Matt's Tour Diary

February 28th 2010

Dundee - Fat Sam's

It was a very long drive up from Sheffield – broken by a nice all-day breakfast at our favourite 'on-the-way-to-Scotland' café somewhere along the A66 - a farm shop and café complete with camel and llamas. How rock n roll can you get? We have a cool van this time - on account of the fact that our usual van suppliers let us down last minute. A quick look through the Yellow Pages yesterday found us a big blue van complete with table in the back. And for the first time ever Sam and John were also old enough to get insured on it – so after our lunch stop I was able to relax in the back and play cards with Alice and Robin. Robin likes to pride himself on his card skills but to be honest I’m not so sure.

The gig tonight was a charity fundraiser in aid of the Haiti Earthquake Appeal – and we were told it raised £15,000 for the cause – which is amazing. A local hotel is putting up all the bands for free and we were fed at a local Indian restaurant, which was great too.

So to Fat Sam’s – what a great venue. Definitely somewhere we all want to come back to as soon as possible. We were sharing a dressing room with Gary Tank Commander – what a guy. If you’re Scottish you’ll probably know who he is already, but to us English musician types, this was our first experience of him. Very funny – check him out on You Tube, he has a TV program on Scottish TV. He even shared his Cheesy Pasta with us.

We had been contacted earlier in the week by the Cairn String Quartet who asked if we wanted to play a song with them on stage. We had a short rehearsal with them in our dressing room – they had written a string part to go with our new song Cross The Water. I’ve never heard strings on one of our tracks like this – what an amazing experience. We ran through the track once and then headed for the stage – and thank you Dundee for such a great response to our music. Really great. Will be back soon.

Glasgow – Capitol

Not a long drive today – so we killed some time by driving to Perth and having a walk round. It has been sunny all day – not seen one cloud. Got some great pictures down by the river today. Adam was the only one of us who has been to Perth before and he recommended we had lunch there – and glad we did. The tour seems to be going strangely without any problems – gig was good tonight too. Smaller crowd and venue than last night but that was to be expected. Cheers to everyone at Capitol for putting on the gig and looking after us. The gig itself went well. The sound on stage was excellent tonight – that always makes such a difference. And although the turnout was fairly small, it was enough to give the place some energy and everyone seemed to really go for it.

Stirling Travelodge for the night. The castle looks good lit up against the sky.

St Andrews – Inn at Lathones

After yet another sunny and scenic drive, featuring deer and mountains (can’t complain) we checked into our 4 Star hotel rooms – this is the exciting thing about this gig. I was sharing with Sam, and we even had a log-fire in our room, which I successfully lit (I was quietly proud of this). Had an amazing meal in the attached restaurant then set up and did the gig. It was a small crowd here – you never have anything else, it’s a 50 seater venue, but it’s always billed as an exclusive kind of a show, and it’s always really amazing. Because it’s so intimate you can spend more time chatting between songs, if you want, although admittedly we don’t go in for this in a huge way. John told the story of the studio-building in return for the album deal. That seemed to go down well and we started selling merchandise in a better way tonight – which really helps. Touring is expensive and it’s sometimes hard to break-even, but we are doing okay this time. Thank you so much to everyone who drove out to Lathones on this very cold night, and thank you especially to everyone who bought themselves an album or a t-shirt, or in one very kind guy’s case, an album, a special edition album, an EP and a t-shirt – you’ve paid for us to eat lunch tomorrow ;)

Portsmouth – The Cellars

Always love coming to Portsmouth and the Cellars. Right up I want to thank Steve Pitt who organises this one each time – it’s one of the ‘rocks’ of every tour we do and without this show coming down south would be too expensive at this stage. We ate a nice big pub meal and then returned to the venue. The gig was the longest one of the tour – 2 hours. At the end Sam played a new song he had written in the van, acoustically, with no amplification. I thought this was a bit daring, but it went down really well. Will be great to get this one into the set for next time we go out on the road. Thanks so much to everyone who came down tonight – I even went back to our hostel (tonight’s accommodation) with my first ever gift from a fan – cheers for that Pete, I will read it over the rest of the tour!!

London – Bloomsbury Lanes

When you’re driving yourselves round and doing all the loading / unloading without any help, a week away can start to drag and I’ll confess for me this was the day when I felt like a night off might be good. I think arriving in London in the rain at rush hour didn’t help. However, the advantage of playing in London is that it’s always busy at gigs – and tonight was no exception. Great crowd, great venue. People seemed to really go for it – and one guy came up to talk to me after and said he had first seen me, Robin, Alice and Sam do a gig in London in 2006 and had followed the band ever since. Can’t believe the four of us have been touring together for 4 years.

Leighton Buzzard – The Wheatsheaf

This is always a strange gig – it’s effectively just a pub gig on a Friday night, but the crowd in this place come back every time we play, you see the same people, and they always give US a great night. I thought it was supposed to be the other way round, but the audience always provide the energy at this place. One lady told me after that she had bought the new album and that the thought of a DLH gig had got her through her week at work. Cheers for that! I hope you enjoyed the gig as much as we did. We did nearly two hours, and two songs as an encore. And then, covered in sweat and ready to sleep, as we began to pack up, somebody shouted: “Slackers!” Yep. Seems a bit sad that the tour is nearly over. Went back to our Luton Travelodge – lovely – and tonight Sam is eating crisps very loudly while I try to watch a film.

Sheffield – The Plug

What can I say about this gig? Maybe the best gig I have ever been lucky enough to be a part of? The energy from everyone that was in the room, audience and band, was unbelievable. Emotional night, feels like we’ve been through a lot over the last couple of years, as a band. Want to thank Alice, Sam, John, Robin and Adam for giving me an amazing couple of years and an amazing tour – and want to thank everyone who came down tonight and to all of the gigs this week.

On a final note – we drove something like 1,500 miles this week. And we got through 1,499 of those without any interactions with the police. Yet, less than a mile from home, after the gig, we managed to turn into a bus-only lane. Obviously, there was nothing else for this particular police car to be doing on a Saturday night in Sheffield, except hide in a side road waiting for a very tired rock band to drive into the said bus lane. Cheers for the fine guys!