On Touring New Zealand (part 2) I am naked in a forest glade in the centre of a patch of purple heather. The festival organisers have set-up a shower block here which is a flimsy set of bamboo lattice and a couple of tie-dyed cotton sheets. It’s entirely see-through and I can see the rest of the band having breakfast whileContinue reading “On Touring New Zealand (part 2)”
On Touring New Zealand Tour is salt and vinegar chips, spilled under the driver’s seat. Tour is launching ourselves into every possible body of water. Tour is a 4 am bed-time, followed by an 8 am lobby call. We spent the week travelling up the guts of New Zealand’s South Island, ensconced within an eight-seater Kia Carnival I nicknamedContinue reading “On Touring New Zealand”
On Gusto Gusto’s New Album Gusto Gusto have a new album! To The Ocean They Returned is out today. It’s our debut full-length album, which is a funny music marketing thing I’ve seen everyone else do and figured we’d co-opt for our project. Is this our ‘debut album’? No, of course not. We’ve got two EPs out already. But it’sContinue reading “On Gusto Gusto’s New Album”
On Low Points Every tour has a low point. I’ve been asking the band for the last two weeks if they think we’ve hit the low point, first as a joke, then as a gauge of everyone’s energy, now with the hope that they’ll assuage my fears and say it’s all up from here. I hope our lowContinue reading “On Low Points”
On Silly Things I’ve Done With My Life Gusto is getting ready to embark on the trip of a lifetime. Well, one of many trips of a lifetime. We’re not going to forget that time we all got into a van and drove out to Geelong to play a festival to absolutely no-one. The comment on arrival was ‘apocalyptic’, and as we stoodContinue reading “On Silly Things I’ve Done With My Life”
On Moving Parts I dream of emails. I dream of emails with signed contracts, with confirmed itineraries, with tentative set-times, with the tag line ‘yep, lock it in’. For the last eight months I’ve been working on one of the biggest juggling acts of my career – lining up a fifteen show, seven person Gusto tour of theContinue reading “On Moving Parts”
On the 400 Bones Single Tour Gusto just finished our second big tour, an odd collection of ten sets in three states across just over a month. We were touring to launch our new single ‘400 Bones’. It always feels a little weird to release singles as an instrumental band, it doesn’t really tie into the whole internet marketing machine –Continue reading “On the 400 Bones Single Tour”
On The Snow We are at the snow. It is way too warm inside, we had to turn the heater off last night and crack open the window to let most of the warm air out, and even then most of the band was half-naked, lying on top of blankets. We arrived yesterday arvo, rolling out of bedContinue reading “On The Snow”
On Touring With One Arm My band Gusto Gusto just did a 4000 km two week round trip up and down the East Coast of Australia, playing twelve shows on the way with stops at Woodford Folk Festival. I went into the tour with a little trepidation – we had a couple of door deal shows that I had genuinelyContinue reading “On Touring With One Arm”
On Newstead There’s an urgency in the air. A poignant warmth of energy amongst the streaming crowds that waft across each street, holding back the traffic, criss-crossing in groups that intersect and divide and combine as mothers push prams and kids beg fathers for ice-cream money and people accost friends they haven’t seen since the last festival.Continue reading “On Newstead”