Well what a great week! The whole tour has been a great experience in many respects, one being that Travellodges (bodges) are a safe haven away from being on your feet all day.
Partying hard and early mornings have taken its toll though.
Bristol Tuesday
The gigs this week have all been packed and the free chew tv t-shirts came in for something useful, to wipe our sweaty brows. The first gig kicked off in The Croft in Bristol, next to "The Massage Club”. First impression were classic; toilets that smelt worse than the Glastonbury longdrops covered up with the smell of Frebreeze. The venue was dimly lit but none the less. Romantic. The gig itself was full of energy and had a great atmosphere. Packaging away a character roamed up to us and started to recite poetry and van halen songs? He was a sort of modern day Shakespeare, but was gurning worse than my senile old granddad! All packed up we headed to the arse end of nowhere, Cambourne. A little over a 4 hour journey well retreated to the local travel bodge.
Cambourne Wednesday
Awake and slightly hung-over we drove to Cambourne secondary school to do our school music workshops. Little did we know the school had been promoting the shit out of the gig that night, and had already sold over 100 tickets, thanks to everyone involved with that. A huge stage, PA and over 200 school and 6th form students, we played a half hour set fueled on chicken shish kebab. The crowds reaction was fantastic, chanting “off, off, off” to Charlie who was becoming more naked and plec-less by the second. After signing various pieces of clothing and multiple arms and legs we headed to Plymouth, home town to the other bands we were with.
Plymouth Thursday
An early start thanks to gimp master TC (tour manager.) We arrived at the school and helped set up the PA for Kat to play the lunch time gig. Being sponsored by Volvic lemon flavoured water (urine flavoured to me) was good and bad, good to keep us hydrated, bad because it became an addiction. And when TC decided to give out 800 bottles of the piss during Kat’s set, well the mob of students went crazy for the free drink, almost knocking Kat out! A student tells me in the workshop “err well I blagged 8 bottles and sold them for 50p each.”
Arriving at the venue “white rabbit” we hauled the gear around 200m which was a struggle, dodging buses and commuters as it was literally on Plymouth bus station. We then ate at a nice restaurant and lined our stomachs, play the gig and then got drunk, all in quick succession. I personally don’t remember how I ended up in bed but it was all good fun.
Thanks to the Chew TV crew and everyone involved with the tour. It was a great experience.
We headed down to the The Fly to catch up with the Pinstripe lads just before they played a 'best of' gig for aloud.com. Despite the constant stream of noise that flooded the buzzing venue, we managed to catch a glimpse in to the life of a Pinstripe on tour.
So, is performing live for you guys where it’s at?
Lois
Writing songs and playing live is definitely the best bit. Josh
I do like recording as well. Charlie
I’d rather just play live.
Do you have any dream equipment that you would love to have?
Josh
I would like a keyboard that is like a guitar.
Now you guys have started young, and you’re doing really well – what has the highlight of your career been so far?
Louis
It’s been such a good experience, we have never done executive dates before so… Josh
Yeah, we have… Charlie
Yeah, but not as many as we have been doing on this tour. Josh
It’s been really good getting to know other bands. I think Glastonbury was a main highlight.
You did the Summerset Battle of the Bands and Michael Eavis choose you didn’t he?
Josh
Yes, he did, it was pretty cool. Charlie
He comes to quite a lot of our gigs. Josh
He came to the first ever gig that we played. We see him quite regularly, we get to talk to him a bit, and he is a really nice guy.
And how was Glastonbury?
Josh
Ah, it was amazing. Louis
We only live about five miles away so it was easy to get back. Charlie stayed for the whole thing. Josh
Same clothes for days wasn’t it?
And so to our second leg of the tour! After the first leg of spotting prostitutes in Gloucester, road crew puking into pint glasses and freezing our asses in the back of the tour van, we were in high hopes of another fun fuelled experience on the road seeing different parts of the UK that we have never played before!!
The first gig on the second leg of the tour was in sunny Slough, a town full of Offices!! It is of course where the office is filmed, although we didn’t manage to see David Brent. We played in a theatre, which was a seated venue, it spoiled the atmosphere, it also didn’t help that we had a dodgy curry just before we went on stage, which we all paid for in the morning. After the gig we headed to our Travelodge and performed the usual routine of milk tittys, squirting the free samples of milk at each other and performing a little jig whilst doing so!! After milk tittys we had build up an appetite and so went to Tescos. Tescos was AMAZING, apparently it is the biggest one in Europe and we all got lost and separated from each other for at least 10 minutes!
A new day and we were off to London to play a best of show for aloud.com. We had a few meetings with music industry types and some interviews in the day and managed to do a spot of shopping. We had a pub lunch in Fulham which was lush, Charlie ate loads of weird sauces and mustards mixed together and fell ill for a while. We played at the Fly on New Oxford St. It was a good venue with a good PA and has a history of plenty of famous bands having played there before such as the Arctic Monkeys, Editors and Kasabian. We were on first; we played well apart from a few technical issues towards the end of the set, to a packed audience. Overall, we were pretty happy with our performance that night with a few special people in the crowd we hoped to impress!! We all got a bit merry after we played, with the crew from ITV Imagine and the night just flew by, eventually being dragged away from the bar by our tour manager. We then zoomed all the way to crazy Sandwich, which is in Kent. It took a while to get there, having to stop several times for a pee in East London late night traffic jams.
The Sandwich show was one of the best gigs we have played so far on the tour. Around about 120 people turned up to the gig and we got a good reaction from a crowd that had never heard our songs before, it was ace!! We sold about 25 CDs and got some more people signed up for our mailing list. After the show we had a mission to our travelodge, which was in Warminster about 200 milesaway, it took about 5 hours, and included a few gambling and pee breaks at the motorway stops. A quick milky tittys then off to bed, we were all knackered and grumpy and had to get up early to get the short journey home to Shepton Mallet. We had one final gig for this leg of the tour, playing in Paignton, Devon. Although not part of the Chew TV tour, it was a pretty good venue and we got to play with a couple of our favourite local bands from the South West. We all got home at 2am in the morning and i feel asleep for 18hours, all recharged for the last leg of the tour, which takes us to venues in Cornwall, Devon and Somerset.
At three of the places we stopped at on the first leg of the tour - Gloucester, Wolverhampton and Stroud - we played gigs in the evening and did workshops in the local secondary schools during the days. These workshops consisted of us talking about what it’s like to be in a band, what it’s like to be on the road, what its like to record cds etc. We also taught them basic skills of our instruments. I was teaching major scales and Matt the bass player from Kat Marsh taught the 12 bar blues.
The gigs we’ve played have been wicked. Its been great to play to crowds who have never heard or seen us before and we’re hopefully creating some new fans. I’ve really enjoyed connecting with people and I'm hoping they had fun too!
When we’re not doing the workshops we’ve have been out promoting the gigs - Working it!
Overall the first leg of the tour was amazing - the after parties are always fun too! I can’t wait to go back for the second leg, although the short break has allowed me some rest :)
Upcoming Shows
