Apologies, I have Balls in North Dakota.

On the last date of the tour, we thought it would be cool to have people from each of th 3 bands do a "full band" ending of an Onsind song as a sort of significant, fun way to call an end to the whole trip. Because the van had to be back early the next day and we were about 250 miles from Oxford where the van had to be in 12 hours, we couldn't finish the tour and then hang out for a bit afterwards like I wanted to - we basically hit up the last show and within a few hours we were driving home which was a bummer, so this was a nice way to close off our time together. Someone fimed it, so, here it is. A once only, 3 band version of "memoirs" by Onsind, practiced only once.

Ladsontour/they'retakingourtour/Wolinski! etc

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.

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.

Spelling Lesson.

I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.
I must spell Kieran correctly.

Sorry Keiran. Kieran.

Madchester

At some point earlier in the year, Andrew Cream, guitarist in The Ruined and promoter under the name Last Lung asked us to play a show with his band in Manchester. Manchester is about 4 hours and 200 miles from London and driving there and back in a night is a nightmare. We did it once and said "never again". Its also terribly expensive in Petrol in a way that the show will never be able to cover. I took the show and figured I'd at least get one show between London and Manchester on the way up and one on the way back to minimise driving and petrol costs. But then Calvinball went and asked us to tour with them and Onsind just a few days later and so all my attention went on booking up a tour with them and the Manchester show just sort of sat there like the last Dog in the pound, just kind of patiently waiting for some attention.

That attention didn't come and so the drive to and from Manchester in one night was looking more likely. On the Saturday I had to go back to Didcot to see my family, and Josh knocked off the first 70 miles or so and went to Peterborough to watch Neil Sutherland and Friends play the Xoo bar. Sounded like a good gig. The day of the show I had to jump on a train to London, to get a train to Peterborough and meet Josh and Keiran (our unofficial roadie/merch girl/hype man) and drive to Manchester. Well, it all went ok on the train, despite destroying my wallet so the train company score 1 point for the well timed trains, but they lose 5 points for a 100 mile journey costing almost £50 (and I hold them responsible for the muffin, see below)

The gig was pretty well attended, very fucking loud and a pretty mixed bill of punk, ska and horror punk(!). I broke only my second string during a set and realised that the backup guitar I bought a year ago, that I have never used live, is completely useless as it won't stay in tune or sound good. Anyone want to buy a used Epi Les Paul? No? Well the set ended on a low point, which was a shame because the rest of it was really good and really fun to play. Nothing like ending on a bad note (literally). The Ruined played last and were awesome.

Come 11pm, it was time to hit up the Motorway and drive home, and it was only at this point that the terrible logistics of our gig planning were becoming obvious. We ended up bombing out at Keirans house at 2.30am and finishing off the journey home at 8am the following morning to get to work in time. Josh said he couldn't focus on the road or signs for about 40 minutes before we gave up. It's times like this that I realise how much DIY punk relies heavily on friends, luck and hard work. Who wants to drive 8 hours in a day and finish at almost 3am? Who wants to be at a venue for 5 hours, only to play for 30 minutes? Who wants a bunch of people staying over after shows and leaving to the next town and leaving you with their mess? Well, we don't always want to, but we'll do it if we have to. Thanks again Kieran - people like you (and your parents) help keep people like us going. See you next time!

Muffin to lose

This muffin is criminal, right when i was relying on it the most. National rail once again have me by the balls because I want to travel the 60 or so miles from London to Didcot and feel that £20 is a fair price for a one way trip on crowded train that takes 45 minutes. Its not a fair price by anyones standards, but at least tonight I got a seat and the seat next to me is taken up by my bag and a bass guitar that is as much company as I really want right now. But this muffin, fuck man, all I wanted was something that might make me feel less like tonight was a big fucking lose. Does anyone else start spending the second they realise they have nothing left? Like once you have reached the bottom, you are finally free? After getting stung for a ticket that will in all likelihood never get checked on this journey I barely cared about the extortionate £2 for a honey and lemon muffin from some faux french cuisine outlet in Paddington station. This muffin is, quite easily, 4 days old. I know this because it crunched when I bit into the piece I wrenched off the top. That's the best bit! I would love to get off the train and slam it back onto their glass counter and tell them that despite missing my train and getting an overpriced ticket/muffin combo, I was not going to be taken advantage again tonight. I want them to eat this shit that they peddle to late night commuters who long for their bed and the conversation of someone other than a ticket robot. I want them to suffer the same disappointment that I felt. I want them to know that despite today being a massive ball-ache that this journey didn't have to be the massive kick in the groin that I didn't want. It could have been a quiet train and a nice muffin, a sip of water and an episode of Peep Show, but instead I am dying inside from this block of muffin scratching through my insides. I swear right now, I will never buy another item of food from a train station, and by my calculations, If I bought 4 muffins a year at £2 (not including inflation) then, if I live till 75, I could save just short of £200 in my life. Fuck you muffin, I'm practically rich because of you.

This post seems to be mostly about Onsind.

At the very start of 2008 I think, I posted about our band on a website, trying to get people to listen to us and managed to attract the usual semi-cynical replies from people that hadn't listened to our band telling me that no-one was interested in our Music.No problem really, its all you can expect from pushing your band on people to a degree and its why I've never been comfortable about doing anything to promote what we are doing beyond playing shows, giving away Cd's and trying to keep our various online presences up to date for anyone that is interested in us. Still, someone DID listen, and they liked us, and they offered us our first show beyond 2 hours drive from our house. Probably our first real show outside London really. JC at Discount Horse records went as far as to book us a headline slot with Onsind in Durham as well as the possibility of playing a house party and another gig on our last day. It was our first real trip for a show. I wouldn't call it a tour, but 3 shows up north in one long-weekend was beyond our expectations at the time and I guess it was our first real experience of the hospitality that DIY punk can offer. Not only did we get paid for the show, people paid for our free Cd's, we got fed, taken on a tour of the Durham Cathedral, played a fun house party and got squeezed onto a daytime show (although this show was beyond odd and the fairly large crowd that were in attendance almost entirely consisted of people in bands who were either about to play, or who had already played). I remember feeling like we had conquered the world on the 7 hour drive home that Sunday and I have always been excited to pass through and see everyone again.

This weekend we loaded up the car with tents, sleeping bags and gear and headed back up north for a weekend festival called Full Throttle where we would spend the weekend with our northern friends. The EIGHT HOUR DRIVE would have killed us off easily had we not been staying with Will, who took us on a refreshing walk with his Dog around Sedgefield as soon as we arrived and the hours of driving seemed to drop off us all quickly (except Ema, who slept almost all the way there). Thanks Will, your hospitality shall go down in the permanent records of Apologies, I have none as being 5 star.

The festival was largely made up of bands I had never heard of and the attendance was mostly people i didn't know - not a problem at all. On checking the bands prior to leaving, I accepted that the line up wasn't made up of too many bands that i would ever love but again, not a problem, I was looking forward to spending time with everyone, watching friends play and wandering between tents in case I caught anything I liked. We were to play the main stage at 4pm - its a big tent with a smallish stage and I remembered playing it last year and struggling to get into the set. The barrier in front of me and huge open, well-lit space made playing feel awkward. It was the same this year so it was hard not to come away disappointed. Its hard to create a good atmosphere when you are dwarfed by a PA, barrier, bright sunlight and 1/10th full tent and i started drinking pretty heavily as soon as we finished. Our friends mostly played in the smaller tents late at night and I couldn't help but feel jealous that we weren't playing the same spaces at the same times. Disappointments like that are hard to shake and are compounded by a sense of distaste for my own self-pity when maybe I should be thankful I even got to play and that people took the time to listen. The rest of the weekend was largely made up of sitting about talking shit and watching bands, some that I liked and some that I didn't. I think the acoustic tent was the premier tent of the weekend for me, it was small and busy and was the last tent playing each night. I barely got through the last night after bombing out on Gin but i recovered in time to see Onsind give probably the performance of the weekend. It was literally amazing. It was really good to end the weekend on such a brilliant set and I think it helped to correct the tiny part of me that didn't want to let go of my own disappointment - it really can be pot-luck as to when you get an awesome show or poor show, but it also helped to focus my own mind on what i can do to get through the more difficult shows. It rained that night and the field turned into the muddy bog that it had promised to do just a few nights before, like the clouds could finally relax. I felt relieved that the rain had held off this long and so I stuffed my new, but muddy tent back into into its too-small bag and got back into the car for the drive home. I am still wearing the mud stained shoes I spent the weekend in - I should buy new ones really, these will never feel the same again but I own no shoes at all other than these. I would love to post pictures of the weekend, but Ema lost her camera on the first night (if anyone was in the Bishop Aukland, Lower Wham area of Butterknowle at the weekend and found a canon Ixus, please let me know!).