toronto

I took a train that went from New York to Toronto. It took a long time to get there. Sometimes the train stopped for a while and then kept going. I was sitting in it for something like 13 hours. Its a lot nicer than being in an aeroplane though, because there's plenty of leg room and you can see scenery such as this:

In Toronto I've been hanging out with Helen, and she's awesome. She's a bit shy with cameras. Here's a picture I managed to take when she was trying to hide from the camera:


ok this is not much of a blog entry but you'll find out more if you're in my privelidged circle of privelidge. Did I even spell privelidge right?

New York

We went to New York. We got rid of the rental van because it would be too much hassle in new york. We all stayed in different places because everyone in new york lives in tiny apartments, eh. I stayed at a couple of different places - Stephen from Poundsign, who was good, and Angelique Clark, who was also good.

oh look, there's the brooklyn bridge

look, there's Pat trying to use chopsticks for the first time.

Look, its a cat in a record store! There were several cats living in this record store,

and Alexander and Lucy were dismayed at how well they were kept.

I went to the museum of modern art. This picture is from the architecture/design part, which was pretty cool.

There's a good painting.
That's by Andy Warhol, eh.

Oh look at Matt with his rock star sunglasses. Next to him is Simon Wright, who kind of manages the Hepburns. He came to New York with his wife too, to meet us all and hang out for a few days.

Look at the stretch hummer, near central park.

I went up the Empire State Building. Its quite tall. It was actually snowing a bit on the top.

I knew that the thing to do in New York is to eat a bagel. I accidently got a pretzel instead. I wasn't very nice. All the white stuff is salt, which makes it too salty.

Check out the fashion. Looks like these cats stepped straight out of 1985. Except using the internet.

I have no photos of our gig in New York but it was really good. Alexander called all his New York friends to get them to come, and with an expanded Welsh contingent as well, it was a good crowd. The venue, Galapagos was really fabulous. Unfortunately time was a bit limited and the Hepburns had to shorten their set.

I was in New York for about 5 days, and a lot of that time was spent walking around getting sore feet. New York is very big. People's personalities seem bigger too. I personally would not like to live there.

Boston

Matt Jones: West coast cowboy in Boston, thinking of his horse.
Happy now!

Alexander Bailey likes used record stores

There's the Hepburns playing a song in Boston. There were not so many people there because of Boston is no good. And the drivers are impolite. And we got lost many times because they don't know how to make street signs there either. But the guys from the band Windy Smiles were awesome and nice and they let me use their fender rodes piano, which was good. Oh and that night Matt and I made a live appearance on a local radio station and played a few songs with acoustic guitar and it was good.

Dmitry let us stay at his place and it was great and he and his wife (not pictured) were excellent hosts and made us feel like celebrities.

Seattle

There's me with stripy shirt, shiny tie and sparkly guitar in Seattle. I liked Seattle, even though I didn't get to spend hardly any time there because of the trip up to Vancouver.



Seattle was a nice show. The people that helped us out (Saundrah, Steve & Nancy) were great. The Birthdays (local support) were cool. Above you can see Alexander behind the merch table, looking like the proprietor of a dodgy hotel. Even though there was not a huge crowd of people, they were really into all the music, I think.



There's Matt playing a song on an acoustic guitar. He enjoyed the night.

The trip from Seattle to Boston was not without hitches and dramas. Its easy to forget little things like passports and boarding passes in random houses or aeroplanes. We didn't sleep that night but we went to a 24 hr bowling alley, and I got beaten by Pat Grover.

Olympia

This blog is a bit out of sequence (Olympia happened before Vancouver), and I'm going to struggle to do justice to the Olympia experience. It was the most bizarre and interesting place so far. Olympia has a great music scene, but it is very much more DIY style than anywhere else. All the music venues pretty much closed down because of constant legal stuff - their excuses are about fire regulations or something. So all the good gigs are house shows in basements and stuff. So that's where we played. In Portland we found that everyone seems to have a huge basement with musical gear in it, so we thought maybe it'd be like that and it'd be cool. but we got to this basement venue in Olympia and it was tiny and bare concrete with rubbish everywhere and hardly any space. There was a dodgy PA system that we couldn't get to work. Everything including vocals were through little guitar amps. We thought it'd be the most terrible gig that you could imagine.

But as the place started to fill with local people who were all really nice and friendly and very much into music, the vibe was awesome and nice and stuff. The people were so into the music, they danced and sang along - it turned out to be by far the best gig yet. The place was packed and there was no border between stage and audience. The Hepburns were awesome with a great audience, and their 90 second songs turned into 4 minute songs, with the crowd of people making up new harmonies etc. Local band L.A.K.E. were awesome. Genious songs and beautiful coherent sound, interesting instruments, sensitive playing.
The people in Olympia were nice.
I have no photos unfortunately. A guy videoed the gig and said he'd put some bits on youtube, so i'll search for that later on, eh.

Vancouver

So since we were up on the pacific northwest, I wanted to drive up to Vancouver to have a look, because I (having lived there for 2 years) hadn't been back for about 10 years. It was really nice to drive around where I used to live, it was a little surreal, even. Matt and Mike came with me and enjoyed it immensely.



We walked down a little trail to the rocky beach at west point grey, by UBC.


There's Matt jumping in the air at Canada place.


There's Matt and Mike taking pictures of swimming seals. One of the seals is swimming past quite quickly.


There's me crouching down at Stanley park with the Vancouver skyline in the background. I opted not to post the photo where I got Matt and Mike to hold hands..


There's my old friend Phil (Matt kept referring to him as Rob because he thought he looked more like a Rob than a Phil), eh.


There's Mike and Matt trying to pose like rock stars in Vancouver.

Portland 2

Someone suggested taking a photo of me during my set in Portland, so I said I'd go and get my camera, and I just did it myself, which people found funny.


The audience in Portland was great and very responsive. It was very low key and informal with a bit of friendly heckling, so I enjoyed it. I took the above photo from the stage in the middle of my set.


The Hepburns, Hepburning it up.

american speak

in America, I hear people talk like this:

Instead of saying "I reckon that.." or "I think that..", they say "I feel like..".

Also, instead of saying "Its probably...", they say "I wanna say...".

And they also use the word "whatever" excessively, and in places where it doesn't even make sense.

I've also learned that Welsh people say "is it" in the same way that English people like Ali G say "innit".

Portland 1

In the van as we set off from Berkeley/San Francisco to Portland. Our planned 6am departure turned out to be more like 11am, but we discovered the journey was only 630 miles instead of the 1000 we had previously been told, so it was fine. Alexander (he's taken up the role of tour manager), Mike, Pat and Sue.


Its a mountain we passed on the way to Portland.


I drove most of the way because I like being active and useful rather than bored sitting in a seat.


Elvis impersonator in the street in Portland. He wasn't very good.



Portland is pretty nice.


In the basement at Shelflife records HQ in Portland, the Hepburns and I rehearsing some songs together. Looking forward to joining them onstage tonight for some rad guitar strumming.


Jens Lekman in Portland last night. It was Super-Tastic! With his all-girl band including both horns and strings, all white costumes and sweet moves.

san francisco gig

Yesterday I went into the city of san francisco and had a walk around. I went up Coit Towerwhich was nice and then I walked to the north beach area which was pretty crowded but not very interesting and then I walked back to the financial district through china town which was really cool.

Last night's gig in San Francisco was allright. The place seemed a bit more small and seedy than I expected, but it turned out allright. There was a decent number of people though maybe not quite as many as expected, and it was a crowd that was actually into our kind of music. I quite enjoyed playing my set, and the people really seemed to like it. Pat Grover (Hepburns drummer) said that the songs they did with me were cracking. Yeah, they were pretty good. Getting better.. At least better than we played them at KFJC Radio on Friday..

The Hepburns, with Alexander Bailey looking on.


Local dude Bart Davenport closed the night in great style. He's a fantastic american songwriter/performer. His songs sound like he comes from the east coast, but he actually lives in the same street as Alexander in Berkeley.

adidas

Matt (Hepburns) and I got ourselves fitted out with some adidas gear from the adidas shop here in Berkeley, CA. It was awesome, all the employees were african american, and one of them had 2 turntables and was doing some record scratching in the store and they were all super friendly.

a few pictures..

Haight Street, San Francisco. You know, where the whole hippie movement started. Its not so hippy anymore. And I can't decide on how to spell hippi.


Castro - its the gay area of san francisco, I think. See the rainbow flags, eh.


The Hepburns playing at our first gig at Monterey. It was arrsome.

The Hepburns live on air at KFJC Radio. Matt Jones playing my guitar there cos I'd just done my set before they did. KFJC Radio was arrsome, the DJ said he's been listening to my stuff for years, and knew all about gifted/popfrenzy (Australian indie pop record label) etc.

goths and first gig

Well I can't imagine I'll ever be able to do justice to what's been going on in the last few days in a little blog entry.
Tuesday: The first time the Hepburns and I rehearsed together
there was an earthquake. 5.something on the richter scale, but we just kept on playing.
So imagine driving from san francisco down to santa cruz (1 1/2 hours) to play electronic drums for a cyber goth band (that uses backing tracks which already has a drum machine in the backing tracks), and then the main guy in the band who roped in some non-goths and brought costumes for us to goth-up with turns up so late that they put another band on instead, and then when he arrived decided not to play because there weren't many people there. oh well, that's ok, Rob is a really nice guy and is lending us a keyboard for this tour. But.. many hours of driving and I didn't even get a photo of me playing in a goth band. but we had a fun time in santa cruz anyway. The streets were packed with people in crazy costumes for halloween. we got into a packed place that was playing hip-hop, ate dinner at 2am in an american diner (with matt and mike from the Hepburns who came with me for moral support), and they were asleep the whole way back. I managed to find my way back to radio khartoum headquarter's (alexander bailey's place) with no directions or map, but I did make one mistake near the end and accidently went across the oakland bay bridge into san francisco and had trouble making my way back. At 4am mind you..


So last night was our first gig, in Monterey, CA. It was a great venue but we were all a bit apprehensive. I really like my new sparkly danelectro guitar, it sounds just right and looks awesome. my set was received really well and when the hepburns joined me onstage it was heaps of fun. I was super impressed with the hepburns as a live band. They're awesome, and it doesn't come through so well on their recordings. I'm very much looking forwards to the other shows now. This afternoon is a live performance on radio then a gig at santa clara university.