When Joseph Poole jumps on our Zoom call, he’s distracted by a commotion outside his window. “I apologise, it sounds like I have the Texas Chainsaw Massacre going on outside of my house,” he pauses, then laughs. “I wish it was, but it’s just a guy with a leaf blower.”
Even with a sinus infection and jet lag from a 30–day European run, the man better known as Wednesday 13 is in good spirits, gearing up to board yet another long-haul flight to a country he’s practically adopted as a second home.
“I’ve been to Australia every year since 2009, minus the COVID debacle,” he says. “Our fanbase has never died there. It’s only gotten bigger and better. We put the work in — Big Day Out, Soundwave, club tours, supporting Manson and Zombie — and luckily the fans have stayed and they’re loyal.”
This time, he’s heading back with one of the most intriguing pairings on the touring circuit: a national run with genre-bending Australian-born agent of chaos, Kim Dracula.
The idea wasn’t his — and Wednesday is happy to admit that.
“My agent hit me up and said, ‘Hey, would you be interested in going to Australia with Kim Dracula?’” he recalls. “I was familiar with the name because anything with horror movie Dracula, I’m going to check it out.”
He’d shown the band a video of Kim’s music a year or two earlier. They’d crossed paths at festivals, but never on stage. Still, the moment the offer came, something clicked.
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“Somebody thought it was a good idea… and it turned out that it was a good idea,” Wednesday laughs. “A lot of the fans are into it. It’s going to be a good crossover. Anyone from either fanbase that doesn’t know the other band’s music, they’re all going to leave fans.”
He sees the pairing as a collision of two eras.
“I lean more toward what I grew up on — hard rock, glam rock — and Kim represents a whole new era of music that’s doing it in a different way,” he says. “You get the best of both worlds. New and old.”
Nearly 20 years into his solo project — and over three decades into his career — Wednesday feels more in command than ever.
“I’ll be 50 next year,” he says, almost wincing at his own maths. “My first concert in front of a live audience, I was 15. So 35 years of playing music is crazy. And I still love it. I think I’m finally good at it.”
He still shreds himself mentally every night, though.
“If you could hear what was going on in my mind the first three songs, I’m like a coach in the corner of a boxing ring going, ‘Move. Do this. Don’t do that. What are you doing? Breathe!’” he admits. “I’m the worst coach in my head because I want to be perfect.”
That demand for perfection is woven into his latest album, Mid Death Crisis — a record some fans have hailed as the “best version of classic Wednesday.” He understood why the minute he finished it.
“It had the vibe of the old stuff,” he says. “After 20 years of doing this, that seems to be the fan favourite — the first couple of records. I experimented over the years, but my favourite stuff is the older stuff and the fans like that. So that’s the route I went.”
Tracks like “Decease and Desist” tap back into his early zombie aesthetic, while “Xanaxtasy” leans into playful experimentation. The balance, he says, comes down to sarcasm.
“I can take a hard rock riff and make the lyrics dark and sarcastic and instantly it has that vibe. I ruin the party,” he laughs. “I take the cake and knock it off the table. That’s what I specialise in.”
The Wednesday 13 formula — humour, horror, and hooks — remains intact. But this album also carries some of the most personal work of his career.
One of the darker tracks on the record, “I Hurt You”, has had listeners reading into its brutality. Some assumed it was about violence toward a partner, a misinterpretation that frustrated him.
But the truth is more haunting — and something Wednesday says he’s never told anyone publicly, until now.
“When I first tried to write something different than a horror movie, I started writing about real-life horror,” he explains. “One of my vices was drinking. That song is sung from the perspective of the bottle talking to me.” He pauses. “Someone actually thought I was talking about abusing somebody. But it’s actually about abusing yourself. The whole idea is there’s no one that hurts you the way I hurt you, and you keep going back to it.”
The track’s melancholy beauty makes the darkness hit harder. “It’s a dark ballad. A good dark ballad,” he says. “I really love the recorded version.”
While he’s happier now with his own songwriting abilities, Wednesday still gets a thrill from creative collaborations — especially when they involve the artists who shaped him.
The guest appearance from Taime Downe of Faster Pussycat on “No Apologies” came together spontaneously, sparked by a comment from his producer.
“He said, ‘This song reminds me of Faster Pussycat,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, it kind of does,’” Poole says. “He goes, ‘Call Taime, get him to sing on it.’ So I did.”
For Wednesday, it was surreal.
“I grew up listening to Faster Pussycat. I credit learning how to play guitar to their first album,” he says. “So to have him come into the studio… when I literally was 11 or 12 listening to that record in 1987… it’s crazy. Now he’s a friend.”
His career-long list of collaborators reads like a rock fan’s fever dream — Alice Cooper, Mick Mars — and there are still names on the wish list. But he’s content if this is all he ever gets. “If that’s all I get, then that’s enough for me.”
Asked about parallels between his own rise in the early ’00s and what Kim Dracula is doing today, he’s reflective.
“Manson was the shock rock artist of that time,” he says. “I can see a little bit of that with Kim. But I don’t know if anything will ever capture that era. Everyone’s too desensitised now. When The Walking Dead became a main TV show and you could see people getting their heads blown off on regular TV… shock rock wasn’t so shocking anymore.”
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He’s grateful he came up when he did.
“It’s harder for newer artists to be that shocking.”
Even as the world gets darker, Wednesday 13 refuses to bring that energy onstage.
“I don’t bring politics or any kind of outside… the outside world can fuck off,” he says bluntly. “I bring a fun rock show. High energy. It’s a fun house.”
He wants people leaving sweaty, exhilarated, and a little dazed.
“Like they just left a rollercoaster. They’re smiling, they’re out of breath, they feel like they got a release.”
And when those fans stumble home from the Kim Dracula and Wednesday 13 double bill later this week? He hopes they feel what he still feels after 35 years: “It’s always fun. It’s always worth the travel.”
Ticket information for Wednesday 13’s Australian tour can be found here.
