead.
The band is touring in support of its 10th album, “X: The Godless Void and Other Stories,” which was released in January 2020.
“On this tour, we’re playing stuff we haven’t played,” Reece says. “It’s nice and refreshing because we’ve never had a chance to play some of this stuff live. We’re excited about that.”
Reece is looking forward to performing at Meow Wolf.
“I went there a few years ago and I really loved it,” he says. “It’s a nice treat to end the tour with.”
In preparing for the tour, Reece says it’s been more about approaching the set with a fresh perspective.
“There are a lot of songs that never got the chance to be heard live,” he says. “The set will have a wide variety and reach the entire scope of all the albums. It’s exciting to revisit a lot of the songs because we can still see where our head was at. We’ve grown musically as well since we started this 25 years ago.”
As far as keeping the band going for a long time, Reece says it has taken a lot of work and energy.
“Luckily, we still have the physical ability to do this,” he says. “I have a lot of friends I started out with and they’ve moved on from music and have normal jobs. It’s been a small victory for us.”
During 2020, Reece continued to make music and the band did a few virtual shows doing that time.
It was a far cry from where the band was at prior to March 2020.
“We had just released the album and we were on this really good path,” he says. “We were in Europe and the shows were well-attended. We were in London for a sold-out show and then it all stopped. We didn’t know what would happen next. This is why we’re on the tour again. We didn’t get to tour the last album.”
Reece says the band recorded a new album during the pandemic and should be released in 2022.
“We recorded it in a very different form,” he says. “The technology we used is different way. We’re hoping to make it more of an art piece so that people can listen to it in spaces. This is the newest challenge for us.”
