I had this vision of updating this blog every night on tour, to somehow document what went on and how it made me feel or whatever and its been 10 straight days and this is the first time I have typed anything other than a response to a work-related e-mail. It’s not that I didn’t have time while we were away to write, we had hours of down-time everyday whilst driving, or the endless waiting at venues before the show starts. Most nights we ended up back at someone’s house and I could have easily done it then, but there was one problem and it held me back constantly on this tour and prevented any sort of outlet whilst we were away.My laptop was in my bag.
And it wasn’t just any bag, it’s a fairly full rucksack full of clean and dirty clothes, a damp towel and underwear – getting my computer in and out of that bag everyday just seemed so much effort. I did my best to “bank” my thoughts as we went and pretended like I would pick up after a few days and catch up. Well I didn’t bother and I really wish I had now. The short version of my account of 10 days in a van with Calvinball and Onsind is essentially this: Someone would drive the van for hours to get to the venue and we would load in (usually up or down stairs with what always seemed to be twice as much gear as we actually needed). We eat (we were generally very well fed by the promoters) then we wait. Play. Sweat. Immediately load out. Drive. Talk shit at someone’s house until it was too late. Sleep.
Nothing deviated from this day-to-day schedule too much, except some periods of sitting in the park and walking around town centers looking for guitar shops. It doesn’t sound too exciting when you break it down to its basic components, but when you break anything down to its basic parts; you are often left with something that on the face of it, sounds equally bland. “Wake up, go to work, try to stay sane for 8 hours, go home, eat, play guitar/hang out with friends/drink too much, go to sleep” is my usual off-tour routine which doesn’t, on the face of it, look much more interesting either, so a casual “wrap up” of tour is basically pointless now because it will consist of all the boring shit that dominated a lot of our time while all the genuinely awesome aspects of the tour I can’t bring myself to write because you really had to be there otherwise it would sound like a horrible list of in-jokes and un-funny recounts of hilarity. Some things, I guess, are best left alone in that sense. I had the best time though.
Calvinball and Onsind were both spot-on each night and instead of getting tired of hearing them, the complete opposite happened. They both seemed to get better as the shows went on as if the hours in the bus, lack of sleep and almost constant tiredness actually fueled them. Somehow, my voice held out for the shows despite singing for about 90 minutes a day, at times it even felt stronger than usual. Maybe it needed the practice? Being home last night felt good: a day without an evening of loading in and then out, a rest for my ears and arms and voice. A bed was good and the sleep and a few hours to myself seemed to calm my mind which hadn’t seemed to rest for days. I don’t miss the van today. I miss the company, but I don’t miss the hours of motorway. Give it another day and I’ll be itching to go again. I think I already am.
No comments:
Post a Comment