Tour Recap Part 1

It's the dream of every single kid who's ever picked up a guitar with the intention of rocking and rolling: to hop in a tiny over-packed van with 4 other dudes, to live in abject poverty for an extended period of time and to play loud deafening music to crowds of no one night after night. Wait, that doesn't sound that appealing all of a sudden. In any event, I'm getting ahead of myself.

So the tour. I went on tour. City of a Hundred Spires went on tour. I've been asked questions ad nauseum about our little trek since we returned and I believe I usually offer the same answer to most: that it was a great experience with great highs and terrible lows. I usually add some half-hearted sentiment about how I imagine that such an outcome is pretty much par for first touring experiences. Yeah.

The first show of the tour is pretty much the perfect synthesis of the great highs/terrible lows dichotomy. On May 5th 2007, we were set to play at le Troquet in Hull with our tourmates in Tunturia. Hull is our (my) hometown and this was meant to be the show to send us off with warm hugs and considerable applause (the memories of which we'd have to nibble on for the coming weeks as hugs and applause would come sparingly from then on.) The show proceedings started off in our traditional ricketty manner. We got to the venue, loaded our gear in and then proceeded to scramble to try and finish burning off our CD-EPs. Being the fiends of last-minute that we are, we'd managed to finish assembling the packaging for our records, but we'd yet to burn the actual music to disc yet. Sitting at the bar with our laptops, we managed to finish up the EPs by early evening. People started filing in and the night was about to begin.

As a small à côté, I'd like to talk about the Jagaton for an instant. The Jagaton was our drink of choice throughout the entire tour, yet it's a drink that is known only to a select few. Equal parts Jagermeister and Tonic Water, the Jagaton gets its name from an amalgamation of the words Jagermeister and tonic, with some slight Carribean flavor added for fun. It's to be pronounced with a slight Jamaican accent. More on the Jagaton later in this story.

I took care of door duties that evening, sipping on many a Jagaton (ha! also: it should be noted that Simon Guibord, friend and Troquet waiter, makes a fine Jagaton) and greeting the overwhelming amount of people that came to see us that night. We somehow managed to fill up le Troquet, there was barely any standing room left. This was a high point without a doubt. It was great to see all these people who'd supported us over the years, all of them gathered there to send us off. Friends, acquaintances, family (my whole family came, great aunt included!) stood/sat around waiting for the music to begin.

Tunturia took the stage before us and played a great set. To say I was impressed with them, especially as they were only on their second live performance, would be an understatement. They played great tunes and turned out to be great dudes. This was a positive omen for that aspect of the rest of the tour.

Our set was decent I believe. We played loud and proud, even getting demands for an encore. Once again, the performance aspect of the show turned out to be a success.

We even managed to sell nearly forty copies of our CD-EP as well as about ten t-shirts. More victories than you can shake a stick at, I tell ya. But unfortunately, the positive stops there (isn't that far enough, I hear some of you asking?)

If there's one thing that rock n' roll is vulnerable to, it's certainly the emotions of the very flawed people performing it. Without going into detail, the ensuing evening resulted in a string of events that damaged not only the emotions of individuals in the band, but some of the relationships between band members. Shit? Shit.

After a great deal more drinks and great tunes (Wilco, D'Angelo.. to name a few) courtesy of Simon, we all parted ways and went home to be greeted by the arms of the last bit decent sleep we'd get for a while. Things seemed uncertain, I was pretty fucking worried. Don't you love how I'm writing this like some kind of thrilling serial? More to come soon.