Bradenton’s We the Kings come home for annual holiday show

We the Kings plays a hometown show in the Bradenton area every year about this time. But the 2017 show, Travis Clark said, is going to be something special.

“It’s our 10h annual holiday show,” Clark said in a phone interview. “Never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined that this thing would still be going after all this time. So we’re going to play our entire first album, front to back. It’s an album that was written in Bradenton and there are references to Bradenton all through the lyrics.”

The show is slated for Dec. 27 at the Hall, at 1330 10th St. E., Palmetto.

Besides playing that entire first album, We the Kings will play hits from their next four albums, and probably a song or two from their upcoming album. The band has released a couple of singles (“Festival Music” and “Planes, Trains & Cars”) from that album. The entire album is due out sometime in the first quarter of 2018, Clark said.

The band is in the midst of raising money for the new album through a pledge drive. Fans can donate by pre-ordering the album. The more they donate, the more swag they get, from T-shirts, to guitars that Clark and bandmate Coley O’Toole played on their last tour.

The new album has a title, but Clark said he can’t reveal it because one of the perks of pledging to the project is getting to know the title before anyone else.

“I could tell you the title, but then I’d have to take your money,” Clark said.

He can talk about the cover, though. Everybody who pledges money, no matter how much, will be asked to send the band a selfie. Every single picture will be on the front cover of the new album. the pictures may be very small, depending on the number of people who pledge.

“If they’re only one person who pledges money, and it’s my mom, then the cover will be a big picture of my mom,” Clark said.

The tour comes at the end of one of the best years in the band’s career. Its single “Sad Song,” which was brand new at the time of last year’s holiday show, went gold, selling 500,000 copies. The band played in 61 countries and to 4 million people, counting concerts and stream. Most significantly, four of the five band members, including frontman Clark, added new babies into their families.

“Four of the Kings welcomed new little princes and princesses into the world,” he said.

Incidentally, this year’s We the Kings Holiday Show is free of charge.

“You don’t need tickets,” Clark said. “There are no tickets to get. Just show up. I’m making good on something I said on two years ago onstage and I announced that all the hometown holiday shows would be free from then on. My bandmates looked at me like ‘How are we going to do that? How are we going to break even?’ But it doesn’t matter. We want to do it for the people who supported us from the beginning, who helped make this happen.”

Details: 5 p.m. (doors) Dec. 27, The Hall, 1330 10th St. E., Palmetto. Free. facebook.com/TheHall941.

This story was originally published December 19, 2017 at 4:41 PM with the headline "Bradenton’s We the Kings come home for annual holiday show."