Cold War Kids 'Nervous' to Perform New Material on Tour

Even though Cold War Kids' third studio album, 'Mine Is Yours,' isn't out until January, the Long Beach, Calif., indie rockers already loaded their tour van and hit the road. "I'm kind of a little nervous actually. We haven't played in a really long time," singer Nathan Willett tells Spinner of the month-long tour that takes them through California and a scattering of southern states. "We're going to do it slowly. We're starting off with smaller shows, too. It's going to feel really nice and I'm excited."

Willett says that the dual role of his home life and being in a freewheeling rock band inform several new songs. "There's this really wide chasm between your band life and your real life," he says. "Initially, you don't want to cross the two, because it would get messy and confusing. I wanted to try and do a little crossing now that I understand myself more as this guy in a band who also has a right to talk about what's going on in my life and relationships."

Though he refers to life at home as "the real world," Willett admits he spends more time in "band world." "It's true, the band is so much a bigger part of my real life," he says. "I was reading about Keith Richards autobiography," he says of the Rolling Stones guitarist's recently published 'Life.' "In a really funny way, every band identifies with what they go through. There's a sociology behind the machine and the crew. It sets the bar for the people we want around us and having a crew that we really like."

Willett marvels at how Richards, one of the biggest rock icons, kept a grip on his sense of self. "He really has," Willett says. "He's an artist. If you looked at Van Gogh, Picasso and Keith Richards, I think you'd find that they are very similar: Very talented, very self-aware. Maybe they burned a lot of people, but they made a lot of great stuff."