Oxygen Thief album = 1 month old today! #teamDIY‏

Hey peeps, my album turns 1 month old today so have put it up to stream online to celebrate:

http://soundcloud.com/oxygenthief/sets/teamdiy

It's only going to be up there in full for today, so if you could pass the link around Facebook/Twitter/etc then that'd be awesome.

I've a couple more favours to ask if that's ok? I'm not too fond of the concept of "street teams" and all that, but the odd call to arms every now and then is alright isn't it?

If so, I might get a few #teamDIY badges made & send them out with stickers to say thanks for helping out. Then we'll work out some sort of secret handshake and go on adventures and solve crimes and drink lashings of ginger beer........

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Favour #2 - free download single Terry Nutkins Salute has been played a couple of times by Tom Robinson on 6music, which is awesome but...it'd be nice to get a bit more airplay wouldn't it?

If you have a minute to email your favourite alternative music dj (Huw Stephens, Steve Lamacq, Zane Lowe, the Rock Show/Punk Show, Bruce Dickenson, XFM, etc) and point them in my direction then that'd be a huge help.

If you've not already downloaded it, then head to http://www.oxygenthief.bandcamp.com for a slice of noise.

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Favour #3 - Sites like Amazon, iTunes, Banquet Records etc all have "customer reviews" sections where you can rate things and leave comments - entries for the album are looking a bit sparse at the moment...so if you've already got it and would be up for popping your opinion down then go ahead:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004UR2AAC

Banquet: http://www.banquetrecords.com/btr9

iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/modesty-is-dead/id429133101?i=429133104

If you haven't already got it, then grab it from one of those links :)

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Think that's about it for now - thanks to everyone who came out to gigs on the tour, it was a fun month. Things are a little on the quiet side gig-wise for a while, going to start working on some new stuff for a bit, but my 200th ever gig will coincide with my set at 2000 Trees Festival so I'm looking forward to that, and I'll be opening for the rock-tastic Hymns in Bristol on Saturday 23rd July

Cheers

Barry OT

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Upcoming gigs:

Thursday 16th June - The Arts Centre, Winterbourne
Friday 15th July - 2000 Trees Festival (200th gig - bring beers)
Saturday 23rd July - The Croft, Bristol (w/Hymns)

Like on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/oxygenthief666

DIY May tour diary - leg 2

Just a quick jaunt this one, v.London-centric with a gig at The Cricketers in Kingston, and one for a friend’s brother’s 18^th birthday party. Let’s forget the fact that I went to the dayjob for a bit inbetween and call this:

Day 9: Kingston
Another thoroughly hardcore Radio 4 soundtracked journey, with a justifiable sense of déjà-vu from last Friday’s identical jaunt. Arriving at The Cricketer’s to meet Del and Zoe I immediately have suggestions of getting a curry implanted into my not-actually-that-hungry brain…..yumcurrytimeyum. Erstwhile tour buddy Kev from [edit] Radio arrived to keep me company for this jaunt, then it was rock o’(massive)clock. 

Gig itself was fun, if a little sparse crowd-wise (about 3 other events happening in K-Town tonight +The Great Escape Festival just down the road in Brighton – excellent timing!) and the venue had some quite serious quirks with its enormous non-running clock, furry carpeted stage, and shonky monitor platforms that barely took my weight…but that I stood (and probably stamped) on anyway. Tonight was my first Luke Leighfield experience, a highlight of which was a fairly lengthy improvised song on the subject of cake – which I’m pretty sure I filmed so will upload soon enough. Hopefully he’ll take on my suggestion of an entirely cake themed concept album; Luke Cakefield, yum.

Afterwards we piled back to Del’s famous shed where I drank a bottle of rosé wine like it was beer (i.e. far too fast), ate crisps, and played Guitar Hero until the early hours of the morning.  Watching Del attempt Hotel California on Expert made me realise how insane that game can be sometimes – if you turned the sound off you’d swear he was attempting some ridiculous Dragonforce track, rather than the relatively-easy-to-play-on-an-actual-guitar country-rock classic. It’s for that reason that I refuse to play on a greater difficulty level than “medium”, and not because I suck and am bitter about it, oh no.

Day 10: London
An early-ish start to pop back into Banquet Records and vandalise a few more copies of my album with silver and gold pens – thanks for buying from them, if you did…and if head to: www.banquetrecords.com/btr9  - and then off into East London to drop off some baggage and find a way to kill a few hours. Kev and I decided to spend the day in Shoreditch playing “Spot The Dickhead”  – we lost count – and went for a meaty combo feast at the Hoxton Bar & Grill: YUM. Later we strolled around, ending up at the Big Chill Bar just off Brick Lane to meet up with a couple more pals before heading to gigland.

Tonight’s gig was part of Josaka head honcho Jim Bowes’ little brother’s 18^th birthday party. Now, birthday party gigs can go one of two ways; either they’re relentless blasts of fun packed with people intent on having an awesome time, or they’re soul destroying evenings where you play to a crowd more intent on getting trashed and chatting to their mates than paying any attention whatsoever to the bands onstage. So it was with a little trepidation that I set up in the quirky Jamboree venue in the middle of the Cable Street Studios complex, the slight hangover and lack of sleep creating a bit of a negative mood.

Thankfully I needn’t have worried at all – Josh and his friends were up for it from the moment they arrived, and were an absolutely lovely bunch; singing along, headbanging, dancing, doing absolutely everything you could possibly ask of an audience and making for one of the most fun 30 minutes I have ever spent on a stage. Highlights for me were asking Josh if he was looking forward to his first ever alcoholic drink (as obviously he’d not have had one before the legal drinking age of 18, right?) and changing the words of “Gold” to “Josh” in the last chorus so everyone could shout his name over and over. Fun fun fun fun FUN.

Headliners Six Nation State got, if anything, an even more enthusiastic reaction, and the party was still going strong as I reluctantly ran for what I thought was my last train (it wasn’t – the TFL website lied/I was too drunk to read it properly). An awesome evening, thanks for having me along.

DIY May tour diary - leg 1

What happened to the weather? It was bakingly hot and beautiful, like all the summers that your parents tell you they experienced every year of their lives at your age* when it's pissing down through July and August........and then suddenly I walked out the front door this morning to find I needed a jumper and an umbrella. Bastard.


Such meterological phenomena aside, I'm back from the first week of my tour with...oh, I'm on my own this time aren't I, so it's a tour with Spotify Premium, a week's restful bank holiday boozing already playing havok with my liver, and my album waiting in the wings for its chance to wrestle its way into people's homes.


This leg of the tour had some interesting clashes with Real Life, a variety of attendence levels, and a serious amount of mileage - sorry carbon footprint.


DAY 1: Birmingham

Started with an activity even more rock & roll than installing a washing machine** - going to my gran's 83rd birthday lunch. I love my gran, she's ace.

My Gran, and my sister; see if you can guess which is which.

Some familial catching up, a tiny glass of champers, and far too much food later we're heading back to Bristol & then I'm Birmingham-bound on the M5 for tonight's first gig at The Adam & Eve. Arriving far too early, I settle in for the evening as the pub slowly starts to populate itself with punters weary from the prolonged bank holiday festivities, yet still keen to witness this evening's lineup of acoustic music.


I've been to the A&E a few times - once for some cable-tv showcase thing which I never ended up seeing (probably a good thing really) - and they've always been a hospitable and fun bunch to play for. I greet a few familiar faces, make a weird piece of modern art broach type thing out of a Pringles can (see below) and  get myself ready.

 Yours for just £2,999,995, and a tube of Pringles.

Annoyingly the opening 3 acts all over run, leading to a bit of a rush for me to get my full set in before the curfew...but luckily the bar staff urge me to play on, so probably end up going over my set time in the end but wtf. A fun opening night & then back to an old pal's place for Easter egg, G&T, toffee vodka and sleep.


Day 2: Oxford

Despite having a week off, my bodyclock is still firmly set to "dayjob" mode, so I wake up far too early & set off for Oxford - my first visit in January was a bit of a rushed affair so I was determined to make the most of a day out in this historic city, sitting in posh places scribbling in my awesome Dr Who notebook...and so I do; strolling around the grounds of the Bodleian while groups of Japanese and American tourists do battle to see who can fulfil the greatest quota of national stereotypes, not to be outdone by the outstandingly posh English tour guides; I also get myself some picnic material and sit in the grounds of Christ Church marvelling at just how much like living in a postcard this feels, I mean just look at this:

 Nowhere should look this awesome on a photo taken by a fucking telephone...

amazing advances in technology or not.

I also stumbled upon The Oxford Museum, which for a suggested £1 donation (I gave 5 x 20p coins) you could witness such delights as; a map showing where some Roman settlements were found near, but not in, Oxford; some marmalade; and a 15 minute video narrated by Tony Robinson in which culminated in rejoicing in the city's vibrant music scene "spearheaded by Supergrass and Radiohead". I'll type that again, "Supergrass and Radiohead". The only reason I can think of for their being ordered that way is that the museum is curated by Gaz Coombes' dad. Supergrass and Radiohead, honestly. And that wasn't the only tragedy - I scoured the whole museum and didn't find even one reference to Lewis, or his sidekick Hathaway. Hell, they didn't even mention the seminal detective series' little known pilot outing "Morse". Mental.


Reeling from this shock omission I made my wa y back to Café Tarifa via a quick pint and a phone charge in the Rusty Bicycle wherein I overheard the most overbearing self-important cuntversation of all time between a group of guys that wanted everyone in the pub to know that they were musicians, and how brilliant that made them, and how they knew people who were signed and everything. I honestly wanted to punch my balls off just for the association of having something in common with these pricks - I would have left earlier, but my phone hadn't charged enough & I wouldn't be able to get into the venue for another hour so endured it as my blood pressure rose.


Now the venue was lovely and the staff were all uber friendly, but unfortunately it just didn't quite happen tonight - there was a reasonable crowd for the first act on, but they were more of a "let's have a chat while some music happens" group of people, so pretty much all got up and went to the other end of the bar as soon as I started playing, leaving me with an audience of about 4. That combined with the fact that I drank one of their enormous bottles of beer before going onstage meant that it was a bit of a self conscious set which I didn't fully enjoy.........still, made a few friends, met up with a couple of old ones, and had a fun day so can't complain.


AND I GOT GIVEN GIANT BEER:

I <3 my giant beer.

Day 3: Bristol

Another relatively early morning tour-wise, stupid bodyclock, so made it back to Bristol in time to have a spot of lunch with @mrsthief and spend the afternoon generally lazing around, getting to The Mother's Ruin in plenty of time to soundcheck, pop out for supplies, and greet the twin loveliness of Jim Lockey and Benny J. Hayes.


Both organising and playing a gig can be a bit of a weird experience as you end up sitting on the door instead of watching the other acts properly (though snatched a couple of looks). Couple that with the fact that you're playing your album in its entirety for the first time ever and there's the potential for a massive nervebomb funfail. Thankfully lots of people came along, were very generous with the pay-what-you-want arrangement (extra bonus points to Stan The Man for putting an entire tenner in) and my voice coped fine with the utter live unfriendliness of the running order (Terry Nutkins Salute third on the tracklist? Ouch) so I had a lot of fun, chatted a lot between songs, and ended up with a rousing outing for Gold (with my first ever self-centred "when I say X, you reply Y") and !@*# track There Can Be Only One for good measure.


Day 4: Brighton

With Jodie Live-Music-Scene on board as co-driver we set off down the scenic route to Brighton, arriving in time to spend £6 on a parking meter and explore the Laines a bit - managing to find a whole new row of shops, including what I can only describe as a vintage clothing and bric-a-brac hypermarket that I'm going to visit again sometime after winning the lottery to stock up on the humungous amount of kitsch brilliance contained therin.


Resisting the call of seaside fish & chips, thinking we'd probably find something healthier***, but Jodie being unable to


I've only played Brighton twice; the first time on a bill with Oasis wannabees in a Wetherspoons-esque venue playing to disinterested friends of the other bands, the second time in a sweaty room above an awesome rock bar, so was looking forward to my 3rd visit to the area. The venue is more a section of the pub, and it seemed to be a focus point for the unusual; a beer garden crammed with people smoking...but weirdly not seeming to visit the bar. Ever. A small dog (Adam Boucher christened her "Wakima") stage invading. And most brilliantly, a small ginger girl placing a helium "I'm Sorry" balloon at the merch table...then SCREAMING at her brother when he tried to retrieve it, insisting it was left in its new position.


I mean, people call all sorts of situations surreal ("Oh my god I went to buy some cheese and they'd run out; it was so surreal") when they actually mean "unusual", "strange", or in most cases..."slightly outside their normal parameters of experience" but I feel this was a turn of events worthy of the label for once - just consider the facts:


a) why did this child have the balloon in the first place?

b) why did the child decide to leave it at the merch table?****

c) what possible offence could you commit that would be serious enough to require some kind of action beyond a verbal apology, to which the purchase of an inflatable "I'm Sorry" balloon would be an adequate, and acceptable gesture?


The mind boggles.


Oh yeah, it also had this amended sign next to the Dyson Airblade

I <3 Dyson Airblades, want one in my downstairs loo sooooooo bad.

Still, it was a fun gig and we managed to incorporate the balloon, and the dog, into proceedings pretty well. Honorable mentions to the fantastic Hollywood Assassins for rock & rolling pretty hard, Adam Boucher for road testing his new backing band, and Adam Bennett for making it all happen.


There was only the small matter of having to drive back to Bristol post-gig as I had to attend a new dayjob interview at 9.50am the next morning - luckily Jodie LMS was up to the task and admirably got me home in time for about 5 hours pre-interview sleep. Hardcore or what?

Day 5: Banquet Records Instore. aka "The Day I Did Everything"

Bed at 3am, awake just after 7am, with a not insignificant amount of disturbance from our cat Monty to contend with during the night. Feeling weirdly awake and not at all mentally deranged I went through the usual interview routines, drank an enormous cup of tea, and went off to wow all and sundry. Feeling pretty positive***** I returned home to have a couple of hours kip before heading back on the road for my Banquet Records instore....well, that was the plan - in reality I led down for about 2 minutes, couldn't get to sleep, so watched Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle and then went to bash 7 shades of shite out of my drums instead. Revitalising.

One intensely rock & roll journey later (listening mainly to Radio 4) I arrive at the majestic Banquet Records, starting point for one hell of a lot of cds/records I've bought in the last few years, and get down to some serious browsing. It's been said many times before, but this place is just brilliant; a well stocked, well informed, well intentioned shop that truly seems concerned with the love of music above all else. After a bracing cup of tea courtesy of JT, I get my gig on - initially feeling a little bit starstruck by the building itself, and feeling a little bit self conscious about playing fully unplugged and shouting directly into the faces of the amassed dozen-strong audience, but I thoroughly enjoy the whole thing and stunned to see so many of the attendees buying copies of the album & asking me to sign them. Buy my album from them now, hell - buy all your music from them in future: www.banquetrecords.com/btr9.

This = Ace.

After a quick catch up with the soon to be Dr Pendrey, I set off for Reading to meet up with Broken Tail Records overlord Ben Marwood and [edit] Radio's Kev Lawson to celebrate the former's milestone 30th year of being alive. First stop is at a fellow celebrant's festival-themed party, where I almost fall straight asleep as the day's activities catch up with me. But after some cake, inappropriate gaffa tape artwork, and a few pints of life giving water, I'm back in a party mood and it's off to the After Dark for double Jack Daniels + Red Bulls and a lengthy conversation about the heavy-metal-covers-of-advert-jingles band that I dearly want to start one day.

Happy Birthday Mr Marwood!

All together now *double bass drum battery* AUTOGLASS REPAIRRRRR, AUTOGLASS RE-PLACE! *chugga chugga widdle-widdle-woooooooo*

Day 6: Day off
And after two nights in a row of staying up till 3 or 4am it's going to be a good lie-in right? WRONG. Firstly I have to wake up at 8am to move my car as it's parked on a single yellow. So back to sleep right? WRONG. The only other spaces in walking distance are 2 hours only, so it's back to sleep for a bit; move the car again.Fun. After a hearty birthday sausage and egg breakfast celebration I head off to pick Mrs Thief up from the station and power towards Stevenage for an old buddy's wedding and a well needed massive amount of drinking ;)

Day 7: CheltenhamAnother night of inadequate sleep and it's time to drive to Cheltenham, via Bristol, for the inaugural Trees On Fire all dayer - a collaboration between the 2000 Trees Festival organisers, and the lovely folk at Istartedthefire Records featuring a stunning lineup. And Caves ;) I think it's safe to say that I might not have been firing on all cylinders for my set, but I had a decent stab at it & managed to enjoy all the other bands, particularly &u&i who provided me with enough of an energy boost to get back in the car and drive home to sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Day 8: Album release day.
No gig to play today, but I had the whole day off to recover - so spent it catching up with Sky+, playing drums, and generally chilling out. Before drinking a bottle of champagne with Mrs Thief to celebrate the album being out, and then going to watch Fight Like Apes at The Academy and drinking a few more beers, stumbling home with ears ringing and liver throbbing. I will never learn.

Jeff & I <3 Fight Like Apes.

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Debut album Destroy It Yourself available now from:

www.banquetrecords.com/btr9 - £9.99, limited signed copies available.

www.amazon.co.uk - £6.99

Play.com Mp3 - £5.99

iTunes - £7.99

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*they lie.
**callbacks ftw.
***Papajohn's Pizza is healthy right?
****unless she was sorry not to be sticking around for the gig
*****I'm certain I wore all my clothes to the interview, and didn't answer all of their questions with the word "wibble"

Destroy It Yourself review round up

Reviews have started coming in for the album, thought I'd put them all in one place:

Live-Music-Scene
Moon And Back Music
Blagsound (7/10)
Whisperin And Hollerin (7/10)





Neon Filler (4/10)

Album is out, SHAZAM!

Morning all - I’ve just got back from the first leg of this tour and to say I am a bit tired would be a statement massive enough to collapse in on itself, creating a black hole and destroying the entire known universe, so I’ll refrain for the sake of all of humanity, and err…animality (or is that something from Mortal Kombat?).
Have had a great time though, so thanks to everyone who came out - tour diary/pics to follow & there are still lots more gigs to go over the coming weekends, which will rock and roll in equal measure.
In the meantime though, my album has only just gone and got released - if you’ve already preordered it, then massive great big piles of thanks. If not then you can get physical copies (with an 8 page booklet containing complete lyrics and a photo of my shouting face) from the following places;

Banquet Records (signed copies)

Townsend Records

Zavvi

HMV

Amazon

Or digitally from:

iTunes

Juno Download

Will update with a few more as they pop up.

Also, in case you might need a bit of convincing…the first couple of reviews have come in:

Whisperin And Hollerin

Live-Music-Scene.co.uk

Exciting, exhausting times - I’m off to eat breakfast and catch up on the week’s Sky+ backlog.

OT

New website: www.oxygenthiefmusic.com

Oxygen Thief has a new home: www.oxygenthiefmusic.com

Ok it's the same url, but it's a new website that works better than Myspace so everyone's a winner right?

OT

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Upcoming gigs:
25th March - The Hobgoblin, Bath
31st March - Slak, Cheltenham

7th April - The Greyhound, Nottingham
8th April - Stereo, York
9th April - The Garrett, Manchester (early gig: 19.30 - 21.00)
10th April - The Cellar Bar, Worcester (TBC)

Now booking;

30th April - available
1st May - available
2nd May - Adam & Eve, Birmingham
3rd May - available
4th May - The Mother's Ruin, Bristol
5th May - The Cobbler's Thumb, Brighton
6th May - available
7th May - Frog & Fiddle, Birmingham

13th May - available
14th May - private party, London
15th May - available

19th May - available (Eire/NI)
20th May - available (Eire/NI)
21st May - available (Eire/NI)
22nd May - available (Eire/NI)

27th May - The Croft, Bristol (w/Chris T-T)
28th May - available
29th May - available

2nd June - The Swan, Kidderminster
3rd June - available
4th June - available
5th June - available

Census thoughts...

Census form has arrived - aside from concerns about Lockheed's involvement there's also The Census Campaign to think carefully about.

Writing "Jedi" in the religion box is fun and all, but http://census-campaign.org.uk/ has good reasons why the non-religious should tick the "no religion" box rather than being flippant, or ticking a box that represents your cultural heritage rather than practicing affiliation.

This isn't an attack on the religious, but an important way for those without a belief to be counted and considered when it comes to the justification of future policy makers*.

That's surprisingly coherent considering the amount of Lemsip I've had today.....



*assuming that government policy has anything in mind at the moment other than "CUT IT - CUT ALL THE MONEY! ALL OF IT!"

Album + Gigs: March, April & May

HELLO THERE! The album is tantilisingly close to being put in the post and made into an actual real life object, rather than just a collection of .wavs, Photoshop files, and good intentions. I can't wait. Pictures of artwork, free mp3s, and other such attention-seeking internetery to follow.






In the meantime, here's some gigs I'm playing over the next couple of months;

16/03 - The Fleece, Bristol with Dave McPherson (from Inme) & Howard James Kenny
25/03 - Bath
31/03 - Slak, Cheltenham

07/04 - The Greyhound, Nottingham
08/04 - Stereo, York
09/04 - The Garrett, Manchester
10/04 - The Cellar Bar, Worcester TBC

I'm also booking album-release-plug-a-thon tour, so if anyone wants me to come make noise in their face/has suggestions for a venue/promoter/band in your neck of the woods  then get in touch via oxygenthiefmusic [at] hotmail [dot] com or twitter.com/oxygenthiefyeah:

30/04 -
01/05 -
02/05 -
03/05 -
05/05 -
06/05 -

That's it for now, laters

OT

Tour diary part 3!

Wow, I’ve been home over 2 weeks now and the tour seems like a distant dream, or that it happened to someone else entirely, with the only evidence being my as-yet-unhealed split fingernail, an increasing number of photos appearing on Facebook, and the fact that The Karate Kid soundtrack is on a permanent loop around my brain – if my future musical output all ends up being synth-led aspirational nonsense about winning “the fight” and being “the best” then you’ll know why. 

So, let’s try to get down as much of this as I can before the dreamory (dream-memory) is still slightly recent and before a person from Perlock comes along to banish it forever.*

Any similarity to Ben Marwood’s blog of the same period is totally coincidental, and nothing at all to do with the fact that a) we were both there at the time and b) I’ve already read his to remind myself what happened. More on my atrocious memory later.

DAY 5 – YORK. In which we get up early, eat a hearty breakfast, I get an accidentally vegetarian beef & ale pie, and we live in the lap of luxury (sort of).

Waking up unfeasibly early to be turfed out into the frosty morning by the cold hearted Jack Alcopop, whose cruel maniacal laughter could be heard echoing down the street long after he disappeared from view**we took refuge at my friend Alice’s place which weirdly happens to be directly opposite chez Jack. Spooky indication that there is a benevolent force guiding all our actions through life, or meaningless yet happy coincidence? you decide.***

Heading back to the car, memories of inserting “i”s onto numerous “To Let” signs with a permanent marker pop into my head, and I feel very proud of myself indeed. Heading out of Oxford I complete my second culinary first of the tour; a Little Chef Olympic Breakfast. Apparently all non-British athletes will be required by law to eat one of these every day before competing, thus boosting our chances of getting a few golds by upwards of 10%. Apparently the sausages were “award winning”, though not unpleasant I’d be surprised if the award was anything other than the annual “Best Sausage Served At Little Chef” award. We were also given a lollipop that tasted exactly how toilet blocks smell. Kev and I amused ourselves trying to throw them into the bin from across the carpark, failing of course but being quite satisfied when they smashed to bits on the cold tarmac below.

The rest of the day went pretty much like this: DRIVING, DRIVING, ROAD, ROAD, MOTORWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY, service station, MOTORWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY, ROAD ROAD, Travelodge. Which as you can tell, was thrilling. I’m pretty sure we would have talked some nonsense at some point, though maybe we had a deep philosophical conversation. We’ll never know for sure.

Heading out onto the streets of York in search of sustenance, we chose Harkers – a food pub that looked like it might meet the balance between dirt cheap and half decent. I opted for the beef and ale pie, which turned out to be one of those fake-pies that are a bowl with a huge piece of puff pastry on top. “No bother”, thinks I, and I begin to tuck in. After a bit of exploration I casually remark that there “isn’t a whole lot of beef in this pie”. I remove said pastry lid and swish my fork around in the sauce “actually, there’s no beef at all” – it’s an ale pie. Normally, being English, complaining about food feels like a strange and alien activity, always tinged with the fear that the staff will scoff and proclaim that “it’s supposed to be like that, you fucking idiot!” or something, but this time I felt safe in my assertion that all was not well. Steeling myself for combat I carried the offending dish back to the bar, took a deep breath and proudly asserted “um…there’s like, uh, no beef in this pie”. The waitress capitulated immediately, brought me a new one, and I ate it. Ironically the second one could have done with a bit more “ale”, but was otherwise beef-tastic.#

Later my arms nearly fell off from carrying the merch/my effects box across town, but they recovered by gig time. Sadly I didn’t get any insane nonsense from the sound engineer (see Ben’s blog) but had an entertaining time nonetheless – highlights including starting a two man wall of death during Mestle & Portar, poet Henry Raby transforming from affable compere to angry politico in the blink of an eye, reciprocating the mosh frenzy during Don’t Let Paris Fool You’s set (nearly being destroyed by Ben Marwood in the process) and witnessing Tom DLPFY’s artistic level of drunkenness – it was like he’d constructed an aqueduct of booze connecting his subconscious directly to his mouth, resulting in the kind of free-association rambling that would make Johnny Vegas give up and go work in a bank. 

Afterwards we went back to the Travelodge for wild rock & roll party times, but as I tweeted at the time we “put all the hooker money in a parking meter thinking it was binoculars” earlier in the day, so made do with tv, rum, and then sleep.

DAY 6 – CHEZ TRIMBLE. In which we buy the world’s smallest bottles of whisky, then get drunk and play in a dining room.

MMmmm sleep, lovely sleep. Managing to tear ourselves away from the Travelodge’s opulent  surroundings, I insist that we have a stroll around York before heading off to Nottingham. It’s fucking freezing cold though, so our stroll essentially is a walk around the block, about 20 minutes in The Whisky Shop (where I could easily have spent a few hundred quid on awesome booze, but decided that being able to afford food and bills was boringly more important) coming away with what are officially the world’s smallest bottles of whisky. Mine came in an “in emergency, break glass” style surround which I resolve to blu-tak in a prominent position when I get home.

Tonight is house-party night – originally mooted as a day off, but PAH: we laugh in the face of exhaustion^ so it’s to the outskirts of Nottingham to Gerry Trimble’s place to play to a handful of people I previously only know via the interwebs. Gerry kindly texted to ask whether there was anything we wanted food-wise as he was preparing a buffet; I checked my mental list of diva-esque demands, and selected for “a bag of salad to accompany the nibbles” and bless him, he obliged. Next time it’ll be a lifesized replica of the Venus de Milo constructed from blue smarties and haribo eggs, with a framed photo of Bob Holness – my rider gland has been stimulated.

The rest of the night is a bit of a blur – singalongs, hand clapping, collaborations, a chap called Rob being determined to bankrupt himself at the foot of our merch alter, and a rather comfy sofa to slip into unconsciousness on.  Thanks Team Trimble!

DAY 7 – FARNSFIELD ACOUSTIC. In which we have the 2^nd shortest drive of the tour, I play the most unusual 20 minute set of my life, and I eat too many sandwiches, and we sip £4 Cava whilst watching/reciting Withnail & I. Warning – may contain traces of artistic self-doubt.

Nipping across town to Laura & Matt’s house, Ben and I have a conversation that vaguely resembles the following;

Me – So who are we staying with today?
Ben – My friend Laura.
Me – Ok, who’s that?
Ben – My friend from college, you met her when we played Nottingham before.
Me – Ohh yeah, I remember, cool.
Ben – We stayed at her house that time as well.
Me – Did we?
Ben – Yes.
Me – I…really?
Ben – Yes, remember?
Me – No. Was I drunk?
Ben – No, you drove.
Me – Um…really?
*Racks brain. Remembers gig. Remembers Laura & Matt. Draws blank on house*
Me – Nope, nothing.
Ben – You slept in the lounge, we watched TV.
*lists of a Father Ted-esque list of things that happened that I have zero recollection of, not quite culminating in “you were wearing your red jumper”, and not resulting in my memory doing anything remotely like flooding back.

Arriving at the house I expect things to fall into place, but they stubbornly refuse. I begin to worry about what might have happened that evening to cause such a huge repression of memory and begin to treat Ben with suspicion.

A trip to the pub for lunch plus a light stroll later and it’s off to Farnsfield – a small village outside Nottingham that has regular folk nights in its village hall. 

I think it’s fair to say I was looking forward to this night with a sense of bemusement, wondering what its attendants would make of my shouty nonsense. Thankfully we arrive to friendly faces, warm welcomes, and a fridge full of beer and sandwiches. I soundcheck looking out at the rows of tables with a feeling that although this isn’t going to be within my comfort zone, but that comfort zones are for losers and I’m hardcore enough to take this unusual situation on and win. All feels brilliant until the houselights go off and I’m presented with a faceless black wall, pinpricked by some scattered tea lights, then I start to feel a wee bit uncomfortable, but make a go of it anyway with a comment of “Goodevening Farnsfield Acoustic – I’m led to believe that I’m pretty typical of the acts you have at these events” being met with knowing laughter. I play a setlist devoid of gratuitous metal screaming, and modify the word “shit” to a Hot Fuzz dvd extra-esque “silt” as I don’t want to pointlessly upset people for the sake of it. There’s applause between songs, and some amusing heckling from a voice that I’m guessing isn’t a regular to these events~  but I can’t help but feel that I’ve cheated myself out of a good time by not giving 100%. I mope about for a bit until Inlay, a trad-folk outfit, get to a song that has some weird timing and sounds remarkably metal at which point I perk up and realise that I’m being stupid – what was I expecting, people to throw over their tables and start moshing viciously?  

Then Ben does his thing, we all jam on a couple of songs at the organiser Mike’s request, and I have a nice chat with some lovely people, then it’s back to Laura & Matt’s to drink a couple of surprisingly awesome £4 bottles of Cava, watch Withnail & I (which I had to force myself to stop talking along to after about 45 minutes) and then Marwood & I did our first double-bed share of the tour.

DAY 8 – SWINDON. In which I almost spoon Ben in the early hours of the morning, drive the scenic route, and nearly fall asleep onstage.

For once on this tour my body clock allows me a bit of a lie-in, though it finally giving in just when I’ll need it for the day at work tomorrow is typical of its selfishness. I wake up not fully remembering where I am as I see a person-shaped mass in the bed next to me and my left arm states its intention of initiating an embrace before my mind takes over and informs lefty that it’s Ben sleeping there, not Kat. Lefty felt a bit sheepish for a while, but seemed happy with me typing that so he must be over it by now.

We do the morning thing; Kev accepting the offer of tea at every opportunity like the fiend he is, then drive down the road for a bewildering choice of delicious looking sandwiches, and it’s fist figuratively meets tarmac again to head southwest to Swindon. I decide that I’ve had enough of motorways, so conspire against the satnav to find a route that will not leave me paralysed with grey boredom. This tactic doesn’t really work – I’ve pretty much had enough of driving by now, and as we approach Swindon I manage to ignore all manner of “YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TURN RIGHT INTO THE PETROL STATION” signs and cause a bit of a backlog by sitting with my indicator on, patiently waiting for a gap in the traffic so I can turn right into the petrol station. Therein Ben buys about 20 chocolate bars, and eats most of them in the 6 miles we have left to Swindon proper – I fear for his mental state at the point the sugar kicks in, and the subsequent sugar crash – then go to meet my mum for some dinner, I go for a Calzone as they are the most win type of pizza in the world ever. FACT.

Getting back to the venue I start to feel the fatigue of the last week stacking up on my shoulders, but am convinced that everything will be fine until our illustrious promoter and sound engineer Alex tells me that I’m being “a bit quiet for such a loud guy” and I worry that I may have fallen asleep with my eyes open or something. My set passes as I try to perk myself, and the lethargic Sunday night crowd, up a bit…failing slightly on both counts as I step off stage and realise that I definitely need to go to sleep straight away…………but can’t as I have Ben’s set to watch (not that it’s a chore of course, but at this moment in time I’d turn down a half hour consequence-free punch-David-Cameron’s-smug-face session for the opportunity to curl up and have at least 4 day’s sleep) and then have to drive home. Seriously, why did I ever learn to drive? To steal some wise words from Left Side Brain’s drummer Ryan “I think I might get myself banned”. Though sadly while he’d have 3 band members to take up the driving slack, I’d just have to start getting trains. Yuck. I managed to enjoy Ben’s set, have a chat to a couple of lovely people who’d enjoyed the gig, hug my Mum goodbye, and then slouch off to the car to attempt the drive home.

Sorry to end on another, almost identical, cliffhanger – and a slight downer as well, I’ve been hanging round with Ben for too long – but you’re really going to have to wait until next time to find out whether I made it home alive………………. 

[imagine that Eastenders drum noise kicks in here]

*Coleridge reference ftw. Though I had to Wikipedia it to be sure, and I was going to write “postman” instead of “person from Porlock”. 

**this is of course, utter lies – Jack couldn’t have been more apologetic and gifted me an Alcopop t-shirt at some point in the evening as well, I just like the idea of imagining such a lovely chap being pantomime evil.

***Though the answer is clearly b). 

# Quite an outrageous tale eh? If anyone’s interested in the film rights then I’ll accept nothing less than a 6 figure sum; The Beef Pie That Had No Beef – surely a cinematic licence to print money?

^or at least snigger behind its back when it’s not looking.

~Me “Ben Marwood’s coming up later. Man “YAYYY MY NAME’S BEN!”.  Me “I’m from Bristol”. Man “YAYYYYY SOUTH WEST YAAEHH CORNWALL!”. It was bring-your-own-booze though, so who can blame him? Plus we did talking afterwards and it turned out fine.

Right then, a hell of a lot to catch up on (not least the sleep which even after an early night at home is still deeper in the red than Nick Clegg is telling us our country is) so let’s see how I get on.

If you read Tour Diary pt 1 then you’ll no doubt have been  waiting with anticipation to see whether I made it home safely…………..well……………….drumroll: I DID! Go me. I did have to stop and sleep in the very last services before home, which is only about 20 minutes away – better lame than never I suppose.

After that drive of insanity I got up and went to work, and spent the day staring into space, borderline hallucinatory with fatigue, and even had to resort to spending my lunchbreak asleep on the floor of an unoccupied office – rock and roll, my friends, is the most glamourous thing in the entire world. Anyway, enough moaning; the tour continues;

DAY 3: BRISTOL. In which we go back to work during the day, have lots of people turn up to our gig, instigate mass singalongs, and then go home sweaty and boozy.

There’s a bit of pressure involved in playing a home-town gig on tour – the “will anyone turn up” factor is heightened, the desire to play well increases, the fear that simply everything will go wrong/turn out shit becomes all pervasive………… thankfully it was all unfounded as everything fell in to place to make it a great evening; Big Jeff rocked up at the start, openers Andy “100% Nan-Safe*” Price and Gaz Brookfield worked their magic, my set was 30 minutes of noisy fun (including a nicely ramshackle first outing of my album-closer All Done Bye Bye with Ben on 2^nd guitar/backing vocals, a rare** outing for Gold, and plenty of banterous nonsense ). I then grabbed some drink to enjoy Ben’s set, chatted a bit, and then went back to Castle Thief with Mrs Thief and Kev @editradio to put a few more beers into my face, make him about a million cups of tea, and watch The Smell of Reeves & Mortimer, which I promptly series linked before zonking out.

DAY 4: OXFORD. In which we pick up a new hire car, murder some people,  eat ice cream, drink beer, and play darts (badly).

My hopes for a decent lie-in were dashed by my bodyclock’s insistence that I wake up alert at 8.30am sharp. Stupid bodyclock – didn’t you get the memo that I’m on tour now and must therefore revert to student levels of lie ins…no? Oh, ok then – you’re let off. Don’t let it happen again though you hear? However unfair my sleepytime woes were, they weren’t a patch on Kev being woken up at 5.30am by Monty (our cat) punching him in the face and meowing loudly. Poor Kev – if you see him, be sure to give him a hug.

Whilst waiting for the car hire company to pick me up (yep, we decided to save £25 by not keeping the car for the whole week – that’s how we roll) I watched an old sitcom on G.O.L.D (G.O.L.D!) called “Dear John” about a recently divorced man that was a strange mix of utterly awful and yet quite charming. I series linked that too, intrigued as to how it would develop.

A ring of the phone and it’s off to get car #2 – sadly not an estate this time (must’ve been a fluke upgrade) that doesn’t have an obvious nickname from its numberplate. We thought of one later on but then forgot it. We notice that it’s not a diesel, so have to work out a song to remind us not to put diesel in this time – how confusing.

Arriving in Oxford we stash our gear at G&D’s and head into town to wait for Ben to arrive, look at old buildings, and play “Lewis”…a game that chiefly consists of filming each other pretending to be dead for later splicing with clips from the actual TV series – it’s going to be the best thing ever/totally rubbish. I think my death was the most convincing…up until the point where I started laughing. Later a local friend turned up and took us to a pub where they used to shoot Morse – I’m impressed but have never seen Morse, we’re a strictly Lewis household***.

Ben turns up (hello Ben!) and we go to Nandos for dinner – I have never been to Nandos before. Ben & Kev warn me off the hot sauce, but I sample some on a chip; it tastes pretty good. I proceed to pour loads of the stuff on my plate and mop it up with my medium-strength chicken quarter. They are impressed – I think I have established myself as the alpha male of this tour. GET IN.

Then it’s off to G&D’s for an unusual, but lovely gig in an ice cream café during which I cause a couple of older patrons to leave, am studiously ignored by some Japanese students, and nearly bring the entire building down on my head with an ill advised double foot stomp. Then we got free ice cream; yeah, you should be jealous. After Ben’s set Jack Alcopop and I take the gear back to his & head to the nearest pub – which closes about 10 minutes later. A quick game of darts later (I lose the game spectacularly using my nice darts, then have a quick throw with the shitty pub darts and score a cool 100 - wtf?) we decamp to the Oxford institution that is The Jamaican/Hi-Lows. 

Therin Ben is harassed by a strange man, we discuss street carnivals with the landlady, and the landlord shouts at people who fail to enter the bar using the correct airlock-like door procedure. Thankfully the atmosphere stays constant throughout , and I make a mental note to come back here as soon as possible before we stroll back out into the night at around 2am…with Jack needing to be up for work at 7am. Ouch.

THANKS JACK!

More tomorrow, I'm off for a nap..............