There was no set starting point of the tour looking back as, even though the album was released on June 24th, we’d been gigging for a good few weeks beforehand to get up to scratch with the new songs. After trawling through our blog to see if I could find a starting place, it’s only now that I realise that the whole experience has come full circle as, on 7th May 2011, after a 2 month break from gigging, we hit the Crumblin’ Cookie Café and 27 weeks later, or 189 days, we ended the tour in exactly the same venue.
With that first gig played, we had The following gig at The Soak had to be cancelled due to my Nan sadly passing (RIP Nan) but we soon got back on the proverbial horse and rode into the West (near Witherly). The weekend of 15th-16th May was the pivotal point of the album and the weekend was handed over to Team Promo, AKA Rob at Redwood Photography and Chris at Wastral productions. Saturday saw us heading into fields, over and under bridges, on fences and generally being one with nature for our photo shoot. The photos that came out were used in our artwork and promotional material. The same night we completed a final, final mix of the album. It was complete.
Check the other videos here and here. Rob also returned to show us the shots from the previous day and to shoot us playing. The weekend was a success!
The gigs came thick and fast for the next few days. Northampton had its very first taste of us at the Bat and Wicket on the 22nd May, and the Sunnyside on the 29th. Sandwiched in between these two was a highly successful showing at Millsy’s Bar in Earlsdon on 23rd May. The first disappointing gig of the tour was played at the Dry Docks in Leicester a few days later on June 2nd, mainly due to the crowd being full of students throwing the rest of their loans on the cheap drink and not really paying attention to the music. Not a disaster but a miss rather than a hit. Around this time we had finalised the artwork featuring Rob's and Emily's (Jonathan’s wife) photos and tracklisting and had the album down pat.
Twice along the tour we played 2 gigs in one day and the first was on the 4th June. Our launch venue and local pub, The Crown, had us on their annual beer festival then we moseyed on to the supportive Cross Counties Radio to play their 2nd birthday shindig. It was a glorious day with varying results, the former a mere background noise to the expansive ale choices, the latter a great chance to chat to fans and play live on the radio!
Our rescheduled gig at The Soak on 11th June was a fruitless affair, with the students yet again deciding that alcohol trumps acoustic tunes. We had a 2 week gap of practicing the new tunes, sorting a set and thinking of how to pull off our launch night. The launch came on June 24th and was a huge success with support from Stylusboy. Over 100 people attended, along with radio personnel and local papers.
The success of the launch night continued into our next few gigs as we made debuts at the Somerville Arms in Leamington on 27th and Rowell Charter in Northampton a few days later on 29th followed by the Godiva Festival in Coventry on 1st July. The festival was great but we just wished we went on later as, opening the festival (which was great) just meant that there were still loads of people mulling around the site and still coming in. We did manage to hit the FRONT PAGE of the Coventry Telegraph though! Another festival followed in the shape of Fuse in Lichfield, which was also a great success, we even got asked back for next year as soon as we left the stage.
The next 3 gigs was a bit of a downer in the tour. The Adam and Eve, Birmingham was pretty deserted as was The Corner House in Cambridge on 13th and 17th July respectively. The lowest point came though at Milton Keynes Living Room (not to be mistaken for actual gigs in people’s living rooms, more of that in a moment) on 20th July.
We travelled the hour and a bit to play 3 songs to a full house interested in talk of the FTSE Index and stock shares. We had a turkey of a gig. To rectify this though we did what we do best, we rocked hard. The following gigs were just sublime.
21st, 22nd and 23rd July saw us play our very first online gig, then play our two favourite venues. We had loads of fun at the online gig at my house and will play more next year. We headed to our favourite venue ever, The Maudsley, and rocked to a jam packed house, selling more albums than ever, and finishing off the weekend with The Crumblin Cookie (again) our second fave venue, it was a joy to be back on top.
A dodgy gig in Derby at Bar One on 28th July was quickly forgotten and followed by a surprise great gig at Katie Fitzgerald’s in Stourbridge on 29th. The tour rumbled on into August with good gigs on 1st at the Market Inn in Kettering, our first journey to the town, and 6th on our return to the Jolly Colliers in Coalville, a great drunken sing-a-long gig. With the despicable riots in full flow our gig in Birmingham was cancelled by the promoter, but not to be defeated, Jonathan played a solo online gig on 10th that the Coventry Telegraph picked up on and gave a good bit of promo. I think the most surprising gig of the tour for me though was the Umbrella festival on the 13th. We both were not up for this, expected to play to 10 people then leave. We could not have been more wrong.
The tent we played in got fuller and fuller the more we played and we ended up selling a sack full of albums and getting over 30 email addresses for our world domination plan. We returned to The Maudsley on 21st but not to play our usual Ditch The TV upstairs. We played a good hour and half to a responsive crowd in the bar downstairs.
We ended August with The Musican on 31st, where we played with some truly original and talented artists. August faded into September with our gigging now becoming a little sporadic than previously but with a long weekend away in London. We played two living room gigs over the 3rd and 4th but totally different. The first living room was actually a fans house who’d asked us to play. It was fantastic with loads of new people, great conversation, home made ales and egg and bacon cooked for us for breakfast, the following day was us at the franchise called The Living Room (same one that we played in Milton Keynes). We hung around from 1 till 8 to play this, where really we should have gone home. We did meet some nice generous fans who we keep in contact with via twitter though. The Sunflower Lounge on the 7th was a bit of a lost cause. On 14th I played my very first solo show online and got great response (again, from the Cov Telegraph who seems to really pick up on us!). The following weekend we headed East to our now annual gig in Norwich. On 21st we played a house gig with my brother at his flat, then 22nd at The Arts Centre which went well. It’s really about getting together with family and friends though and having a good time!
We now had about 2 weeks break from gigging until we returned to local venues in Coventry and Kenilworth. With The Phoenix on Oct 3rd I was full of cold and so played a bit sloppy but at Royal Oak on 9th we nailed it.
The second time we headed to Rowell Charter on our tour saw us take many spoils with a rip-roaring set on 19th. At this point we could see the light at the end of the tunnel and only a handful of gigs remained, and again we now had 2 gigs in 1 day.
On 22nd Oct we headed to Lichfield to play the Folk and Roots fest, snapping 2 strings we thought it was rubbish, til we ended the set and people came rushing to buy albums! The evening gig at Ale Wagon in Leicester was for Oxjam and we absolutely slaughtered it. Another 2 strings broken, a crowd screaming for us to continue (we obliged) it was a fantastic response. A Good Day! We now only had 2 gigs left, the first just a few weeks ago on the Nov 1st at my home studio with an online gig. We both played great and got loads of requests, ending up playing over an hour. With this gig over, and no confirmation of our last gig we thought we might have played our last song but a few days before the 12th we were confirmed as support to Ben Marwood at…The Crumblin Cookie.
The last gig went amazing; the place was rammed, so much so that it took 2 minutes to cram through the bodies to get to the stage. We rocked, we sweated, we messed up (of course we did!) but we gave it our all. It was a truly great moment and a fitting way to end the tour.
Over the course of the tour, taking in 40 gigs, we sold well over half the stock we held, gained over 300 emails, found a capo on the floor, drank way too much, spent way too much, had a blast, had a panic attack, broke around 24 strings and drove Miles. We now take a well earned break to look after our wives, regain our voices and read books by Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and JK Rowling.
Thanks for the memories. *rides off into the sunset on a stallion of burnt amber*
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