Tour recap part ii

The show must go on, right?

Henry or Shakespeare? You decide…

Basking in the warm glow/hangover from our successful Swedish exploits I returned home with quite a lot of prep for the Uk dates still to do but full of energy and raring to go. Within about 12 hours I started to feel a little tickle in my throat and sometime after that I developed a cough. By Wednesday I had full on “Man flu”. Our first day of the UK shows was Saturday in Nottingham so plenty of time to recover I thought, at least 3 days. I informed that band that although I was too ill for the planned rehearsal that week I would be fine by Saturday morning and would pick them all up as planned. And so it went.

The Angel Micro Brewery is a great little spot in central Nottingham with an old chapel turned into a venue upstairs. The show was organised by ace promotors “Cosmic American” (James and Kristen). This was to be our first OMITF, not a support gig in Nottingham. The great news was that tickets had sold well and the room was full of new fans. The band were bright eyed and bushy tailed after our triumphant Swedish exploits and couldn’t wait to get started;

As it turns out I had been in full on denial for the last few days, that was right up until standing on stage and atempting to sing the opening few notes of Thin.

If you know that song, it starts with a fairly high falsetto line; “hold all my calls and take this letter down”. It is intended to be delicate and to set the scene for the rest of the song, This particular rendition was so delicate it was almost entirely whispered. “When is my voice going to kick in?” I wondered. Having an internal monologue at any point of a gig is bad but I have never had a conversation with myself so early on as this. I was in uncharted waters. Then finally a sound came out. The notes I was able to sing were in random keys and none of which were the key the song its self is in and the incomplete words made for a strange sort of gibberish. So not an ideal start.

This organ falling on my head might have been the ideal escape route.

I looked down at the set list and wondered what I could do to mitigate the lack of vocals. Should I cut some songs? should I change the key of any to be within the range of whatever voice I had left? There was little time to make good decisions so I ploughed on occasionally glancing at the band from whom I received the odd shrug and forced smile. Confirmation that we were definitely now too far in to go back but perhaps about to deliver the rest of the set as instrumentals.

Somehow we got through. It was not good but the people of Nottingham are kind and they hung around until the end and chatted to us after the gig (It was one way traffic as I was virtually mute by that point).

The last thing I wanted to do was cancel shows but as I wandered to fetch the car I thought to myself that there was no way I’d even be able to try to do the next gig as there was no voice to try with. I called Chris Metzler, and nothing came out so I texted him. He’d booked the tour and I expected some kind of “suck it up buttercup” pep talk along the lines of which I’d been giving myself over the last week. Chris said we should absolutely postpone the next two shows at least and everyone would totally understand as I was obviously not well. Hmm, a learning I thought.

So we spent the next days not playing in Sheffield or Birmingham as planned but instead we hung out in our Airbnb (which much like the houses used in nuclear bomb tests had walls and a roof but not really anything else). An exciting thing happened as we left Nottingham and headed south; I was still coughing a little bit and didn’t want to infect the band with my lurgy so casually opened the window of the car to let out some cough safely. The window refused to close. We had a long drive on motorways on a cold wet February morning ahead of us so this needed fixing. I pulled over and googled garages near me. The first few to answer were only able to take a look in 3 days time so no good. The car is a Mitsubishi and they said they could take a look later that day and it would be £200 to take that look - hmm. We tried the nearest Halfords - that was a waste of time. I tried manually heaving the glass upwards but it was stuck fast. I had another look at google and there was one company that had not come up first time “CarTek” about 2 minutes down the road from Halfrods. I called and the chap who answered told me his colleague was on the way back to the garage and that guy would be able to get the window up but probably not much else. This was fine I thought, damage limitation, get the glass back up and deal with it later. So we headed to CarTek. They took the keys and asked us to come back in an hour or so.

We were in North West Nottingham, a rather nondescript part of town close to Bobbers Mill Bridge, with not a lot on offer for a band needing to kill some time on a Monday morning. We picked the transport cafe above McDonalds and then the pub. I can recommend the Bobbers Mill Cafe (if you’re ok with sweary, shouty waitresses - I was on the phone to Ellie and as our food arrived she thought I was being attacked. It was just the waitress informing/screaming me that my lunch was on the table ) but probably not The Nags Head to doors down.

I called CarTek for an update and the car was ready! Hurrah I thought, at least we can get on our way and I would sort out the window later, we don’t need to open it anyway. Steve from Cartek handed me the keys and I asked with no little trepidation how much I owed him. Anything under the £200 Mitsubishi wanted would be ok. “Tenner” he said. “What?” I replied. He told me it was just a loose connection so they re-soldered it and it’s all working fine now. I gave him £20 and asked if he would like a record or cd, he asked what kind of music it was and I said it’s kind of Americana to which he said firmly, and with a scowl, no thanks and with that we were on our way. If you ever need a garage in North East Notts, CarTek is the place to go but do not let on you like Americana.

To be continued….