Every tour has a low point. Ive been asking the band for the last two weeks if they think weve hit the low point, first as a joke, then as a gauge of everyones energy, now with the hope that theyll assuage my fears and say its all up from here.
I hope our low point was Sunday morning.
We played a show in London, a blurry late night blast of local ales (terrible), local pub food (excellent) and local experiences (mixed). Our tour has neatly lined up with the UEFA tournament, and England was in the quarter finals playing against Switzerland on the night of our gig.
We stayed at a hostel in bustling Brixton. When we arrived they were busy fitting a new set of giant TV screens into the beer garden in anticipation of the nights crowd. We tried to get in to the beer garden to watch the game but they were already at capacity, even when we told them we were sleeping upstairs and could literally see the screens from our window. We rolled on to a double decker bus and through the suburbs to Clapham where we were playing.
When we got to our venue the game was on. First quarter, no points. We order meals, had some beers, watched the game. Im not invested in sports unless its going for solo runs around the park, but it was fun to scream at the TV with a couple hundred Londoners.
The game went to penalty shoot-outs and England narrowly won. Cue a fun night with a local crowd. When we finished everyone was talking about a London experience, but no-one was really sure what it entailed. We wound up Ubering back to our hostel at 1 am and drinking beers on the balcony overlooking the beer garden. Various band members disappeared. Someone discovered the lock code for the back-door of the pub. Some band members snuck into the pub for another drink.
I went to bed.
Wed planned to leave at 10 am, so at 9.30 I got up and started rattling around. I was feeling fine, if a little tired, but the band was not moving. Turns out most band members got in bed at 5 am when the sun was starting to come up. Not the greatest idea but I was feeling fresh so I offered to drive.
One band member was completely missing, and we finally got on to them at 10.30. Theyd wound up not coming home and only got in to bed at 9 am. Not an auspicious start, but we managed to get them back to the hostel at 11 to pack up their gear and head to the car.
A long slow descent to the low point.
When we got to the car we discovered someone had broken in. Theyd smashed through one of the windows and rifled through the car. There was a decent amount of glass on the front seat, and a bag missing with it an assortment of personal belongings a laptop, a Nintendo DS, some headphones.
Curiously theyd taken a small selection of toiletries out of the bag and left them on the drivers seat, along with a bag of food. So we still have toothpaste. And Weetbix.
We sat along the edge of the road in bustling Brixton to do some admin. One band member called the police to file a report. One band member called auto-repair places to get the window fixed. One band member wandered back to the hostel to borrow a vaccum cleaner to get rid of the glass shards. One band member napped on the backseat of the car. I rang our afternoon festival to cancel our slot.
It started to rain.
Once the admin tasks began they started piling up. No-one was willing to come fix the window on a Sunday afternoon. The vaccum refused to turned on. We needed to organise another nights accommodation somewhere because the festival was meant to put us up. The rain increased.
We decided it might be better to just ditch London entirely and head north. Our next gig wasnt until Wednesday in Liverpool, so we had a little time to kill.
We fashioned a window cover out of two pieces of cardboard and duct-taped it into the hole. We swept the glass out with another piece of cardboard. We took some photos for the police.
London to Liverpool is five hours on a good day, but traffic was bonkers. We also got a little lost on the way out, driving 45 minutes in the wrong direction to drop off a rented accordion. We got halfway and decided it was time to call it. Found a cute home in Birmingham, made a home-cooked pasta and watched Jurassic Park as a band.
Is this the low point?
…
Everyone’s in surprisingly good spirits. Tired, but not broken. Ready for a break but excited for the next set of gigs.
We’ve got some personnel changes for the last week of tour. Our beloved Sam is jetting off to be a space scientist and present papers at some prestigious conferences. Our beloved Pan is headed to mainland Europe for romance. We’ll have a fill-in accordion player taking over tomorrow for the last five gigs of this tour, which will be fun, but feels like it might re-set some expectations for these gigs.
We’re playing Liverpool on Wednesday, Manchester on Thursday, Newcastle on Friday, Carlisle on Saturday and Glasgow on Sunday. If you know anyone in any of these places, let them know we’re coming and ask them to buy a ticket please! All gig details here.