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