Anyway. I'm back. I have to write more things to keep my brain in check. Doing a full six months of music solid with a festival occupying every weekend since May has made me happy, sad, confused, upset, joyous, drunken, hungover and emotional. It's been a pureed up diet of cider, rum, lager, cold baked beans drunk directly from the tin for breakfast lunch and sometimes dinner (if i'm unlucky) rollercoaster of a ride. I'm pretty sure I should be a bit slimmer after such bouts of extreme food rationing. The guys call it the Skinny diet. I call it disgusting. But I have indulged. The darkest moment was undoubtedly the hula-hoop rav sandwich incident. Imagine taking two ready salted hula hoops and placing a single slimy ravioli from a Heinze tin between them, then imagine eating it... I know. But hungry musicians will go to any lengths to acquire a meal, especially when it's 3am and there are no other options. Here's the evidence -
Now festival season is over, it feels like something's missing. Yeah we're still doing a load of gigs but its not the same. Don't get me wrong. If you know me, you know I hate camping. There's nothing worse in my opinion, but we've been a bit spoilt with posh loo's and showers which has made it much more bearable. Not every week but mostly. Plus we get to park the car right next to the tents usually so we've got a proper base camp. It has been amazing and I miss the camaraderie of the crew all being together for days on end. What larks.
The real best bit of the summer was probably the Grand Union Narrow Boat tour. I never even contemplated going on a canal boat before. But it was such a wonderful experience, so peaceful in the countryside with all the scenery, you move so slowly on the boat, I think its something like a 4mph limit, they just don't go any faster. You don't want to either though, such a pleasure. If you want an extreme chill out, I reckon there's no finer option. All the other full time boat dwellers were helpful and lovely. Even when I crashed our vessel into another craft resulting in insurance details being swapped we still managed to befriended the injured parties and they ended up coming to the gig that night. Unbelievable.
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| Me and Tash having a drive |
The next adventure for Skinny Lister will be the Homecoming tour. The idea is to play gig's in all our home towns, so it's going to be Leicester for Max and Lorna, Brid/York for Dan, Newcastle for Tash and Hastings for me plus a number of other locations in between. We were initially going to do it on a double decker bus keeping up the theme of odd transport methods, but at this point I don't think it's going to happen. Other methods currently on the table are Rolls Royces with caravans on the back, a small fleet of Motorbikes and sidecars, or just old classic cars. But we're wrestling with the budget so I think the Roller idea might already be out of the window. We will see as Monday is the cut off date and we must be decided by then. Wish us luck.
