Tour Diary

National Tour
October 2005

The night of our album launch in Sydney for 'Stories You Wouldn't Believe' I found out we had the national support for Crooked Fingers. I was so happy. Not only was I going to be travelling all over Australia but I was going to be playing with a legend. Eric Bachmann was in Archers of Loaf. He is Crooked Fingers. I own all his albums. We have Chris from Pop Frenzy to thank for this opportunity.

Friday 14th October 2005 - Sydney

The first show of the tour was in Sydney at the Mandarin Club. It is always a bitch to park in the city so T-Bone and I ended up walking forever with so much equipment. We were men after that journey I tell you. We meet our travelling companion Eric Bachmann. Lovely guy. Very tall. Hehe, but in all seriousness a great fella. He soundchecks with 'Chumming the Ocean' on the piano they have there, and I call my mate Matt Hancock and leave it as a message on his voicemail. We play after El Mopa, who I hadn't seen in ages. They were really great. We are a four piece tonight. T-Bone plays bass. It's a little more stripped back I guess but still rockin'.

Eric's set is awesome. People are sprawled about on the floor of the Club, in awe of this man's talents. He plays a lot of new songs for a forthcoming album, but career wise pretty much everything you want to hear. He even takes requests where possible. We don't get too much of a chance to chat with him that night but heck, we have all week throughout Australia to do so. And we do just that. T-Bone is accompanying me on the entire trip which is just awesome. We have a 9:50am flight the next day to Adelaide, so I end up staying at T-Bone's. Hit the hay late, maybe 4am which kind of stinks as it means we will be knackered before we begin! Nevermind.

Saturday 15th October 2005 - Adelaide

We get up about 8am and make our way to the airport. We get a call from Chris the promoter, after we check in. Eric is running late. Chris tells me to tell the flight people to tell Eric to make the next flight. It's all a little too much too soon in the morning but anyway, we board our flight without our new friend. Just before they close the doors, Eric gets on smiling! He made the flight after all. He is ... I don't know how tall he is actually but he gets to sit in the front row for extra leg room so we catch up when we land in Adelaide. We get the hire car which has one of those GPS talking contraptions. It's flawed. It lies. Lucky we have T-Bone, the greatest navigator in the land. I have never been to Adelaide so it was kind of exciting to be in new territories. We drop Eric off at the hotel. It doesn't look too flash.

T-Bone and I go to my mate's place which is where we are staying the night. My old boss infact, Robert. He is a dude, and best boss I have ever had. It was when I was at Rehame Media. He moved here to take over the Adelaide office. It is great to catch up with him. He has a nice little place near enough to the city. He takes us for a drive and shows us the sights. We try and have lunch at the legendary Grace Emily Hotel but its still shut. We end up eating at this cafe located inside a Christian book centre. It is truly strange. It was a supermarket sized store for Christians. The cafe had some tasty sandwiches mind you. At the end of our meal an older man gave Robert a pamphlet on the Lord's work.

Strange how small Adelaide is. Good Strange. Robert takes us into the Rehame office cause he knows I will get a kick out of it. Man, it is tiny! Kinda funny, having been in the Sydney one so much. We chill out a while at Robert's and listen to Eric on the local community radio station. It's funny because the host sounds somewhat elderly; it was like a grandad interviewing him. It had a certain charm to it though. We have some Asian for dinner. We head to the Jade Monkey venue which is an amazing place. It has lovely set up and lovely staff. I am really excited by this show because Sodastream are also playing. They are so great. We meet Pete and Karl from the band. Nice, nice fellas.

I am technically tour managing the shows which is a little weird for me. Not a big deal but some authority anyway. We play our set and for us, it was the best night of the tour. We played what felt like a really together, inspired set and had a nice response too. It was probably the smallest crowd of the tour for us and generally speaking, but it was just one of those beautiful nights where all the acts were in top form and the people there watching were vocal and dug it.

Our set didn't change too much each night:
Breakdown
Night For Remembrance
The Moon and the Stars
Wyoming
Out Of The Question
Goofy
Until Sunrise
Scotty Come Home
House Near Bridge w/Born To Run interlude
Boy's Don't Cry (Cure).

Sodastream played a really amazing set. Some new tunes, some old tunes. For a two piece they do make some big sounds. Met some nice folks from Adelaide. To back-trap a little, on Crooked Finger's latest album 'Dignity & Shame', a lass named Lara Meyeratkin sings on it. Lara is a Sydney girl, who T-Bone and I knew many moons ago when we were kids. She was in Lustre 4 with Sally who is now New Buffalo, and T-Bone and I were in our little SubPop inspired Landspeed. I hadn't seen her since those days. Anyway, she has been playing in Ben Lee's band and it just so happened Ben Lee was playing in literally every city we were playing in. Calls were made and she came to sing at a bunch of shows which was a great added surprise for many. I didn't get to catch up with her tonight, but she sang on three or four songs with Eric and it was so pretty. Eric's set was phenomenal. I mean, in all honesty he was phenomenal every damn night! That is the truth. No sucking up, nothing. He was on every night. Tonight he played a long set and the people wouldn't let him go. Again, it was like this most nights.

Robert heads home on his own, as we have a bunch of things to tie up and then transport Eric back to the hotel. I am absolutely starving at this point but nothing is open. We find a service station and get some goodies. We watch Rage with Robert well into the night. He has set up a bunch of mattresses in his spare room which is so nice of him. We crash around 3am and I sleep very well.

Sunday 16th October 2005 - Perth

We sleep in way too late. Robert is up, dressed and into his day when we get up around 11am. We say goodbye to him around midday and head into town to pick up Eric. We eat some take away fish and chips down towards the water. Get to the airport around 1:00pm and return the car. The flight to Perth is going to be long, and we have a few hours to wait as well before we get on board. We get some food and coffee, and I find a review of our album in a film magazine which is a nice surprise. We talk Eric's ear off as he does to us. He is such a nice, friendly guy and incredibly intelligent as well I might add. He and I would end up discussing American politics a lot on this trip. We are flying budget so no food or drink. I pay for coffee and feel like a sell out. T-Bone is disgusted. Eric is sitting ahead of us with some leg room. When we arrive in Perth (again, I have never been here) we are in a real hurry as it is now 4:30pm (they are a few hours behind the rest of Oz). Doors are supposed to be 6pm. We get the hire car (no computerised woman telling us the wrong way this time) and find the Rosemount Hotel fairly easily. Perth looks great; very suburban. The staff here again are really cool. Andrea books the venue part-time and helped on the door that night. No one really soundchecked which worked out fine and all.

Rob who used to be in a band called Braving the Seabed turned up early which was a real surprise. I hadn't spoken to him in a while so that was great. We meet some lovely lasses who Chris has organised to sell merch for us tonight. El and Annie. They are adorable. They do a great job too and it really helped us all out which we so appreciated. In between bands I gave them free beers from the rider, which was one of the best on the tour actually. Lil bottle of Jack for Eric (he is a Jack and Coke man) and lots of beer which I would end up taking advantage of. We played to a small but friendly crowd. It was a Sunday and it was early. Still, we made the most of it. Pretty big stage and a pretty big room.

Catch up with Perth legend Pete Stone. Great bloke Pete is and for once, I was in his home town. We hang out by the pool table and watch the second band play. All of a sudden Pete Kelly from Decoder Ring is next to me smiling away. Turns out they were in Perth too. That was a little moment of niceness; being away and you see someone from home. Maybe I am too sentimental?

Eric played to a respectable crowd, a very vocal and appreciative one too I might add. It was cool seeing him on a big stage. His set was mostly the same everynight, and I can tell you his next album is going to be a CORKER! He did maybe seven songs that were new and they were amazing. Really, really amazing. Just his passion in his voice and his phenomenal guitar playing killed us and all every night. Fair dinkum.

T-Bone and I finally caught up with Lara after the show, and she was really pleased to see us. It had been so long so that was great. We'd end up hanging in Melbourne too. Eric had quite a few punters to talk to so we hung about. I thanked El and Annie for their help with the merch too. I wanted to get them to do the whole tour with us!

This was my tipsy night on the tour. Nothing outrageous but yeah, made me happy enough. Eventually we get into the hire car and the car in front has a drunk Eric fan in the back seat. As we approach a roundabout, the car in front goes round and round as the fella yells out something to Eric. Very funny stuff. We drop Eric off nearby to his hotel.

T-Bone and I do what we thought we would never do. We check into a Formula One Hotel. For years they were the butt of our jokes; for now they were our saviour. It was a funny experience too. You kind of just punch in a number; there are no people working there really. T-Bone was obsessed with getting a pie from the pie machine (yes, there was a pie machine!) but he didn't end up doing so. I took the double bed and he took the bunk above. We watched some bad movie. The bathroom was tiny but I must say, for a cheap stay it was pretty ok.

Monday 17th October 2005 - Melbourne

Today is a day off. We checked out of Formula One about 10am. We head to Eric's hotel and have a coffee with him in his rather fancy looking hotel. It looks at least a four star to me. We have some time to kill so we head towards the beach. We drive about 45 mins and explore a little. It reminds me of Cronulla, but wider and less populated at this time of the day. Very scenic and pretty. We have lunch outside in the warm Perth sunshine. It's a long flight from Perth to Melbourne so we need to stock up. Again, the conversation flows. I can't imagine how bad it would be to be on tour, let alone tour managing, someone who isn't a nice person. I mean, I should point out Eric was extremely independent as well. We didn't need to do much for him at all.

We head to the airport, check in and get on board. We have a lot of luggage so it was such a great moment to be rid of it when it was checked in. We had two electrics, two acoustics plus luggage and two lots of merchandise. Only six sets of hands. There is something beautiful about a day off in the middle of a tour, no matter how short. We were all extra chilled out today. Oh, speaking of chilled ... T-Bone had his top fives going and somehow Red Hot Chilli Peppers came up for Eric in the negative sense. He said they are referred to as the 'Chi'Pepp's'. That amazed us. Anyway, with Eric in the back of the plane T-Bone and I found ourselves going a little stir crazy up in the front section. T-Bone had read the airline magazine numerous times by now, much to my amusement. So he started his top fives with me and it actually took my mind off how restless and yucky I was feeling 30,000 feet in the air. I stood up looking for Eric and couldn't see him, and then out of the corner of my eye I saw someone gently waving at me. It was my buddy Craig New! He was doing merch for the Missy Higgins / Ben Lee tour. Of course, my first question to him was "IS MISSY ON BOARD?!?". Much to my disappointment, she wasn't. Sigh. We sat and talked for half an hour; Craigie gets so busy that sadly we don't see one another for a while at times, so it was tops to just sit and catch up. Due to the different time zones, we arrived at 7pm in Melbourne.

Eric, T-Bone and I meet Lara and we all head off to get the hire car. It is a little chilly in Melbourne which is quite nice. We drive some distance to the city to drop off Eric and Lara at the hotel. Lara asks us about some folks from way back when, and tells us about how the Ben Lee tour is going. Around 8pm T-Bone and I head out to CC and Shayne's place. It's another 45 minutes out but it's T-Bone and I; fun times. We grab some burgers on the way, pass SexyLand and get to their place. We watch the first Australian ever win Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Have a few quiet drinks and hang watching the new Simpsons on dvd. We all crash about 11:30pm. T-Bone has been so great on tour, so it's only right I let him take the double bed. I take the floor. It's a bad move but hey, I stand by it now. CC gave me a little radio 'cause I find that helps me sleep but it didn't pick up very well for some reason. I didn't sleep for ages! T-Bone snored a little too,
though that is unrelated.

Tuesday 18th October 2005 - Melbourne

I slept in pretty late til the afternoon. T-Bone had been out and was all into fixing his guitars. I felt way guilty. We headed out around 4pm to pick up Eric and Lara to head to soundcheck. Tonight's show was at the Corner Hotel and we couldn't wait. It's such a fine, fine venue. I have played there once, a while ago, but I have seen some killer shows here.

Eric and Lara soundcheck extensively because tonight they will go on to do a few older songs as well together. We have a soundcheck too which is a nice change for us this week. I talk to Lara about her living in NYC, and my experiences there this year. She explains visas and the like to me. They head off to dinner; T-Bone and I speak with Paddy (Grand Salvo) and his mate who joins him onstage as well. Tonight would be another highlight; Paddy and I go back a few years; I love his songs. T-Bone takes me to an amazing Thai place down the road.

We head back to The Corner and I catch up with Melbourne pals Aaron and Chris in the front bar. We play early but to a good crowd. Tonight was another great show for us in terms of the audience reaction. I find Luke Smith in the audience and take him back to see T-Bone. We introduce him to Eric too. It's a nice change having a real dressing room for a change. The rider is great tonight as well. Hey, we have some food on there too. The Corner seriously looks after it's bands. Grand Salvo plays my favourite song of his 'Sordid Trophy' ... about the t-shirt; her t-shirt. Sigh.

Eric's set tonight was amazing; he tore the house down. The crowd loved him and he did numerous encores. He did 'White Trash Heroes' by his old band Archers Of Loaf. T-Bone and I set up the merch near the exit. Eric did a roaring trade. Roaring. We say farewell to Lara. It was lovely seeing her again after so long. We drive Eric to his hotel. He has been loving his Jack and Coke, and good on him. Very well deserved. We get back to CC and Shayne's around 2am and hit the hay pretty quickly. T-Bone lets me take the double bed so I can sleep better, which I do. What a gentleman.

Wednesday 19th October 2005 - Brisbane

Up early and leave the house around 8:30am. We head to town to pick up Eric, who is in the cafe next door. We have a quick bite with him, some coffee and then head off to the airport. For the first and only time on the tour, we are running late. We drop off the hire car, and check in. T-Bone asks for Eric to have extra leg room and then me as well for my Restless Legs which makes me laugh. The lady denies us on both counts as we are so late. I smile and tell her I really do have Restless Leg Syndrome. There is no response. T-Bone and Eric have respective aisle seats, and I am next to Eric on the right hand side with an older man next to me in the window seat. A little after take off, Eric isn't feeling too well and spends some time in the loo. Something to do with the Jack and Coke maybe ... he is a genius though because when he returns to his seat he has the full attention of the staff, all of whom are beautiful Virgin Blue women of course. He gets courtesy drinks and some food. Way to go Eric!

We get to Brisbane around 1pm and thankfully it isn't too hot at all. We cancel Eric's interview initially, but then arrange for him to do it via his hotel room where he can relax for tonight's show at the wonderful Troubadour Hotel in the Valley. T-Bone and I again, surprisingly, take a room at the Formula One chain. We have some time on our hands but are so knackered we just kick it around there and then. I sleep for a few hours actually. Eric's hotel is right by the venue in Fortitude Valley so we meet him at the venue. As described in the Brisbane tour diary from earlier this year, this venue is one of the best in the country and run by some very friendly cool folks. Jamie is the owner and Marty is the sound guy. Great fellas. We soundcheck, and then Eric, T-Bone and I head out for some dinner. Our last dinner so to speak. We have Chinese in this awesomely big, yet quite empty restaurant. Nice. Like the last time up in Brisbane, we play to a reasonably sized crowd who sit fairly close to the stage. It's such a great room to play in.

T-Bone and I have a few beers. He takes some snaps of Eric and some nice video during 'Broken Man'. Eric used T-Bone's Telecaster specifically on this song every night. This Brisbane show, like them all, was fantastic. We hang out afterwards, waiting around to get money for Chris the promoter. Eric meets and greets a bunch of eager folk. Can't blame them either. Eventually the three of us walk back through the Valley to the car park, then to our respective hotels.

Thursday 20th October 2005 - Sydney

We head off to get Eric from his hotel. Have coffee with him in the cafe next door. Death Cab For Cutie is on. We drive to the international airport because Eric is heading to New Zealand for some shows before his final Oz show on Sunday which we are not playing but will be attending for sure. Infact, I will continue to play tour manager by fetching Eric from the airport to the venue. We give him man-like hugs and say farewell. What a fucking legend.

I call my friend Holly who has been playing with Missy Higgins and Ben Lee in Tasmania. She is playing with The Eels starting tonight in Sydney. Lucky gal. More than deserved mind you! I ask if I can speak to Missy; she laughs but doesn't answer. She puts me on the door for the Eels tonight in Sydney. We take back the car (funny how familiar and routine it all gets) , then T-Bone and I grab some food in the domestic airport before boarding around 11am. Wow. We are tired. Good tired mind you.

Alice picks us up and kindly drives me home first, then drops T-Bone home. He was going to go to work but I don't think he did. I didn't end up going to see The Eels and Holly either. That's how tired we were. That feeling too, where you haven't been in your bed for a while and you cannot wait to lay down and sleep. Oh, the joy.

I really need to thank Chris Wu for letting us do the tour with Eric. I mean, we helped him out a little too but it was his tour and he let us do it. Thanks Chris. Thanks of course to Eric Bachmann ... you are the man.

I hope we can do it again. Thanks to Robert, CC and Shayne for the accomodation. El and Annie for the help in Perth. Sodastream for rocking in Adelaide.

Sam x