Hideaway, 2019 UK/NL tour
With our first single out, it felt time to try and play as many shows as possible. Booking shows is in joint first position for being the absolute worst part of being in a band. The other being carrying loads of heavy stuff on public transport. But it’s got to be done and I should stop complaining. We kicked off our little tour to promote Hideaway with a celebratory release day show in London at Sister Midnight, the home of our first show a year before. Alex had bought lots of fake plants for the stage and the room was lit in red light giving it a slightly seedy vibe. This somehow felt perfect for our band at that time. It was a great night, a real party and we all celebrated with a whisky or two afterwards.
A few days later we headed up to Scotland to play in Glasgow at the Hug in Pint before playing in a student bar in Edinburgh then making the trek back to London to play at The Sebright Arms. The trip was a lot of fun. A few highlights from me:
Arran and his partner had made each other a promise to try out a carb-less diet for a month. He did a great job at sticking to it for 24 hours before getting drunk in Glasgow and devouring his first ever deep fried pizza post show.
On a personal level, it was so nice to play in Scotland again – my first time since 2011.
The day after the Edinburgh show we woke up early and decided to get into a rehearsal room before catching the train back to London. Running through Glasgow in the rain with all of our stuff, it made me think of how much we value making music together despite some of the sacrifices we have to make. Whatever happens, sometimes that’s enough.
We spent the next couple of weeks in pre-production for our next single before heading off on a five day jaunt of the Netherlands. We’d played Amsterdam earlier in the year and sold out our show so we were keen to get back. I’d spent many a late night booking the tour and getting things sorted. Amsterdam was to be our first bigger headline show and we were playing a longer set than usual so had been in rehearsals most nights since getting home from the gigs in Scotland.
Our bags were packed, hotels booked, tickets sold and we were feeling pretty good. We met at our practice spot to do a final run through. All was going well before disaster struck - Alex slipped at the end of the rehearsal and landed awkwardly on his hand. As Arran rushed Alex off to hospital for an all nighter in a South London A&E, I went home and tried to figure how the fuck we were going to make this work. With his hand in a huge cast, Alex could gently strum his guitar. There was no time to figure it out so there was nothing to do but hit the road and find a way.
The first show of the tour was in Den Haag and it went went well all things considered. We were all beyond tired from the 12 hour journey and ferry ride crammed into a small car, especially Callum who had driven us the whole way. We finished the night off with some fries and a couple Heinekens in our sketchy hotel before having probably the best sleep of our lives. The next morning we travelled across Holland to Leeuwarden to play a show opening for a Belgian band called Black Leather Jacket and a Dutch group called Niko. Both bands ended up being absolutely amazing and the show turned out to be a real party. It’s always such a blessing to have nights like that, meeting cool characters from different cities. The next day we headed off to Amsterdam with both bands blasting out the car and Niko’s “Five out of Ten” had become a bit of a tour anthem.
For our Amsterdam shows, my dear friend and all round legend Ed Phillips had learned all of Alex’s guitar parts so, for a couple of nights only, we were a five piece band. We were supported by a garage rock band fronted by my friend Sofie called Bad Penny and there was a lot of familiar faces in the crowd. It was a really good show for us and it was so cool to see all these familiar faces in the crowd. We ended the night drinking my favourite Dutch beer at 5am in the basement nightclub of our very cool but very expensive hotel which also featured a skyline bar and rooftop hot tub.
It was a great tour and we were all set to come back and do it again this autumn before 2020 happened. But more on that later.
Lots of love for now,
Danny
