The Reason (Parasite) Tour / Dreadzone Tour
Seven gigs in two weeks. Like any journey, being on the road puts a different perspective into life and reminds you of the important things in life. Good food, good drink and good sleep are things I've been reminded to appreciate this week. Living off service station food and sleeping in vans is probably not something you'd want to ride out in the long-term for the sake of health and sanity. Considering the six of us have been living in such close proximity over the past 90 or so hours often with little amounts of proper sleep, I think we've done pretty well this time round to not have a single argument. Or maybe we did, I was just too tired to remember it.
Being Dreadzone's tour support has been awesome - spending time with these veteran dub legends has been a great experience and given us an insight into sustaining a career in this ever-evolving industry. The band and crew are a brilliant bunch.. rarely a dull moment and very generous with their rider.. (that vegetable chilli at Colchester was a touch) we feel so looked after.. thankyou Greg, Spee, Leo, Earl, Chris, the other Chris, Johnny, Loki and Danny! And whilst we're at it, we also need to thank Paul's sister Zoe for putting us up for a couple of nights (we snuck into De Montfort University and crashed in halls there.. hello to William and KK who had to deal with finding random, slightly stinky musicians passed out in their kitchen in the morning). Also thanks to Adam and Sophie for putting us up in Bristol despite the fact that they had parents visiting their new house within the hour that we left.
Tonight's gig in Narberth had to be the highlight of our Dreadzone support gigs.. good to see a huge bunch of familiar faces from Carmarthen (you know who you are) - we had a chance to let loose and fully enjoy the Dreadzone set.. keep an eye out for their album which will be due out in March next year (around the same time as ours.. save up your pennies so you can buy both)
Electric Circus last week was also huuuge, thanks to so many of you for coming along and supporting us and the Circus2Iraq charity. For those of you who followed the blog previously, you'll know it's something that I was involved with a while ago and something that I strongly believe in. It's quite rare that you meet someone who has as much integrity and will as the mastermind behind all this but I'd urge you all to keep an eye out for future events they hold. Ruth always manages to pull together a tremendous crew and variety of artists for the most eclectic party where fun just drips off the walls. Hooray for dancing bananas and naked chainsaw-juggling men. Very pleasant surprise to see Shingai from The Noisettes who took time out from her busy schedule to come and see us again here too.
I write this on a laptop as we're in the final stage of our journey home - it's been a relatively painless journey - the van has performed remarkably well (we're having to top her up every 90 minutes because she's losing water that quickly) the only major hitch was Stu managing to lose his bass effects pedal somewhere at Scala, meaning that one gig was done with the bass not sounding quite as intended and sp we had to make an emergency visit to a music equipment store the following day to get a new one. Nelly then got militant on the van packing, arming himself with a clipboard and making a thorough list of every item that needed to be packed so that we wouldn't lose anything else ever again. We promptly lost our merchandise board at that gig.
If anyone has managed to acquire the silver box with the bass multi-effects pedal in, please get in touch. It has Subsource written on the side and a phone number.
I'm not far from my own bed now. I haven't missed it, but I'm looking forward to it. My body clock is exactly 12 hours out of sync of where it really ought to be and when I wake up I suspect it won't be the time of day I'd like it to be.
Being Dreadzone's tour support has been awesome - spending time with these veteran dub legends has been a great experience and given us an insight into sustaining a career in this ever-evolving industry. The band and crew are a brilliant bunch.. rarely a dull moment and very generous with their rider.. (that vegetable chilli at Colchester was a touch) we feel so looked after.. thankyou Greg, Spee, Leo, Earl, Chris, the other Chris, Johnny, Loki and Danny! And whilst we're at it, we also need to thank Paul's sister Zoe for putting us up for a couple of nights (we snuck into De Montfort University and crashed in halls there.. hello to William and KK who had to deal with finding random, slightly stinky musicians passed out in their kitchen in the morning). Also thanks to Adam and Sophie for putting us up in Bristol despite the fact that they had parents visiting their new house within the hour that we left.
Tonight's gig in Narberth had to be the highlight of our Dreadzone support gigs.. good to see a huge bunch of familiar faces from Carmarthen (you know who you are) - we had a chance to let loose and fully enjoy the Dreadzone set.. keep an eye out for their album which will be due out in March next year (around the same time as ours.. save up your pennies so you can buy both)
Electric Circus last week was also huuuge, thanks to so many of you for coming along and supporting us and the Circus2Iraq charity. For those of you who followed the blog previously, you'll know it's something that I was involved with a while ago and something that I strongly believe in. It's quite rare that you meet someone who has as much integrity and will as the mastermind behind all this but I'd urge you all to keep an eye out for future events they hold. Ruth always manages to pull together a tremendous crew and variety of artists for the most eclectic party where fun just drips off the walls. Hooray for dancing bananas and naked chainsaw-juggling men. Very pleasant surprise to see Shingai from The Noisettes who took time out from her busy schedule to come and see us again here too.
I write this on a laptop as we're in the final stage of our journey home - it's been a relatively painless journey - the van has performed remarkably well (we're having to top her up every 90 minutes because she's losing water that quickly) the only major hitch was Stu managing to lose his bass effects pedal somewhere at Scala, meaning that one gig was done with the bass not sounding quite as intended and sp we had to make an emergency visit to a music equipment store the following day to get a new one. Nelly then got militant on the van packing, arming himself with a clipboard and making a thorough list of every item that needed to be packed so that we wouldn't lose anything else ever again. We promptly lost our merchandise board at that gig.
If anyone has managed to acquire the silver box with the bass multi-effects pedal in, please get in touch. It has Subsource written on the side and a phone number.
I'm not far from my own bed now. I haven't missed it, but I'm looking forward to it. My body clock is exactly 12 hours out of sync of where it really ought to be and when I wake up I suspect it won't be the time of day I'd like it to be.
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