Sorry folks but this blog will now cease to exist, or at least have any new posts. Our new blog lives here, theres already a few bits on there....
Au Revoir and also Bonjour on Tumblr
Hawk
x
Monday, 16 August 2010
Thursday, 8 April 2010
March Tour Diary
Recently Chickenhawk finished touring the UK with the delightful Outcry Collective and The Computers, the following dates happened:
White Rabbit, Plymouth 15th
The Cavern, Exeter 16th
The Croft, Bristol 17th
Rock City, Nottingham 18th
Uncle Alberts, Middlesbrough 19th
Roadhouse, Manchester 21st
Corporation, Sheffield 23rd
The Flapper, Birmingham 24th
Club Ifor Bar, Cardiff 25th
Ibar, Bournemouth 26th
This is my hazy account:
Monday 15th Plymouth White Rabbit
POW BANG POW, tour starts today!!! With mega super excitement chickenhawk are off on tour again. We set off at 10am on our way to the very southerly Plymouth, the drive is long and tiresome and the endless motorway turns into stories of men living in yellow castles protecting the motorways from end of level robots and more nonsense about flying on lightning. We arrive at the venue at roughly 7ish, just in case you were wondering and i didn't make it clear that is a lot of driving. The venue is next to a bus station carpark and the delightfully cheery parking attendant won't let us in simply because we have a trailer. I hold my mouth when my brain tells me to inform him there is no bomb in our trailer. As a result we have to cart our gear from outside Staples, through the bus station, into the venue. This is proper rock and chips. I think we left our roadies on the motorway somewhere, maybe in the yellow castle? Outcry collective are soundchecking as we arrive and they sound pretty fucking mighty... Introductions are made and sillyness ensues immediately... Beer and food!!! WINNNNNN. I envisage more of this over 2 weeks...
The venue never really fills up properly, a slightly anticlimactic start to the tour but the gig is still lots of fun and it seems like the other guys in the other bands are all cool guys... Off to a local hostel, good night...
Google says this is Plymouth:
Tuesday 16th Exeter The Cavern
Thank fuck we’ve got the big drive out of the way, very short drive to Exeter today. On the way down yesterday we spotted Buckfast Abbey, home of the good stuff, so we stop off there to look for pissed monks and buy some ‘medicine’. I stole a book called the ‘The lives of saints for boys’ by mistake... Information i have learnt as a result includes Joseph, of surrogate father to Jesus fame, is the patron saint of a happy death...
Watched a video about Monks making booze in a room called ‘video,’ straight to the point at least.
We arrive in Exeter nice and early, load in and check into our Hostel, very nice, very nice. Try and have a quick sleep but the atmosphere in the room descends into madness so I don’t bother, tested out the newly purchased medicine, tasty tonic...
Soon enough it’s time to go back to the venue for soundcheck, its only a short walk from the hostel so we dont have to DRIVVVVVEEEEEEE. At the venue i get to stare at the Batman pinball machine, its just a normal pinball machine with Batman written on it, I do know this, honestly I do but for some reason its so hypnotic.
Outcry collective get told off by the Cavern manager for trying to eat their food before soundcheck, which I find a bit odd, is it like don’t eat before you go swimming?
Matt’s playing on the floor tonight, soundman isn’t the best pleased with this idea but Barry needs floor riffs tonight. If the name changing confuses you, i have now began referring to Matt as anyname i can think of, he is fine with this. Venue fills up pretty quickly and after the first band play theres at least 3 times the amount of people in than last night already.
We play really fucking well and enjoy it a lot more than last night, completely destroyed after the gig but theres loads of breadsticks so everyone is a winner.
I found this picture when searching for 'Exeter,' we did not see any of this:
Wednesday 17th Bristol The Croft
Another relatively short drive (2 hours) in comparison with the horrendous beast that was Monday. I always love coming to Bristol, we always seem to park next to a homeless clinic, this time we pull up and a bunch of alcoholics are cheering on 2 dogs fighting over a bone... Amazing... We load in and the 4 of us decide to sit in the empty trailer and have a beer, rock.
After wandering around and trying to find another parking space, I discover Steve from Outcry Collective is randomly following me on the other side of the road, he might be my new favourite person, I think he's secretly insane. After discussing our upcoming Maida Vale session, he suggests we only call Mike Davies, Michael and refer to the cosmos and the ether when discussing writing our music. As I said he's a genius. A little while later we had cider and then lost the rest of the evening. It turned up a week later in the merch bag. This wasn't to be the first thing we would lose on the tour.
In fact we also left a guitar at the venue, well done Chickenhawk number 1.
Thursday 18th Maida Vale/Nottingham Rock City
Today we are recording a Live session for Mike Davies’ Radio One punk show, load in is at 11 in London, we are in Bristol, up at 6 out by 7. Bullshit. Odd feeling of excitement crossed with complete tiredness as a result of going to bed at 4 last night.
We arrive at 10:50, angry BBC reception tell us we can’t load in until exactly 11. I have heard rumours about the amazing maida vale canteen, however it was shit, all they had was coffee and pastry.
We are recording in Maida Vale Studio 4, this is where all bands do session work. The other rooms are for full on orchestras, there are pictures on the wall of The White Stripes, Scissor Sisters, everyone has been here Led Zeppelin, Nirvana and now Chickenhawk...
Right off the floor the room sounds amazing, there is so much history and power in one room its ridiculous. We nail our four songs quickly and after a quick break the super powerful Miti mixes them. They sound fucking banging, cant wait for these bad boys to go out on air.
As soon as we load out we bomb it back up the M1 for our gig in Nottingham. We are tired boys and when we arrive at Rock City we pretty much load in and play. Apologies to the girl i made count us in, she looked really uncomfortable doing this... I can't even remember my head touching the pillow that night..... 12 hours solid sleep follows!
Friday 19th Middlesbrough Uncle Albert's
After the equally amazing and body destroying day before, it's time to kill ourselves again. Back in the car, trailer ready to go and off to Middlesborough. For some reason I can’t really remember what happened on the journey up...
However we get lots of food and beer at the venue, I didn’t tell the others this but I decided to eat pizza upside down to see if this has any effect on digestion, it doesn’t. Imagine that.
Gig is free entry... Come on midlesborough come and see some free riffs. It sounds like im begging, I'm not its a fucking right line up.
No local support so we are on first, the venue fills up nicely before we play and the Middlesbronians seem ready to be riffed, we play probably the best gig of the tour so far even amidst familiar crys of ‘play the one about the egg!’ Later the culprit told me he heard someone shout that at one of our gigs previously and now plans to shout it at all our gigs... Thats fine.
Sadly this lady was not in attendance:
I found this under 'Middlesbrough Uncle Albert's'
She is not what the average Friday night clubber looks like in Middlesbrough.
Saturday None Tour Day
Nothing much happened, Steve Outcry points out the signourney Weaver boob shot in Ghostbusters, having watched this film more times than is healthy or even vaguely cool I feel useless that I have never spotted this.
Sunday 21st Manchester Roadhouse
Im not sure why i dont have much to say about this gig, it was a good gig and i enjoyed playing but nothing weird or bizarre happened. Having gigs fairly local to Leeds means sleeping in your own bed, this is a good thing. If this gig was in Japan I couldn't have done this. Dear Japan please put my band on, I promise I won't moan about not having my own bed in your country.
Lovely review here:
http://highvoltage.org.uk/readreview.php?id=292
Monday 22nd Sheffield Corporation
All Hawk memebers are at work today so this means it’s a late depart to Sheffield. As soon as we arrive we load our gear in and set up to play. Chickenhawk is good friends with Sheffield having played here many many times in our life and its nice to see old friends and meet new ones. Vegan Chilli for the bands is a definite welcome and discussions on what sort of sordid hellish situations have occurred in the backstage area will not grace this page... Back to Leeds post gig for a lovely sleep in preparation for an early start tomorrow, or so we thought...
Wednesday 24th Birmingham The Flapper
Plan: Leave Leeds at 10:00, pick up drum equipment, visit Matamp factory in Huddersfield along the way.
Reality: Leave at 13:00 some members of the band have waking up disabilities.
I personally always enjoy playing in Birmingham, they are fond of a good bit of rock and I always cross my fingers for Ozzy and Rob Halford being in attendance, why wouldn’t they come to a gig like this? I may start putting them on the guest list for all gigs. I've read somewhere that Greg from Dillinger Escape Plan always puts James Hetfield on their guest lists in the hope he will one day attend. Good Lad, I imagine his face is his backstage pass though. I have heard he has 'AAA' tatooed on his forehead.
Again no local support tonight so we are on first, plenty of people down for this show, the sound is brilliant and its another really good Chickenhawk show. Due to nowhere to stay we have to drive to Derby that night so we depart after Outcry Collective play, we thought we had all our gear, we were wrong we left all the screen printed posters in Birmingham. Well done Chickenhawk number 2.
Thursday 25th Cardiff Clwb Ifor Bach
Driving from Derby to Cardiff isn’t too bad a drive an after a stop off for fuses, a stop in Bristol to pick up the missing guitar and another stop to do a phone interview with Radio 1’s Mike Davies. We arrive in Cardiff in plenty of time, being a genius I enquire the castles name in the middle of Cardiff city centre... Answers on a postcard. Again we were struggling for somewhere to stay but thankyfully Mark Foley from ‘Strange News from another star’ saves our bacon, coincidentally he also feeds us bacon the next morning.
After speaking with the soundman it becomes clear that they have a club night at the venue immediately after and there is a strict curfew of 9:30 that all bands need to be finished by. Again no local support which means we are on at 7:15. By the time we soundcheck its not long until we have to play, people start to shuffle in at 7 but people are light on the ground as its still early.
After the gig Mark suggests we leave the trailer at his practice room. I totally misinterpret the word ‘his’. It becomes clear that it is actually a set of practice rooms and he owns the business. The rooms are brilliant and outside one room is littered with BFMV flight cases, I can only imagine the power inside that room.
This is the first time we get to have post gig jollies and Mark takes us into Cardiff towncentre, stopping mid way to chat to some bald chap on a bike, after the chat Mark informs us that this guy used to be in Catatonia... The power of Cardiff
Gig Review:
Friday 26th Bournemouth Ibar/Stonehenge
Last day of the tour! Mark makes us some delightful bacon sandwiches and plenty of Coffee before we depart.... I love you Mark, can i move in?
No more gigs on this tour, massive rubbish rubbish. The Computers and Outcry Collective have both been extremely tight every night, made us 100% step up our game plus they were all lovely boys. Bournemouth is a bit of a drive but we get to stop off at Stonehenge, somewhere 75% of us have never been before. Unfortunately it is a mega let down. Its £6 to get near it, as we are such rebels we had our photos taken from the otherside of the fence. Ryan is displaying his excitement here:
Ibar is a pretty small venue but it fills up pretty quickly, last gig of the tour is mega good and is 100% fun to play, again we have to depart quickly as we are travelling to London for a place to stay. Watch Outcry Collective play for the last time and cry all over the floor, everyone ends up swimming out of the venue and we teleport to London. Some of this is a lie. Goodbyes are exchanged and we depart with the Ghosbusters soundtrack as our soundtrack to London.
Tour Over. Had Fun. More Please
Review: http://www.dorsetrockonline.com/?p=3829
White Rabbit, Plymouth 15th
The Cavern, Exeter 16th
The Croft, Bristol 17th
Rock City, Nottingham 18th
Uncle Alberts, Middlesbrough 19th
Roadhouse, Manchester 21st
Corporation, Sheffield 23rd
The Flapper, Birmingham 24th
Club Ifor Bar, Cardiff 25th
Ibar, Bournemouth 26th
This is my hazy account:
Monday 15th Plymouth White Rabbit
POW BANG POW, tour starts today!!! With mega super excitement chickenhawk are off on tour again. We set off at 10am on our way to the very southerly Plymouth, the drive is long and tiresome and the endless motorway turns into stories of men living in yellow castles protecting the motorways from end of level robots and more nonsense about flying on lightning. We arrive at the venue at roughly 7ish, just in case you were wondering and i didn't make it clear that is a lot of driving. The venue is next to a bus station carpark and the delightfully cheery parking attendant won't let us in simply because we have a trailer. I hold my mouth when my brain tells me to inform him there is no bomb in our trailer. As a result we have to cart our gear from outside Staples, through the bus station, into the venue. This is proper rock and chips. I think we left our roadies on the motorway somewhere, maybe in the yellow castle? Outcry collective are soundchecking as we arrive and they sound pretty fucking mighty... Introductions are made and sillyness ensues immediately... Beer and food!!! WINNNNNN. I envisage more of this over 2 weeks...
The venue never really fills up properly, a slightly anticlimactic start to the tour but the gig is still lots of fun and it seems like the other guys in the other bands are all cool guys... Off to a local hostel, good night...
Google says this is Plymouth:
Tuesday 16th Exeter The Cavern
Thank fuck we’ve got the big drive out of the way, very short drive to Exeter today. On the way down yesterday we spotted Buckfast Abbey, home of the good stuff, so we stop off there to look for pissed monks and buy some ‘medicine’. I stole a book called the ‘The lives of saints for boys’ by mistake... Information i have learnt as a result includes Joseph, of surrogate father to Jesus fame, is the patron saint of a happy death...
Watched a video about Monks making booze in a room called ‘video,’ straight to the point at least.
We arrive in Exeter nice and early, load in and check into our Hostel, very nice, very nice. Try and have a quick sleep but the atmosphere in the room descends into madness so I don’t bother, tested out the newly purchased medicine, tasty tonic...
Soon enough it’s time to go back to the venue for soundcheck, its only a short walk from the hostel so we dont have to DRIVVVVVEEEEEEE. At the venue i get to stare at the Batman pinball machine, its just a normal pinball machine with Batman written on it, I do know this, honestly I do but for some reason its so hypnotic.
Outcry collective get told off by the Cavern manager for trying to eat their food before soundcheck, which I find a bit odd, is it like don’t eat before you go swimming?
Matt’s playing on the floor tonight, soundman isn’t the best pleased with this idea but Barry needs floor riffs tonight. If the name changing confuses you, i have now began referring to Matt as anyname i can think of, he is fine with this. Venue fills up pretty quickly and after the first band play theres at least 3 times the amount of people in than last night already.
We play really fucking well and enjoy it a lot more than last night, completely destroyed after the gig but theres loads of breadsticks so everyone is a winner.
I found this picture when searching for 'Exeter,' we did not see any of this:
Wednesday 17th Bristol The Croft
Another relatively short drive (2 hours) in comparison with the horrendous beast that was Monday. I always love coming to Bristol, we always seem to park next to a homeless clinic, this time we pull up and a bunch of alcoholics are cheering on 2 dogs fighting over a bone... Amazing... We load in and the 4 of us decide to sit in the empty trailer and have a beer, rock.
After wandering around and trying to find another parking space, I discover Steve from Outcry Collective is randomly following me on the other side of the road, he might be my new favourite person, I think he's secretly insane. After discussing our upcoming Maida Vale session, he suggests we only call Mike Davies, Michael and refer to the cosmos and the ether when discussing writing our music. As I said he's a genius. A little while later we had cider and then lost the rest of the evening. It turned up a week later in the merch bag. This wasn't to be the first thing we would lose on the tour.
In fact we also left a guitar at the venue, well done Chickenhawk number 1.
Thursday 18th Maida Vale/Nottingham Rock City
Today we are recording a Live session for Mike Davies’ Radio One punk show, load in is at 11 in London, we are in Bristol, up at 6 out by 7. Bullshit. Odd feeling of excitement crossed with complete tiredness as a result of going to bed at 4 last night.
We arrive at 10:50, angry BBC reception tell us we can’t load in until exactly 11. I have heard rumours about the amazing maida vale canteen, however it was shit, all they had was coffee and pastry.
We are recording in Maida Vale Studio 4, this is where all bands do session work. The other rooms are for full on orchestras, there are pictures on the wall of The White Stripes, Scissor Sisters, everyone has been here Led Zeppelin, Nirvana and now Chickenhawk...
Right off the floor the room sounds amazing, there is so much history and power in one room its ridiculous. We nail our four songs quickly and after a quick break the super powerful Miti mixes them. They sound fucking banging, cant wait for these bad boys to go out on air.
As soon as we load out we bomb it back up the M1 for our gig in Nottingham. We are tired boys and when we arrive at Rock City we pretty much load in and play. Apologies to the girl i made count us in, she looked really uncomfortable doing this... I can't even remember my head touching the pillow that night..... 12 hours solid sleep follows!
Friday 19th Middlesbrough Uncle Albert's
After the equally amazing and body destroying day before, it's time to kill ourselves again. Back in the car, trailer ready to go and off to Middlesborough. For some reason I can’t really remember what happened on the journey up...
However we get lots of food and beer at the venue, I didn’t tell the others this but I decided to eat pizza upside down to see if this has any effect on digestion, it doesn’t. Imagine that.
Gig is free entry... Come on midlesborough come and see some free riffs. It sounds like im begging, I'm not its a fucking right line up.
No local support so we are on first, the venue fills up nicely before we play and the Middlesbronians seem ready to be riffed, we play probably the best gig of the tour so far even amidst familiar crys of ‘play the one about the egg!’ Later the culprit told me he heard someone shout that at one of our gigs previously and now plans to shout it at all our gigs... Thats fine.
Sadly this lady was not in attendance:
I found this under 'Middlesbrough Uncle Albert's'
She is not what the average Friday night clubber looks like in Middlesbrough.
Saturday None Tour Day
Nothing much happened, Steve Outcry points out the signourney Weaver boob shot in Ghostbusters, having watched this film more times than is healthy or even vaguely cool I feel useless that I have never spotted this.
Sunday 21st Manchester Roadhouse
Im not sure why i dont have much to say about this gig, it was a good gig and i enjoyed playing but nothing weird or bizarre happened. Having gigs fairly local to Leeds means sleeping in your own bed, this is a good thing. If this gig was in Japan I couldn't have done this. Dear Japan please put my band on, I promise I won't moan about not having my own bed in your country.
Lovely review here:
http://highvoltage.org.uk/readreview.php?id=292
Monday 22nd Sheffield Corporation
All Hawk memebers are at work today so this means it’s a late depart to Sheffield. As soon as we arrive we load our gear in and set up to play. Chickenhawk is good friends with Sheffield having played here many many times in our life and its nice to see old friends and meet new ones. Vegan Chilli for the bands is a definite welcome and discussions on what sort of sordid hellish situations have occurred in the backstage area will not grace this page... Back to Leeds post gig for a lovely sleep in preparation for an early start tomorrow, or so we thought...
Wednesday 24th Birmingham The Flapper
Plan: Leave Leeds at 10:00, pick up drum equipment, visit Matamp factory in Huddersfield along the way.
Reality: Leave at 13:00 some members of the band have waking up disabilities.
I personally always enjoy playing in Birmingham, they are fond of a good bit of rock and I always cross my fingers for Ozzy and Rob Halford being in attendance, why wouldn’t they come to a gig like this? I may start putting them on the guest list for all gigs. I've read somewhere that Greg from Dillinger Escape Plan always puts James Hetfield on their guest lists in the hope he will one day attend. Good Lad, I imagine his face is his backstage pass though. I have heard he has 'AAA' tatooed on his forehead.
Again no local support tonight so we are on first, plenty of people down for this show, the sound is brilliant and its another really good Chickenhawk show. Due to nowhere to stay we have to drive to Derby that night so we depart after Outcry Collective play, we thought we had all our gear, we were wrong we left all the screen printed posters in Birmingham. Well done Chickenhawk number 2.
Thursday 25th Cardiff Clwb Ifor Bach
Driving from Derby to Cardiff isn’t too bad a drive an after a stop off for fuses, a stop in Bristol to pick up the missing guitar and another stop to do a phone interview with Radio 1’s Mike Davies. We arrive in Cardiff in plenty of time, being a genius I enquire the castles name in the middle of Cardiff city centre... Answers on a postcard. Again we were struggling for somewhere to stay but thankyfully Mark Foley from ‘Strange News from another star’ saves our bacon, coincidentally he also feeds us bacon the next morning.
After speaking with the soundman it becomes clear that they have a club night at the venue immediately after and there is a strict curfew of 9:30 that all bands need to be finished by. Again no local support which means we are on at 7:15. By the time we soundcheck its not long until we have to play, people start to shuffle in at 7 but people are light on the ground as its still early.
After the gig Mark suggests we leave the trailer at his practice room. I totally misinterpret the word ‘his’. It becomes clear that it is actually a set of practice rooms and he owns the business. The rooms are brilliant and outside one room is littered with BFMV flight cases, I can only imagine the power inside that room.
This is the first time we get to have post gig jollies and Mark takes us into Cardiff towncentre, stopping mid way to chat to some bald chap on a bike, after the chat Mark informs us that this guy used to be in Catatonia... The power of Cardiff
Gig Review:
Friday 26th Bournemouth Ibar/Stonehenge
Last day of the tour! Mark makes us some delightful bacon sandwiches and plenty of Coffee before we depart.... I love you Mark, can i move in?
No more gigs on this tour, massive rubbish rubbish. The Computers and Outcry Collective have both been extremely tight every night, made us 100% step up our game plus they were all lovely boys. Bournemouth is a bit of a drive but we get to stop off at Stonehenge, somewhere 75% of us have never been before. Unfortunately it is a mega let down. Its £6 to get near it, as we are such rebels we had our photos taken from the otherside of the fence. Ryan is displaying his excitement here:
Ibar is a pretty small venue but it fills up pretty quickly, last gig of the tour is mega good and is 100% fun to play, again we have to depart quickly as we are travelling to London for a place to stay. Watch Outcry Collective play for the last time and cry all over the floor, everyone ends up swimming out of the venue and we teleport to London. Some of this is a lie. Goodbyes are exchanged and we depart with the Ghosbusters soundtrack as our soundtrack to London.
Tour Over. Had Fun. More Please
Review: http://www.dorsetrockonline.com/?p=3829
Monday, 8 March 2010
TOUR STARTS IN 1 WEEK/RADIO 1 LIVE SESSION!
So...we are about to embark on our first tour of the year with none other than Outcry Collective (Visible Noise) and The Computers (Fierce Panda)! Plus during the tour, we're excited to announce we will be stopping off at BBC Radio 1 - Maida Vale studios to record a live session for Mike Davies' Punk Show to be aired later this year (when we know you'll know).
15th March White Rabbit - Plymouth TICKETS
16th March The Cavern - Exeter
17th March The Croft - Bristol
18th March Rock City - Nottingham
19th March Uncle Alberts - Middlesborough FREE ENTRY
21th March Roadhouse - Manchester TICKETS
23th March Corporation - Sheffield TICKETS
24th March The Flapper - Birmingham TICKETS
25th March Club Ifor Bach - Cardiff TICKETS
26th March Ibar - Bournemouth TICKETS
We will be opening each night, so please make it down early in time to catch us!
NEW MERCH (NERCH) MADE OF BIRCH IN A CHURCH, LURCH
Chickenhawk will also have a whole bunch of new full-time rocker riff daddy merchandise available for the first time on this tour and available to pre-order online now from Brew's Big Cartel HERE! New T-Shirts / Tote Bags and Tour Packages for your rocking pleasure. Plus reprints of the recently sold out screen-printed tour posters will also be available in different colours.
PRE-ORDER HERE RIGHT NOW, RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND.COM
SEE YOU THERE...MAYBE?
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
New A2 Limited Edition Screen Printed Tour Posters
YOWWWZA! in preparation for the tour next month we have 20 limited edition screen prints available, designed by our very own Matt Reid. £6 + P+P:
Buy buy buy:
http://brewrecords.bigcartel.com/product/chickenhawk-limited-silkscreen-tourposter
Buy buy buy:
http://brewrecords.bigcartel.com/product/chickenhawk-limited-silkscreen-tourposter
Saturday, 6 February 2010
Free London gig/ Godzilla Black Album Release 20th Feb
Special free show starting 8pm til late! The Unicorn is on Camden Road, NW1 9AA
Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chickenhawk/9517036172?ref=nf#!/event.php?eid=290579331014&ref=mf
Celebrating the download release of their debut album (it's free, get it here: godzillablack.bandcamp.com/ )London pop/noise dealers hit the stage. Godisinthetvzine said:
the schizo electro beats and sexual, suggestive vox draw favourable comparisons with everything from Beck, Alec Empire, a more deranged Late of the Pier, and the filthiness of The Faint's ‘Wet from Birth’ album. Monstrous!
www.myspace.com/godzillablack
alond with.........
CRABS!
Lead by Emmett Elvin of Chromehoof, Crabs! work in the same area of sound as Scratch Acid, Killdozer and Dazzling Killmen - disconcerting yet arousing, it's heavy but it ain't metal!
www.myspace.com/crabsound
see you there.............maybe
Hawk
x
Sunday, 24 January 2010
Another week another photoshoot that goes exactly to plan with no problems whatsoever…..
Seeing as how its been so long since something bizarre happened at a Chickenhawk photoshoot we thought we’d do something to change with that.
Plan: Photographs in a room filled with smoke, no problems there surely…. Setting up the room was going swimmingly well (after about 30 minutes of pumping a smoke machine into a room it was literally swimming in smoke.) Everything is fine everything is fine no problems everything is fine……..
......until SMOKE ALARM…..who knew smoke + smoke alarm = alarm going off, who knew? …..cue panic and swift removal of all lighting equipment from the room where we shouldn’t have really been in the first place
Next week photoshoot inside a volcano….
Thursday, 14 January 2010
One night in the snow with a photographer called Danny
On a dark cold night Chickenhawk ventured into Todmorden up a giant hill covered in snow and ice with a photographer named Danny North in tow…….
Aim: to find a location that Danny claimed was 30 minutes walk in ‘normal’ conditions. Stick brought the whole world in a bag, including chairs and unicycles, which were quickly removed from the bags before we set off.
In hindsight if things had gone worse we may have needed some of the more bizarre items but more on that later……
Walking along the main path leading to this giant hill was fine in comparison with what was to come, it was bitterly cold and we had to wrap scarves around our faces.
When we began to ascend a hill covered in ice and snow that’s when the fun began…
The snow was deep and I mean really deep in certain places you had no idea if you would tread on solid ground or fall through less dense snow that was up to your waist and this did happen A LOT. We climbed for about an hour, the peak seemed a mile of hunting for this golden location. We finally reached a wall which would hopefully break the wind a little, it didn’t and although we were now on flat ground the snow was still just as deep, we could now see the forest we were aiming for but the funny factor had already gone.
We eventually approached this ‘forest’ it was clear no one else was around for miles and hadn’t been for a long time. This places was mightily impressive: rows of trees with a ‘corridor’ down the middle something straight out of Edward Scissorhands. We thought it was snowing, it was raining ice….thats something I’ve never seen before.
Walking down this corridor Danny picked his choice location and in true Indian Jones style we wrapped a cloth round a stick, doused it in turps and set it alight…..
We, I say we but I actually mean Danny experimented with different set ups and eventually settled on us with our backs to a tree, by now I think there was just pure ice on my feet and it felt like my whole legs had pins and needles. Danny set the camera up with a very long exposure which involved us staying as still as possible for about 30 seconds, not very hard when you are the coldest you’ve been in your life.
I am really not complaining about Danny giving up his time to do this photoshoot but it seemed an age to get the actual shot and standing still does not help one bit.
Once we had all the shots that’s when the fun was completely gone everyone was really struggling and as a result we came back down the ‘hill’ a lot quicker, as the ice in my boots began to melt for some strange reason the cold water felt really refreshing. I cannot explain to you how bizarre my legs felt. Myself and Matt bombed on ahead with the thought of a warm car…. Once we got onto the main path down to Danny’s village I kept slipping on the ice, in total FIVE times, you think I would’ve learnt from this….clearly not….all I wanted was a warm car.
When we got back to the cars, I pulled off my boots and literally poured a pint of water out of each one, I bet that looked amazing when it was frozen inside around my toes. Truly bizarre things always seem to happen to this band….this is one of them, the location Danny found was amazing, I’m now adding arctic explorer to my C.V and no I’m not over-reacting…..total man challenge.
Moral of the story: always have photographs taken in a sauna.
First gig of the year: Next Friday at the cockpit with Future of the left and Kong...POW
http://www.myspace.com/chickenhawk
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