Tour recap

No sleep till somewhere.

Hello folks, I hope you’re all doing alright? Apologies for the lack of activity on these pages of late - I’m crawling out from under the cover of procrastination (apparently there’s an ADHD epidemic so I’ll blame that) to give you a little summary of what was quite a busy month.

As is often the way and when it is least convenient, along come several new song ideas, a whole new recording idea and various deadlines both “un” and “fore” seen. We musicians want to be busy, we will all say that. However when busyness arrives we will all moan - I’m sure you will have experienced those conversations with our breed? If the widely accepted term for a group of actors, a “winge” of actors, is correct then therefore a group of musicians should definitely be referred to as a “sigh”.

That aside here I am writing so I’d better get on with it while the urge lasts. I should start with the two festivals in Sweden; Falkenberg and firstly Stockholm. These were our first foreign jaunts as a 6 piece for some time (the last being Los Angeles 2019) and the first with the new rhythm and string sections. I’m pleased to say Maddy, Annie and Eva covered themselves in glory in a musical sense and Henry, Raul and I could not have asked for better travelling companions. Not a hint of a sigh or a winge.

Sleep was not much of an option on this trip. I think I got an hour at Henry’s then maybe an hour of Ryanair Z’s on the flight and perhaps some Swedish train naps but that was about it between Friday’s 3am departure from Henrys in Brixton and Sunday evenings return. Everyone else kept smiling so I tried to as well, with moderate success.

Cheese

Cheese again

The gigs were good. Somehow we summoned enough energy to impress the crowds in Stockholm and finished the night with a number of gig offers from venues close by (one of which we are doing in May at a place called Twang, how apt).

After our show in Stockholm we hung out a little, ate some of the very fine rider including some traditional cream filled sweet buns which Magnus Carlson (who played after us with Jesper Lindell) explained were there because, of course, it was “cream filled sweet bun day in Sweden and these were particularly good ones. You had to make it yourself, as in fill the bun with cream, and I’m not sure if I was missing something but I was tired and it’s very likely I was.

So with 1 gig down, we eventually made our way to the hotel some time after mid night. I was very nice that a lot of people who’d seen us before came to the show and said hello but it meant we didn’t get to our rooms until after 1am which was not in the plan. We tried to give new pal Ole Kirkeng (great guy, wonderful tash) a lift but he did not fit in the Uber and the Uber guy got cross so we had to leave him on the roadside hoping he would make it to the next festival in Falkenberg.

I cunningly booked a hotel 2 minutes walk from the station so that we could catch the early train easily whilst also wolfing done a breakfast in the 15 minutes it would be open before we had to head to the station. However the kind lady on reception realised we would likely be pushing it so she prepared some take away breakfasts for us so the morning was somewhat less stressful than it might have been. I drank 3 cups is not bad coffee machine coffee before I realised Henry who had been right behind me in the corridor earlier wasn’t there. It turned out he’d got on the wrong lift and was in someone’s apartment demanding top know where his breakfast was. I’d already handed our keys in so the reception lady offered to go and find him. Not long later the rest of the travelling party arrived in reception and we were on our way.

And 6.5 hours of near seamless Swedish train travel later we were in Falkenberg.

I was looking forward to seeing our old pals Ulf and Anders who we’d first met on our trip during covid and been back several times since. They always put on a great show and this time was no exception. We actually arrived a little earlier than we’d expected so we had time to set up and do a longer sound check. I could tell it was going to be a good gig, the sound was great and everyone perked up a bit now that we were here. Magnus who does sound at Falkenberg uses Ableton mixing software for his live sound and he passed us the stems afterwards. Our pal Lawrence was able to then mix these into a proper live recording which we will release as a CD and streaming soon…

We then checked in to our rooms and had a little nap which was well needed.

With no sign of pre show nerves we went out and played our set to a packed Falkenberg crowd who even sang along to Thin and Swansong, it was “Big Saturday”after all.

Here’s an early mix of the live recording of the first song we played including an intro from our good pal Anders;

My memory thereafter is a little hazy.

We saw more old friends in the audience before the show including this chap, Freddan, and his dad who were very excited to see the show having driven a long way up from Hultsfred (he only got thrown out of the green room the two times).

At some point my hat and glasses went missing and I had quite wild hat hair but that doesn’t matter I thought, I’m done now so I can hide/relax. I was then summoned on stage to sing a song that I didn’t know the words to with all the other musicians (who all did know the words), along with hat theif Lizzie No, in front of a full audience. There weren't even and tall Swedes to hide behind.

Stay tuned for the UK leg of the tour coming soon…