On the road oh yes please

again, comrades!

Thursday May 2nd and we are driving from Melbourne. Victoria to Orange, NSW.

This is the two of us. Myself and Clare Moore, in our Toyota Tarago. We have packed a drum kit, two small amps, small keyboard, some stands, effects pedal case, merchandise and two bags with clothes and toiletries.

We packed the night before. Of course, when leaving the house for a few days I often pack too many books, sometimes a chess set (which I rarely play) and also sometimes some sort of recording device or other random unfinished project. Its a thing that when you leave your pad you have the idea you can tie up all these loose ends, learn a new language or skill etc…
Going on a tour has never been that disruptive to us as we can take a lot with us. I have been aware of bandmates over the years having to deal with walking out of the door from their lives for a week or two. One time, I picked up a fellow player who I always thought was a tough, hard boiled type. He had two young children and I noticed he was shedding a few tears as we drove off. It was hard for him, and he was a band leader himself.

But today it was just myself and Clare driving. If we play interstate with our band the mistLY we usually drive with our gear (as I like my own gear and hate airports) and our two players Stu and Stuart fly and we meet up in with Sydney or Adelaide. (Brisbane is too far to drive, as is Perth).

We are playing in Orange tomorrow night and like I said, its just us two. (WE are hooking up with Greg Thorsby to play bass with us in Katoomba and Newcastle) I have an acoustic and an electric guitar and Clare has a rhythm machine, keyboard, melodica and iPad (to access digital mellotron which is then played via the keyboard). Clare also has a keyboard stand and small mixer to hook up the keyboard, rhythm machine and iPad. She much prefers to do a gig with drums as there is no plugging in of leads and dealing with different PA systems and operators.

We work with our agent in Sydney who lines up our shows.

We have very little other contact or links with any music industry people (except for our digital distributor), just other musicians.

We will be playing two sets tomorrow. Songs from our new album, (strangely)(emotional) and others from In A Mistly (2022) and others from albums going back to the 90s.

I have played at the venue in Orange once before, by myself, sometime in the years pre covid.

I’m looking forward to it and will report here after the show tomorrow.

The drive here was good. We eventually left our side of Melbourne at about 10:30. We had to take our cat, Sylvie, to the health spa she stays in over in the next suburb. As is usual, she twigged that we were heading off and promptly went to hide inside Clares other bass drum down in the studio. After we tried cajoling her to come out with treats and upending the drum and also banging it with a stick we finally got her out and into her carrier. We got into the van and drive off and then an appalling smell became apparent and we deduced that she had taken a dump in her carrier. We stopped to clean it as best we could and then left her with her highly trained nurse. It is a mystery why she runs and hides as she loves going to the sanitarium. Just cat stuff I suppose. Cats gotta cat.

We pulled into Orange at about 8:45pm and checked into a motel. We had listened to a History Of Rock in 500 songs episode about the Doors and another about the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, the latest SIZZLETOWN and a Rest Is History podcast about Chocolate. The latter was spoiled by their acknowledgement of being sponsored by Cadburys at the end. ( I had enjoyed their recent 4 part series on Byron last week).

There were many news reports of a venue in Brisbane closing down. The media loves stories of doom in the music scene. A few festivals have died recently.

We operate in our area of entertainment. We are either in the future or somewhere else. We are in our own present anyway.

There was a financial report on the radio. The sort of breathless rubbish you hear every day. Up (gasp!) Down (gosh!) etc. Who gives a damn? The language is interesting, sometimes. “Blah blah blah choppy sea of red…” Today this oily geezer was flying a story about important profits reports from McDonalds, KFC and Burger King coming out in the USA. Apparently all down and also apparently McDonalds are to “adopt a more street fighter attitude to win back low income customers…” Should not the news be that people are eating more healthy food in the USA? Or perhaps that people are starving in the USA?

We also read of two musicians we follow on Instagram selling their house in upstate New York, for US$350,000. Three bedroom house. Two hours from NYC. Houses in East Brunswick or Fitzroy or Carlton (Northern suburbs of Melbourne) start at AU$2,000,000. WTF?