Shelby Clements goes one-on-one with John Beardman Jr. ahead of The Beards’ visit to Bar on the Hill, and because “A young patchy uni student beard is still a beard in our opinion”.

Q. Okay, well John, it’s lovely to meet you and I was just wondering, you’ve just come back from New Zealand on the start of your national tour for your fourth studio album The Beard Album, with your debut single being All The Bearded Ladies, do you plan your tours around the colder months because a beard is essential a face cosy?

Well we do find that winter time is a better time to grow a beard, not that there is ever a bad time to grow a beard, but in colder months it’s definitely nicer to have a beard so we do like to tour a lot around winter time.

But like I say, there is no bad time to grow a beard, and in summer we find that if we get too hot, we just dip our beards in cold water and it acts like an air conditioner for our face, because we never trim our beards.

Q. So how is your tour going so far? You’ve had a few shows in New Zealand, that’s some prime beard growing country is it not?

It was only a quick trip, but we had a great time. It has a very rich beard growing history.

I believe Gandalf the Grey lives in New Zealand so we kept our eyes out for him. Unfortunately though we didn’t see him, but hopefully next time we will.

Q. So coming back to your new single All The Bearded Ladies, how do you feel about this new trend of beard transplants? Do you think that this is something women should be looking into because let’s be honest, you guys are very adamant about everyone owning a beard.

Yeah that is correct! We certainly are adamant, and we definitely think women should look into doing it.

I’m unsure of how many people are actually performing this type of surgery in Australia at the moment, but we were thinking of finding a surgeon to maybe perform these procedures at our gigs at the merch table.

Q. So on your new album did you get to collaborate with any artists? You worked at the Grove Studios on this record, how did you find that space to work in?

We hadn’t recorded there before but it was just excellent, nothing this beardy had been recorded there before, so I think it’s about time that the Grove has something bearded to put next to their picture of Delta Goodrem, beards work for us so maybe they’ll work for her as well.

And as for collaboration we didn’t actually write any songs with anyone except for ourselves, but at gigs if we see someone with a good beard, we invite them up on stage and get them to collaborate with us then.

Q. You happened upon a funny live collaboration last year with Ben Caplan because people assumed that he was apart of The Beards, him having impeccable facial hair and all. Is that a moral booster for you guys on the beard awareness front?

Excellent beard, it was an honour to play with Ben Caplan because his beard is impressive to say the least.

I think anyone with a beard should be treated like they are royalty, wherever they go, regardless of who they are, so I’m glad that Ben got treated well for having such a great beard in Australia.

Q. How many times approximately do you think ‘beard’ is said on your new record? Just at a rough estimate?

Well I would say that the beard count would be at over 100.

We get paid per time we say beard by our endorsers so we try and fit it in as much as possible.

Q. You’re coming up to Newcastle very soon to play a gig at Bar On The Hill, how do you feel about post pubescent boy beards? Do you feel like guys fresh out of high school are the most malleable to your cause?

I think that ideally we would be playing in front of children because really, children can be manipulated into growing our message.

Once people get a bit older they start thinking for themselves, so it can get a little harder for us to convince them, but luckily for us we are extremely good at convincing people to grow a beard and a young patchy uni student beard is still a beard in our opinion.

And people don’t have a beard but they want to know why beards are so good, they can come on down and we will explain in length and repetitively just how good beards are!

WIN TICKETS TO SEE THE BEARDS! #yakbeard

Upload a photo of your beard to Facebook, Instagram or Twitter using thehashtag #yakbeard and go into the draw to win a double pass to The Beards gig.

Finalists will go into the running for best overall beard, which will be judged by the Beards at Bar on the Hill Wednesday 23 July 2014.

People without beards are welcome to enter using props or other creative ideas.

Your pics will be shared on our social media sites and our website.

Competition commences Wednesday 11 June 2014 and concludes at Monday 21 July 2014.

Read the competition terms and conditions.

Good luck!