48 hours to tour.

I've taken the idea of practicing at home for granted. For the entire life of this band we have had a drumset at home and enough space wave my telecaster about without breaking windows or hitting it on the cymbals. This is all I ever needed. It meant practicing was easy - everything was always set up and ready for us right at home with a quiet drumset and unplugged mics on stands- we could do a 30 minute practice, we could practice for 2 hours. We could practice, have lunch, watch a South Park and them pick up right where we left off and really, considering how much we have to work and do other stuff, this suited us perfectly. No wasted hours of driving to a practice space, no charges. No excessive PA volume, no headaches. Our neighbours bore the worst of this, but over the years, we have saved a ton of money in practice spaces, so its a win for us and a lose for the neighbours. Erm...sorry about that.

The honeymoon is over. On leaving our house when the lease was up, we dumped everything in the Big Yellow storage companies possession including our practice kit and began sleeping at friends and waiting to go on tour. Its not been too bad at all, but I like practicing when I want to, not when the practice space actually has space for us. So last night we decided to hit up a last practice before our tour with Calvinball and Onsind and I found a studio in South London that seemed a balance of cheap and "not completely like some hell-hole from the hostel film" and had a slot for us. We have used another practice space in the past to flesh out parts with real drums and to practice our mic control, but the experience left us with ringing ears, heavy hearts and feeling overall completely shit. Last nights practice space was marginally better and had better sound and a surprisingly productive session, but the whole experience made me feel so lucky that we have never had to do it long term. Lugging all our shit into a 4th floor room, setting up, yelling for a few hours and then driving home minus £31 in your wallet is like booking your own terrible gig that no one shows up for and where your playing just gets progressively worse as the night goes on.

But there's no substitute for playing with real drums, real mics and at proper volume with a PA, - it makes the transition from practice to gig more fluid and from one practice, I already feel more confident playing our new songs live. But I cannot wait to get our own place again and move the drums back in for the majority of our practice. Until then, I need to get some better earplugs, my epithelium hurts.