Happy new year

Hi.

I was going to wrap this year up by listing and describing my favourite shows that happened this year and I never finished that because it sounded like a whole bunch of backslapping of people who are my friends and it all sounded a bit cliquey. I'm not into that. The people who smashed it this year, well, I've already told them that I thought they were awesome. I know that when you tell someone they were awesome right after they played it can come across a little dishonest at times, other times it's just a horrible time to be starting a conversation while packing stuff away, but I hope those people know that what they have done has stayed with me.

For me, this year has been great, it's our first full year as a 4 piece and I feel happier and more content with what we are doing than ever before. We've played a lot of shows this year, been to Europe twice, been around this country more times than I can count and played with more than a handful of bands that I have a huge amount of admiration for. Next year we'll be putting out a full length (finally) and touring hard as usual and hope we can change things up a little and do a lot of new things, musically, and otherwise. I'll talk more shit here and tell everyone about gear and stuff like that, because that stuff is universally accepted as being awesome to discuss. Right?

I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who put us on this year, everyone who let us stay at their house, fed us, partied with us and mostly, everyone who came along to our shows and made sure we didn't just play to the bar-staff and the promoter. We've been there, it's not fun.  I also want to thank the bands we have toured with this year - Rooftops, Just Panic, Imadethismistake, Crazy Arm and Dan Postin for being the best dude I have met this year. Touring can be tricky, even at the best of times and I would do it all again with all of you.

I am rambling now, I feel I have too many people to mention and I have mostly said all this to people already so I'll leave it here.

I cannot wait to get back onto the road next year, see you all then.

Dan
x

ps: New website soon. Myspace is dead and I am abandoning it ASAP.

Dear Apple inc.

Dear Apple Inc.

Thanks for the e-mails through December reminding me to buy various Apple products as Christmas presents for my loved ones. Had you been advertising iPod shuffles, Nanos or accessories for Apple products at a reasonable price, I might not have been so keen to immediately delete your e-mails. However, you thought it perfectly appropriate to remind me to buy iPads for my loved ones. A £500 gift. How about a Macbook pro? Only a grand!

And yet the only things you know about me, are that I bought my laptop from you four years ago in your refurbished section to reduce the cost to myself and I have bought nothing from you since then. I have only been in touch with you to have my laptop repaired a number of times because of random faults and the fact that your magnetic power supply cables frequently melt and become a fire hazard. My laptop died this year, only four years old. By any standards, thats pretty shit for eight hundred pounds.

Thanks for e-mailing me today, reminding me, only 4 days after Christmas, where I bought nothing from you, that I should "treat myself" to an iPad. Even my Dad knows that the iPad is a gimmicky, expensive, underpowered toy.

Merry Christmas.

Dan

Last Minute Christmas presents!

We have just upped our new shirts and ceramic owls to our shop. Any orders we get will be shipped the same day or the day after if you are buying for Christmas. The owls are limited to about 100 and we sold a bunch on tour so not too many left. They come giftwrapped and strung with ribbon.


Dan

The worst day our band has ever had. Ever.

We bailed on a show for the first time ever at the weekend. To make things worse, it was the last date with Crazy Arm on our UK tour together. I was beyond gutted. We all were.

Our London show the day before was a difficult show for us, we spend a cold half an hour jump starting Crazy Arms van which had died and the PA had some problems which pushed the show back and meant that the vocals were a struggle to hear. Only one monitor worked so we had to switch positions at the last minute after setting up and the soundguy was hassling us to get going. Not a great start. I want to say a huge thanks to Dave McManus for organising the show though, his Everything Sucks nights are always busy and always well promoted, but for me, the show just lacked something on my part. I wasn't happy after the show and after the nightmare load-out where we can to carry our shit for about 400 meters on icy paths across multiple journeys to where we managed to park the van didn't help. I just wanted to go home and start again the next day. I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye to Crazy Arm who were heading to Plymouth after the show. The next morning I felt much better, a little easier about the night before and ready to play hard and round the year off on a good note.

In 3 hours we travelled from East London to West London. Fifteen miles. The motorways were jammed, snow was falling hard, cars were slipping all over the place and it seemed impossible to make it to Plymouth in time considering Crazy Arm took seven hours to get home the night before and this was on clear roads with minimal ice. We call up the train company and ask about possible trains and PJ cracks up in the van after being told that it would cost four-hundred-and-thirty-pounds-and-eight-pence with a four-person super saver deal. No chance. We hadn't moved more than 500 meters in the last hour and it seemed dangerous and impossible. It took a further three and a half hours to get home and we had to spend another 45 minutes digging the van out after dropping Joe home on the way. The van had slipped against the curb and we had to use wood, boiling water and direct pushing on the side of the cab to get it free. We google mapped our journey - 30 miles in the best part of seven hours. We checked how long it would take to walk that distance - four and a half hours. Once I got home I felt delirious. No way to spend the day. No way to end a tour. No way to end the year.


I want to say a massive thanks to Crazy Arm for asking us to come out on this tour with them, they are probably the best band in the country and watching them every night was incredible - they play tighter and harder than pretty much anyone I have ever watched and they are the very best dudes. Their new single Ambertown is out now, its classic Crazy Arm and mega-banging. A huge sorry for bailing on the show. I promise we did everything we thought possible. Thanks to everyone who put us on, put us up and PJ for cooking most days. This tour has definitely been an education and we are all keen to get started next year once everyone is home from Christmas and New Year and finish up this record.

Day 6 - On the A14 to Norwich

It seems stupid to keep a tour diary when we're driving only a few hours between shows in our home country and staying at, mostly, people we knows houses. There's something comforting but fairly risk-free about touring in the UK that doesn't keep me on my toes the same as I feel when we tour Europe and everything feels a little terrifying and home is more than an overnight drive away. I've eaten well, slept well and am wearing fresh clothes each day. The van smells ok and loading in and out each night has felt a little to easy. I don't feel like I'm on tour. I feel like I'm hanging out with my friends, old and new, and playing a show each night between bouts of sitting around swapping stories and discussing other shit that happened on other tours while PJ cooks. That said, and I realise that everything above might sound negative which I definitely don't intend, this tour has already been really good for us and fun beyond words. Its been an education watching Crazy Arm every night, they really are about as good as you can get and even their worst shows are better than most bands best. Every night after they play I want to jump back behind the monitors and do our set again. I am looking at everything we do as a band and trying to work out how we can make what we do a bit better, sound a little more defined and push us a little harder. I can't wait to get home and go over all our new songs and write parts that I can't play so that I can force myself out of my comfort zone and make things a little different whether we keep them or not. I'm excited about everything at the moment and I think these ten days is what we have needed for a little while to eek out a little more from ourselves. There's four shows left, Norwich, Leeds, London and Plymouth and I feel like we're just hitting our stride. I could keep this up, weather permitting, for much longer than ten days, although a few nights in my own bed would be awesome right now.

/ramble

Dan

Ps; if you bought something online from us over the last few days, its all being posted today or tomorrow. You'll have it by xmas, sorry for the delay.

I am laying on the floor in Warren from the Attika States house.

3 shows into our tour with Crazy Arm and I have learnt a few things already. We're always dead careful about where we park our van, we're worried about people hitting it, getting parking tickets or leaving it in the way. Crazy Arm do not give a shit how they park there van and at first I was thinking that maybe we were over cautious and we should just do whatever we liked, like Crazy Arm do. They got a parking ticket yesterday. One-nil to us!

I'll share some more learnings, such as how Crazy Arm refuse to turn their amps down, and how they seem to need 12 hours sleep another time. Needless to say, they are killing it every night and we are constantly looking at our own performance and trying to work out how we can raise our own game. They are amazing. 7 shows left, come hang out. Bring earplugs.

Dan

Tour starts today.

Today we go to Exeter to start a ten day tour with Crazy Arm. We have a bunch of new shirts, ceramic Owls and a grip of lozenges. We're ready.

Hope you can make it.

Dan

7" review.

Hi. The good people at Pop 'Stache have done an article on our 7" - mostly about the packaging and presentation - all of which were done by Ema Smith. Have a look, I think the article is rad. Whoever wrote it, thank you for taking the time to do it, its much appreciated.

We go on tour on Thursday with Crazy Arm for 10 days.

I hope we have a heat-wave in the UK.

Dan

PJ, you can have your strap back.

I borrowed this guitar strap off PJ about two years ago when my awesome blue strap died after Josh stood on the plastic adjustment part and it broke. It's been through a lot. In that time it's been through probably a few hundred gigs, a few thousand hours of practice and probably a few bucketfuls of sweat. I had to leave it to soak after our euo-tour in the summer because, well, it wasn't exactly fresh. But it carried on and never broke. Never slipped. Pj, you can have your strap back now with my eternal thanks. It probably needs retiring soon and I wouldn't trust it on any guitar that you could risk dropping. It's wearing out, but holding on ok. It could be said that I owe you a new strap. We'll talk about that.

Soon to be unveiled on the Crazy Arm tour - my new tweed guitar strap. Yeah. Tweed.

Dan - 28 years old, fashion sense of a 70 year old farmer.

March

Yo. We're already planning for a tour in March next year and we're hoping to have a lot of the new record done by then. We're planning to go to England, Wales, Scotland and both Irelands. If you want us to play your city, town, party, let us know, we should be able to squeeze some in. Hit us up on contact@apologiesihavenone.co.uk and we'll talk business!

Ps; Mike Davies played us on this Radio show last night. It's on the iplayer for a week.

Dan