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 while I shower. Peny tells me a bird flitted in and sat on the edge of the bath-tub while she was in there. Glimmers of Disney. I arrived here by van, a 1980s Toyota that barely made the trip up the mountain. Towing a campervan we did the entire journey in second gear, grumbling around hairpin curves with a convoy of angry drivers behind us. It took an hour to drive from Nelson to the top of Takaka Hill, then another hour along a dirt road that twisted through Pikikirunga Trail and into the Abel Tasman National Park. When we finally made it to the festival the driver pointed me in the direction of the info tent and cheerily told me to ‘watch out for the carnivorous snails’. We find out that this forest is home to a set of snails that eat each other. Not whole, but in slow snail sized bites. The risk of being caught and eaten by a snail is low, but the risk of humans on the snail’s natural habitat is high, so we’re warned away from them. The snails can live for twenty years, and we find a row of empty shells, large hand sized spirals stretched out on a branch in the woods. The other thing to watch out for is tomos, natural sinkholes that form when the granite mountain beneath us spontaneously crumbles. The whole thing is hollow, they tell us, a giant resonant chamber. Sort of like that swiss cheese? Sally asks, and we get a nod in response. Just make sure you let someone know if you’re going for a run, you might fall down one and we’ll never find you again. … The volunteer at the gate tells us there’s a creek if we follow the road to the third gate on the right, but we miscount how many gates we pass. I convince everyone to try one more bend in the road, then the top of the next hill, and finally we find ourselves two hours deep into the bush staring at a sign that says Danger. Harwood’s Hole. A hiker wanders out of the woods and tell us we’ve well and truly missed the creek, but that we should check out Harwood’s Hole instead. We ask him what it is and he tells us its a 180 meter deep hole, New Zealand’s deepest vertical shaft. Instead we turn for home and halfway back we are re-directed to the creek by a shirtless runner. A couple of minutes later I am naked again and trying to ease myself into waist deep water. It’s crystal clear and icy, fed by glaciers. I channel Wim Hof to get myself under the water, but I never took his class and I didn’t finish watching his documentary so I’m not sure what the breathing pattern is to unlock freezing New Zealand mountain water. I settle for a scream and duck my head under to immediate brain freeze and the feeling that I’ve never felt quite this alive, quite this present, quite this cold before. … The organisers have us camped in a row of yurts that glow white in the New Zealand summer sun. I open mine to find a single mattress, a pillow and a towel. I spread my belongings out across the floor but still have enough space in there to run a full six piece band rehearsal later that night. It is glorious to have a space to stand up while I change, and I reflect on other festival camping experiences. At Woodford Folk Festival in 2022 our tent sprung a leak on night one of five days of torrential rain and my mattress promptly soaked up the water like a kitchen sponge. When I got in and laid down the water squeezed back out into a puddle on the floor. By the last night my mattress had sprouted a layer of light orange mould. This yurt is dry and cool and achingly bright in the afternoon sun, catching the gleam and amplifying it into my eyes as I try and nap. I put on an eye mask and have a fitful sleep in amongst the echoes of African drums and accordion from the festival proper. Finally I wake in a puddle of drool and make my way to the artist’s tent to find a cup of tea and stumble into a swarm of giant mosquitoes the size of sparrows, floating around the fire. I beat a retreat back to the tent. … We’ve been asked to run a rhythm workshop at this festival, which i’ve called Clapping with Gusto : An Enthusiastic Exploration of Rhythm. We arrive at the workshop tent to a large group of pregnant mothers and children, lying on pillows on the floor. The workshop before us is called Conception to Seven: Foundation for our entire Human Experience. I cheekily ask them if they’d be interested in sticking around for some clapping and the tent promptly empties, but then fills up again with a crowd of people who are really excited about clapping. They are exuberant, loudly clapping and wooing their way through a bunch of Greg Sheehan exercises I only learnt a week before. It’s a testament to a) how strong Greg’s concepts are and b) how universal rhythm is and c) how you can convince a crowd to try anything if you’ve conveniently placed band members around the circle. That night we play a mammoth hour and a half set, the longest we’ve ever played. This festival is alcohol-free, a five-day consciousness event deep in the forest and its interesting seeing a sober crowd interact with our music. The connection feels deep, the crowd is so engaged. Where normally we’d pause between songs to audience chatter, here when we stop the crowd is quiet, keen to hear the stories behind the songs, ready to pitch in when I ask them questions. It’s an awesome experience. By this point we’ve played seven shows in the last eight days and the songs are tight. There’s a beautiful feeling towards the end of tour when you’ve rehearsed everything on the bandstand multiple times and its ok to take risks, to try for things you normally wouldn’t try. Buoyed by the success of our rhythm workshop I push the crowd to clap increasingly complex patterns against our songs. They sing along with our melodies. We try a couple of songs we’ve never played live before. We play two encores. It’s a beautiful end to a wonderful tour.