Hayden’s Blog

Land of Oz

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We’re in Australia, and the tour has officially begun. I’ve finally started to realise just how big this tour is going to be. We’re in Melbourne right now, and I’m absolutely exhausted after only 3 shows. But I’m getting into the swing of it I think. We’re just learning to get sleep when we can, because you can never bet on getting enough when you want it.

Our first show of the tour, in Brisbane, was at a cool little venue called the Troubadour. The place had such a relaxing atmosphere, which was a good thing after a really hectic day of driving around in rush hour traffic and (trying) to get to interviews.

Managed to miss what was probably the most important one, JJJ, because of a number of things. Mostly the fact that there are about 10 different Sherwood Roads in Brisbane, and it takes about 5 hours to get anywhere by car.

Anyway, the gig went great. Had around 100 people show up (which made the small venue pretty full), had a great sound guy and played well.

I still haven’t got a digital camera, so I can’t really post any photos of the stuff I’m talking about, which makes things slightly less interesting, considering I’m a really bad writer.

So next stop was Sydney, which we have now dubbed the most unfriendly place in Australia (I’m sure there are worse, but I’ve only been to 3 cities). Every person we had to deal with (apart from the really friendly people where we were staying and the people who came to our gig) were complete jerks. Everyone had a really reluctant attitude when talking to you. It made me really happy we only had to spend 1 day in the place.
We played at a place called the Hopetoun (or the Hoey for short), which is more a pub than anything else. Hence when we turned up to load in the whole place was full of Sydney soccer fans, completely drunk and chanting british-hooligan-style chants. Thankfully they all left en masse come 7 o’clock when their game was starting at a stadium down the road.

That night we played to a sold out crowd – making the not-very-well-ventilated room a sauna. We were dripping sweat on stage, our instruments were going out of tune, it was so hot. But it was a fun night.

And now we’re in Melbourne. I love this city! I think I could move here.
We played a show at the East Brunswick Club to about 300 people. It was strangely sobering though, cause nobody moved at all during the show. They just stood and stared at us. After the show we found out that Melbourne is notorious for motionless crowds. Our sound guy told us it is known as the city of folded arms. Would have been nice if someone had told us before we played.