Welcome to the ‘Sea of Bright Lights’ tour! The celebration kicked off on album release day (Oct 26th) in Adelaide with a massive hometown launch party at an old church that had been converted into a theatre.
We performed the album live and in full from start to finish. To make it extra special, we got some of our friends involved to play all the extra parts, including our pal Luke Million, who played synth and grand piano. Yeah, that’s right, a GRAND piano! We even had a 4-piece string section (3 x violins and a cello) to play the string parts live, as well as a saxophone! In total we had 13 people on stage for some songs. And they say nothing exciting ever happens in Adelaide!…
Talking about making Adelaide exciting! The next day we played a guerilla style DIY show in the middle of Rundle Mall. It was just going to be a little acoustic, busking style thing, but we thought “arrrhhh fuck it! Lets bring our full backline!”
So we brought in the rugs from our rehearsal room, made a drum riser out of some old brick palettes we found and borrowed some scafolding to make our own backdrop. It was awesome and a shit load of fun. We managed to play a full 30-min set and sell a whole bunch of CDs before security came and shut us down. Apparently Witchery felt we were “too loud”.
Next stop was Alhambra lounge is Brisbane. The humidity up there always plays havoc with our long locks. Supporting were Melbourne’s Lurch and Chief and Brisbane girls Go Violets, who were both awesome. The night before Ricky and Edgy played an in-store at Jet Black Cat. What an absolutely fantastic record store! They also had a wicked display of our album on an old piano.
Edgy then DJd across the road at a bar called The End. We have never DJd before, but Edgy had all the moves.
Matty Stadler was clearly struggling with the Brisbane heat….
The next night got pretty messy and it ended with us visiting Pie Face (bad decision), then heading straight to the airport ready for our 5.00am flight straight to Sydney in order to be at Channel [V] at 9am (who the hell booked that for 9am??!!). We can’t really remember what happened after that. All we have is this photo of Dan and Ricky with Danny Clayton and his filthy mustache.
A few weeks before the album tour, we got the call asking if we wanted to open for The Living End for 4 nights as part of their Retrospective tour. That was obviously a no-brainer. It also meant we had to rehearse a different set. So while in Sydney, we hired a room at the Pitz (Australia’s best and most affordable rehearsal room).
Here’s a nonsense pic of Sax man Johno and Ricky riding a scooter together that we found.
The Living End show was awesome! We had to work our arses off because, well let’s face it, we were opening for the best live band in this country. We stepped our game up and gave them what they wanted – some guitar solos. Well…one guitar solo anyway. We also found out that both Ricky and Chris Cheney share a common love for the Canadian tuxedo (double denim).
We had to use the mixing desk, which looked more like the Starship Enterprise than a mixing desk.
Here’s a picture of Ricky and sound engineer Dan Woolford looking utterly confused….
Chris and Scott loved our new Baseball Ts. Here’s a couple of pics.
When we settled in, we started to get a little too comfortable, and by Friday night, we were lead astray by Woody (The Living End sound man extraordinaire, our producer and bad influence) and the rest of the band. Edgy went missing, but we found him the next day. Here’s the moment we discovered his body. Don’t fear. He’s still alive.
Next up was Newcastle, Wollongong and Sydney’s Indie Shuffle Party.
Newcastle we played a little room called the Terrace Bar. More interestingly though, we somehow decided to have dinner at some big pokies lounge thing called ‘Panthers’. When the chef saw us walk in, he threw down a saucepan in disgust. We knew we were going to be in for a bad feed, and indeed we were!
The gig though was awesome! Terrace Bar – check it out next time you’re in ‘The ‘Castle’.
Wollongong was only meant to be 3 hours away. Someone must have forgotten to factor in traffic when they told us that. Fuck you Sydney traffic!
5 hrs later, we made it to the Patch in Wollongong, but we couldn’t load in because there was a strip show happening in the band room, so we had to play the front bar. Yep, we got double booked for a strip show. Usually we would be annoyed, but when a double booking = double Ds, we let it slide…just this once.
Sydney’s FBI social presented by Indie Shuffle was a show we had been looking forward to the most on this tour and it lived up to the excitement for us. A great lineup of bands (Palms, Made in Japan , Olympic Aryes and us) and a killer night. There was even the token old drunk dude, that danced inappropriately.
See pics below…
Next up we hit our nation’s capital. Up until this point, we thought Adelaide was a bit boring at times. Canberra makes Adelaide look like the freakin’ carnivale. We got to visit Parliament House though. That was okay I guess.
Workers Club in Melbourne was an awesome room. On the drive over, Matt and Dan found this new little friend.
Finally, we hit our hometown to bring the ‘Sea of Bright Lights’ tour to Jive, supported by Bad Dreems and Jesse Davidson.
By this time, we were really starting to feel the pain of being on the road for over 5 weeks. Bodies were tired and voices were getting thin. Ricky whipped out a special acoustic version of Back to Normal.
Next up we’re off to the beautiful Byron Bay and the Gold Coast for the final shows of the tour. After that we will be unveiling our pale, white legs to soak up some rays, then finally catching up on some sleep, so I’ll have to fill you in on those a little later.
