Calvinball + Onsind + A,IHN tour.

It's been ages since I tried to book a tour. I just don't know some bands in the US manage to book months long tours across dozens of states when they have just 1 EP out or a split record, but it seems to happen all the time. Maybe there's just a ton of venues and hundreds of isolated scenes that put on shows that makes it seem easier or maybe its not easy at all and all the American bands spend months pulling their hair out trying to make the 400 mile trip to the next venue worthwhile. Booking tours in this country is just not easy and relies on luck, patience and well, a lot of luck unless you are a big enough band that people will bend over backwards to book you. We managed to book up a few dates with our good friends Calvinball and Onsind that will take us to some places we have played before and some new places across the country (and Scotland) and the process only took us a few months. To be honest, we were massively unsuccessful in booking up dates so most of the work was done by the other bands - thanks guys. I'm stoked on this tour - we're hiring a van between all of us and "doing it properly" which I am hoping will mean eating, sleeping and partying well.
This country is starting to feel small now. We've driven to so many major cities, quiet villages and houses that every time we pull-in to get petrol I feel like I recognise the lino and coffee smell and urinal. Like at every service station we have a preferred parking spot and my wallet winces at the memory of the overpriced, over sugared shit that I bought here last time. I can measure the distances between cities in terms of hours, petrol money and meals now. I don't want to get stuck in any sort of routine and touring with friends whom we have still yet to get to know as well as we'd like seems like a great way to break things up a bit but its also reassuring to know that regardless of how well organised the show is, whatever the turnout, at the very least I get to listen to bands that I already know that I can sing along with. I am sure that the 9 days are going to fly by far too quickly and leave my on my ass wondering where the next time we get to do it again will be so I'm already thinking beyond August, about where we can go next.

Here's our August tour dates:

August 9th TBC
August 10th London (at the Brixton Windmill)
August 11th Leamington (at Robin's Well)
August 12th Birmingham (at Scruffy Murphys)
August 13th Leeds (Royal Park Cellars)
August 14th TBC
August 15th Perth (Mucky Mulligans)
August 16th Newcastle (at King's Manor)
August 17th TBC

Calvinball - www.myspace.com/thisiscalvinball
Onsind - http://www.myspace.com/onenightstandinnorthdakota

The PJ and Gaby Cartel/Experience/Brigade

We spent the best part of the weekend playing shows with PJ and Gaby as their backing band, which is a horrible term for "we play the drums and bass for them". Although, that could actually sound kind of cool, I think I could probably get away with saying that we play drum+bass and then let people think I am some sort of awesome DJ. I will need sunglasses and a bigger man-bag if I am to pull that off I suppose. Me and Josh decided to rename the full-band PJ and Gaby "The PJ and Gaby Experience". Does that sound awesome? Or totally shit? Jimmy would be turning in his grave.

The Friday show was in Basingstoke, a place I have been too once and only remembered being lost in the industrial estate for hours whilst looking for fun stuff to skate. I had no idea that Basingstoke was, essentially, a secret hub of punk. There were easily 50 people at the show, all of which paid attention to the bands and seemed to open to the differant acts playing differant styles of acoustic punk. I was really unsure of how the show would go whilst we were driving there, I always get apprehensive playing in new towns I'm not familier with but the show was a pretty solid success and Pear Cider was £2.50 a bottle and we got fed excellent vegan Chilli. Even if I pissed myself on stage I would have considered the night a success at that point. Kelly Kemp blasted out a solid set and Burning Idols played their first ever show and did way better than we did (see below) at our first show. The sound on-stage was shitty so it was a tough show to play - I kept my head down and focused on hitting the right strings as well as I could. Pj broke two strings in 30 minutes, a feat I have only ever seen beaten by Daniel from Onsind at Full Throttle festival last year. Amazing.

Saturdays show was at a family garden party in a marquee. Not your usual show at all and one that had we played at as A,IHN would have been somewhat difficult. I would have felt like I was basically just yelling, shouting and swearing at a family gathering which is, or isn't cool, depending on how you feel about that stuff. Probably about a dozen people played through the day, generally all what I would loosely call "folk" - there were banjos, ukes, madolins, 12 strings, violins, a double bass and harmonicas - sometimes all played by one band. Playing was easy and I can safely say I made the fewest mistakes at any show we have ever played with PJ+Gaby. I count that as a victory. My progression on the bass has been nothing less than amazing.

Amazingly slow.

Our next show is at Full Throttle in Lower Wham, Butterknowle. I'm sure you're familier with it. See you there?

Radio! Radio! Radio! Radio! Radio! When i got the music i got a place to go!

Mike Davies has played us on his Punk Show twice in the last 2 weeks. My Mum and Dad are so proud they even attempted to listen to the show on the internet. I think they finally realised that we took this music thing seriously. My dad rejected the internet for years but then when I moved out of home I think he finally "got it". Getting broadband probably helped (he is as impatient as me) but every time I would go home to visit, he's pull me straight upstairs to the computer and show me his latest funny YouTube clip or Lol image or something. Its great. Now he e-mails me, texts me, and now, finally, he has accessed digital Radio. Progression. (See below)

Anyway, none of that is relevant. You can hear us getting played on the radio here if you like:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/mikedavies/ (this link will die in a week apparently)

Don't tell Mike that he called our record by the wrong name, I don't want to piss him off and at £16 per minute for airplay, if he plays Eason Drive we would scoop £64. That would be the easiest "daily wage" we would ever have earnt. What? of course we're in this for the money. At this rate we'll break even sometime in 2024.

Camdon't.

Our last show was at the Purple Turtle in Camden with Mischeif Brew. Before I even get going about the show (which was awesome and I will get to that) lets talk about Camden. I got into a conversation with a local Birmingham band (whilst i was in....Birmingham) who play a pretty modern style of indie/punk that has that quality about it that makes it pretty NME friendly. You know the sort. They told me how keen they were to get out of Birmingham and said they wanted to play Camden because its where all the good bands play and its legendary. It's really hard to explain to someone outside of London that Camden is a myth. Despite being the Paris of "alternative" music and having the history and the legends and the endless stories that make up "rock and roll history", it's a myth. Every single night it is swamped with a few dozen bands who play to a few dozen people and then everyone goes home again and it all happens again the next night. It's a perpetual cycle. Getting a gig in Camden is not the achievement it sounds like it should be and the truth is a lot darker than it sounds. Some of the venues there, the ones that have the "name", have policies like this:

If by stage time on the night it is apparent you have not attempted to reach your MFB (minimum fanbase quota) quota we will pull your set EVEN IF YOU ARE READY TO PLAY! (its not fair others make the effort & you steal thier audience)

That is a direct cut+paste. Imagine driving from Birmingham to Camden. You have hyped the shit out of your gig on the internet, driven half your mates down in your van and you only manage to pull 8 people. Goodbye! Go home! No gig for you! I don't know wether they would actually pull your set like that, but the message is clear enough regardless. Most of the venues have a policy of paying you once a minimum number of people has been pulled at the door for your band. This is usually around 25 people. Only then are you likely to get any money, and even then it would be around £1 per person. There is the possibiluty that despite getting 50 people to come see your band you would walk away with £25. If every person who came to see your band bought 1 drink, the bar would pull something like £150. It's crazy.

Of course, it's not all negative. There are awesome venues in Camden that put on really good shows and if any band got the chance to play an awesome venue with a band they love, even knowing they would get nothing for doing it, its understandable that they would take it. The larger shows at the better venues are really good and the Sainsburys stays open late, which is excellent.

Enough myth-busting for now.

Mischeif Brew were awesome and I fell in love with their band after seeing live. I was a bit so-so about the records, but live they carry a certain energy, but they wear it like it hangs on them effortlessly. Like a seasoned band that have done endless tours but still have that drive to play hard and have fun. I can't place it, but it got me stoked. We arrived late, messed the bill order up and played third to a pretty full room. A guy called Benji from France came over to see us play because he was on holiday in the UK. He had to leave right after we played and said he just came to see us. I hardly got to speak to him or buy him a drink, but I appreciated the effort. Thanks Benji. We don't have anything on for a while, we're trying to sort some new songs and save some money because the end part of this year is definitely going to break us.

Don't forget about us.

That was acoustic.

Progression, like the aging of skin and the dirtying of carpets, cannot often be noticed on a day to day basis. Sometimes you get caught off guard and take a real look and remember how clean your carpet was and how you never really noticed that it started becoming brown, or that your once youthful face now displays the years that it has weathered proudly and you finally, actually look your age and don't need to carry ID anymore. This band is like that. My housemate Jim came to our first ever handful of shows and can openly state that he has seen us at our very worst. He's seen us play twice as fast as we should do because we were nervous, he's seen us play too drunk, he's seen us play to no-one and has seen us fumble endless chords, choke a million notes and tell a hundred bad jokes. And he took photos of most of it. He's "that guy" that every group of friends has who always has the camera and always scores the amazing photos that really sum up an evening and I could get lost forever in his endless folders of photos remembering the awesome, not so awesome and odd nights we have shared over the last 10 years or so. But its this recent batch of photos he has posted that brought me back to the beginnings of our band. Our first few shows were mostly acoustic affairs, just 2 guitars, a melodica and a terrible clamminess that meant that whilst playing I remained motionless - terrified to move in case I forgot words or fell over. At some point, I did both. It's funny to look back and remember how tied up I used to get before shows, the nervous I had then are totally different to the nerves I have now (which I still get at every show). I remember on this one particular night I would have given anything not to play. The room was noisy and full of art-student types who were engrossed in their coffees and £3 bottles of beer and I felt like we had just rocked up out of no-where with our guitars and told them to shut up and listen to us shout through a PA. I honestly felt like we were intruding on their evening despite the fact that the venue had a poster on the wall that said "This is Acoustic" and had our name on it. We've been at similar shows since and my attitude these days is much more enthusiastic, but this one night I just wanted to get my bag and leave. Its rare that I would prefer not to play a show, out of all the shows we have done the number I would have happily bailed on could be counted across the fingers on my left hand. And even though we played fine that night and I remember feeling like despite my apprehension that we did as well as we could have expected, the biggest steps we have taken, I think, are that the nerves we had before that show that almost stopped me picking up my pick have been replaced with nerves that drive me to play and conquer them.

I look a lot older too (No ID needed anymore)

With thanks to Kim Ford.

Sometimes a photo doesn't tell a story quite as accurately as it could do. Sometimes, a photo is completely misleading and inaccurate. Or maybe, it tells a truer picture than any first hand experience might do. I don't know. I just know that the acoustic Housemans bookshop show we played recently was fun and I think people liked it. I think people sang along and from what i can remember, people smiled, even grinned. I do concede that I was coming off the back of a 6 hour journey from Cornwall that day and me and Ema had been drinking gin in the blazing sunshine that drenched London that day whilst leaning against the side of someones house before the show, but I had it together. I was fully aware of my surroundings as much can be possible at a show considering I sing with my eyes shut and am too self conscious to look at anyone directly. I just cannot figure out how a photo taken at a show that, as far as I can be completely sure, was good fun, can possibly feature people looking this bored:


You win some, you lose some, I guess. Maybe they were there to see an acoustic show and were pissed that we brought an amp with us. "Sell out punks bring amp to acoustic show shocker". I am going to make an effort to keep my eyes open at tonights show.

Getting Sweaty with A,IHN.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Theres really no excuses for poor online-presence. Heres a bunch of photos from some fairly recent shows in London, Southsea, and Dorking. A picture is worth a thousand words. Most of those words would probably refer to how floppy Joshs hair is and how red I am when playing. Black and White is the new colour when shooting bands. Seriously.

This is Josh at the Defiance Ohio show in London and below you can see PJ crowd surfing during our set. When PJ got on stage, right at the end of "Rearranging the Dust" I thought he was going to get on the mic and sing with me, but he pushed me out of the way and steadied himself. I saw the fear in everyones eyes. I saw the tension build and the eyes close, ready for the imminent moment when his feet would leave the floor. I saw him dive in and I saw the crowd pull together to keep him up. It was such a rad show. I am almost purple in this photo.

This is Tom, from Attack Vipers. At some point whilst we played the Fawcett Inn in Southsea he got on stage and hugged me from behind before slipping back into the crowd. After the swaperoo he got under Joshs arm to close off our set in this embrace. Beautiful.

I have no idea where this photo is from. This is completely standard for any gig we play. Calvinball shirt? Check. Shouting off the mic? Check. Fucking sweaty? Double check. Standard really.


This looks like we are playing in someones expensive front room, but it's really the Lincoln Arms in Dorking. Its an odd room, but a lot of fun. Josh doesn't get sweaty at shows. Unlike me. (See below.)


I think I am saying "bangers? BANGERS!" here. I usually am.