6th of January 2013 - San Diego CA

Last post of the tour and it shouldn't be too long this time.  Apologies for the delay, but I've been enjoying some relaxing holiday time here in San Diego and have rather let the days get away from me.  To those of you who've been desperate to know how the end of the tour went, I can only say I'm sorry.

I said my emotional goodbyes to Adam and Malin and took my final bus of the tour down to LA, where my good friend from Wymeswold, Franic Rozycki, and his lovely LA-based girlfriend Oana came to collect me and take me to Amoeba Records, the largest independent record store in the world.  I managed to escape without spending too much money and managed to pick up a birthday and Christmas present for Fran, with his help.  We eventually located The Smell and, as not much was going on there, we headed out to find some gross Mexican food (my third tortilla based meal of the day - California!).  By the time we got back to the venue, Taryn had arrived.  Here's a team shot of all three of my 'fans' for the night:

A rock band played at an ear-splitting volume we were too refined/old to enjoy, so we hung out away from the stage, where it was still too loud to have a conversation.  Then I played at a more sensible/square volume, and had a lot of fun doing so.  Brannigan's Law were the band who set up the show and got me on the bill, and were one of the acts I was most looking forward to playing with.  They did a great job and were very fun and energetic on stage.  They are so young and so good and so cool that I should hate them for professional reasons, but I can't bring myself to.  Check them out.  The four of us went for a drink in a nearby bar, then Taryn and I headed back to San Diego.

Taryn and I spent the next day hanging out around the North Park neighbourhood of San Diego before heading over to the venue, Eleven, for the show.  Here I met Mike Sherk, my companion from the first US tour (unfortunately carried out in the dark pre-blogspot age and therefore not painstakingly documented online) and a friend I am always happy to catch up with, and a bunch of Taryn's friends I was excited to hang out with.  I was in very high spirits and it was fun to play in front of friends and friends of friends.  Mike joined me for a couple of songs at the end of my set and it was cool to finish off the whole adventure with him shredding along to my celebrated version of Dancing In The Dark!

That's me doing my one 'stage move'.

The main purpose of the show was to give Taryn's band The Dirty Legs one last hurrah before their bass player and singer Carrie moves up to Seattle, so emotions and alcohol consumption were running high.  They played a great, rocking, crowd-pleasing set, undaunted neither by the weird voodoo skeleton man throwing plastic sperm at them from the front of the stage, nor by the Jagermeisters forced upon them.  Here they are in their specially designed matching outfits.

Rounding out the night,  Mandarin Dynasty produced a great, playful set of Mike's terrific songs and some choice cover versions.  My tour wrap up party took place back at Taryn's place where Mike and his girlfriend Carly joined us to spin some records, drink some booze, catch up and crack jokes.  It was a great night and a wonderful way to finish what has been an incredibly fun tour.  Ups and downs as always, but definitely a hugely positive experience overall.  New Orleans aside, I thoroughly enjoyed every stop I made and even that is pretty funny in retrospect.

A thousand thankyous to all those who helped out along the way, from Brad and Mickey in Denton TX to Taryn here in San Diego and all the beautiful people in between.

Finally, as a thankyou to all my readers, particularly those enduring what sounds like an especially miserable British winter, here is a special holiday greeting card to you all

Thanks for your patience one and all.

Stay nice,
Hugh
x 

18th of December - Montara CA

Oops.  13 days seem to have gone by since I had a chance to update this, which means another pretty long update probably.  I will try to be brief.

The day after the Plymouth show, the always rad Dustin Krcatovich came to pick me up and drive me to Detroit, where we looked in some record shops and I ate my first ever 'slider', all the time fulfilling my tourist's obligation to drink in the city's faded glory.  Here it is:

Look at that faded glory.

We made it back to Ann Arbor for the show, which took place at a fun little space called The Third Death Star.  The show was very exciting for me because, as well as featuring the much celebrated Fred Thomas, it was also a comeback show of sorts for Actual Birds, the project Dustin was working on when we first met in 2004 and who produced some records I like a great deal.  On this occasion he was reimagining some of his old fits through a prism of "mid-period Psychic TV meets Erasure".  Obviously, this sounded great and I had a blast dancing and singing along.  Dustin, as ever, dressed the part and put on a great show:

 I went back to Robert and Kourtney's house for another night of expert hospitality and the next day I met up with Dustin for the ride over to Chicago.  We didn't have a show booked (Chicago seems really tough to book), but we had arranged to hang out with our friend Ally, just like last year.  We went into some record stores and I didn't spend any money again.  Good work, Hugh.  Then we had a drink in a Polish dive bar, ingratiating ourselves to the barmaid by putting some Polish Christmas music on the jukebox.  We rode over to Ally's where she was preparing a fantastic meal for us, which we fell upon gratefully, before heading out for a Chicago barcrawl, which was a little shambolic, but a lot of fun.  Several hours later, we got back to Ally's, I mixed up some harsh drinks from the dubious moonshine in her cupboard and we all piled into bed together to watch a terrible horror movie, whilst falling asleep.  It was a really fun night and it was great to see Ally again.  She is exactly the host that an itinerant musician hopes for.

Look at that cuddly, adorable thing... hugging a giant teddy bear.  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

We all went out for Chicago style pizza (it's a bit thicker; nice claim to culinary fame, Chicago), then it was time for me to take the bus to Milwaukee.  My show in Milwaukee was kind of crappy - a bar show to a decent sized crowd who were all chatting to each other (which is fine: I don't feel entitled to their attention or anything, it just makes things seem a bit pointless), but my plea for a place to stay was met by a couple of really friendly and fun, self-described "rednecks".  We stayed up, drinking bad Milwaukee beer and chatting about all sorts of things, having a great time before I tucked myself up on their grotty sofa for the night.

The next morning I rode my last megabus of the trip in to a freezing Minneapolis.  I dropped my suitcase off at the venue (Fuck Mountain!), then spent a fun few hours walking around the town, picking up some cool looking trashy hardcore 7"s from Exxtreme Noise Records, found the art gallery closed and headed back to the house.  The show was slow to get underway, but was cool when it did.  Not too many people came out for the show, but the people who did were nice.  I played what felt like a fairly entertaining show, then Mr Mons Tear (aka Lady Shaver) played a cool set of warped lo-fi Kesha style electropop (or something), resplendent in her finest finery:



A band called Strange Relations played a good set of shoe-gazey, Banshees inspired rock, then InBoil played some 'sad Christmas songs' upstairs, while I spoke on the phone to a highly entertaining Taryn J Popplewell, on the back-end of a wild, gin-fuelled work Christmas party.  By this point the snow was coming down pretty thick and fast, and I was beginning to wonder how much this might affect my getting to Seattle the next morning by plane.  When my alarm woke me up (some 95 minutes after I had gone to 'bed'), the snow was about 4" thick outside and I (inevitably) set out for the bus stop in totally the wrong direction, discovering that however great my new suitcase (really; thanks Drivers), there are some conditions that it was just not built for.  I got to the bust stop and found no sign of any buses running, which prompted me to begin panicking pretty hard about missing my flight.  A friendly passer-by gave me the number for a taxi-firm, I swallowed the bitter taste of my second expensive airport taxi-ride of the trip and made it to the airport in something approaching comfort, in spite of my drivers disregard for the icy conditions.

After a  long day's travel, changing planes in Denver, I found myself in Seattle with no show set up, but a place to stay with Zach Burba, somebody with whom I have many friends in common, so was fairly confident would turn out to be great.  He didn't disappoint, looking after me admirably, and showing me a fun night in Seattle, going to a show at the local radio station and staying up for a few drinks with his lovely, enthusiastic housemates back at their place.

I was pretty excited about the following day, heading up to Bellingham WA to play with Girl Guts at Lil' Wisconsin.  This was a repeat of one of the most fun shows on the last tour and turned out very nicely again.  We picked up some free pizza from the pizza place Andrew Wild works at, then went back to his place to drink beer, eat pizza and listen to Black Flag; a pretty great combination as the smart ones among you will already know.  After a little while people started turning up and the show got underway.  Two young local bands played sets of slightly jazz-inflected post-rock, I played a set featuring the great Girl Guts as my effective and surprisingly sympathetic backing band, then it was time for the main event.  Girl Guts were great last year, but they were even better this time out, equally raucous but with a little more nuance to their songs I guess.  Fun times and a sweaty, moshy crowd topped off a beautiful night.  Here's me and Andrews Beer and Wild from the band.

Andrew Beer was kind enough to let me stay at his place and even to wake up early enough to feed me breakfast and drive me to the train station for my first ever trip to Canada (unless you count my 7 hour layover in Toronto airport, but let's not).  The train journey was beautiful enough to discourage me from adding to the two and a half hours of sleep I had and I made it through immigration and customs without any of the problems I had been worried about to find myself in a very wet Vancouver.  I strolled around in the rain, looking in some thrift stores and eating excellent Thai food until Hassan, one of the people I was going to play with offered to come and pick me up, which I gladly accepted.  I took a shower at his place and pulled out my reserve pair of shoes (extravagant packing, but ultimately a great idea), leaving my Puma MTV Yo! Raps to dry out.  We went out to meet Rose Melberg (another performer for the show) and her boyfriend John at a Chinese restaurant before heading to the show.  Rose has been active in the indie-pop world for a long time and has made some records that I really love, but her friendliness made it easy not to be starstruck.

The show was at a house called The Mansion which was nice in a rundown sort of way and the show there was a lot of fun.  Rose played some songs by herself, then some with John as their new project, Imaginary Pants.  I managed to persuade Rose to play some drums with me, which she did spectacularly well.  Here we are playing together:

I don't know what I'm bellowing, but it looks like people are finding it very amusing.  That could just be the accent though I guess.  Hassan Li played a really cool set afterwards, including a great Abner Jay cover.  After the show, Rose and John, their friend Tory and I all went back to her house to drink beer and tequila, listen to records and stay up late talking.  It was a lot of fun.  I went to sleep with my alarm set for one hour of sleep before I had to dash off to take the train to Olympia.  My body had finally had enough of me putting it through that kind of crap though and refused to comply, meaning I woke up a clear 3 hours after my train had left, suddenly terrified and with no idea where I was or why.  'Luckily', my show in Olympia had fallen through, so I didn't really need to be there.  I spent some time hungoverly searching for a solution to the problem and discovered I could take a train the following morning which would get me to Salem OR in time for my show there the following day.  Feeling much relieved, I was able to enjoy a relaxing day in Vancouver, giving myself a haircut, wallking around beautiful Queen Elizabeth Park, getting some Christmas shopping done and, spending an evening hanging out with Rose and her ten year old son, Sam, playing Wii and watching Rudolph and getting a very welcome early night.

My Canadian travel disasters were not at an end yet, however, as the ticket officer at the station pointed out by highlighting that I didn't have a ticket from Vancouver BC, but from Vancouver WA.  This is what happens when you do things like that hungover I guess.  It wasn't cheap or easy, but I managed to arrange a route that would still get me to Salem in time for the show.  I am still drafting my letter demanding that one of the Vancouvers change its name, but I'm not sure who I need to send it to.

In Salem, I played with Election Year and Whiskey Priest in the beautiful home of Alex and Jen Carmichael.  It was a lot of fun to play in front of a smallish but attentive crowd, and everyone I met was fun to hang out with.  I was sorry I didn't get a chance to see Salem at all, because it looked like a nice little town.  The next morning, I got a good breakfast and a packed lunch for my trip, then a mad dash to the Greyhound station where I caught my bus to Medford with seconds to spare.

My show in southern Oregon was in Jacksonville, a tiny little goldrush boomtown that was pretty cute in a hokey sort of way, and fun to stroll around in.

I played in a cafe with a band called The Seaons.  These guys are young, good looking, talented, enthusiastic and commited to what they do.  They even have screaming girls at their shows.  They were really sweet kids, put on a fun show and were game enough to do a few songs as my backing band, which was great.  The only problem we encountered was in our difference in opinion about Coldplay.  Anyway, it was a fun show, and I had fun hanging out with the band and their manager/soundman/roadie/dad, Dave.  The weirdest part of the night was when I got back to Dave's house and found his dog was so terrified of me that it pissed itself when I walked in and couldn't stand to be anywhere near me.  Animals are always the first to know, huh?

I took a bus the next morning down to Sacramento, where I did some more wandering around in the pissing rain (don't believe everything the TV tells you about California), waiting for my dear friends Adam and Malin to come and pick me up for our show in Davis.  We arrived at the Robot Rocket Residence as "the first band every to turn up early for a show" (except for Generifus who beat us to it), and went out to eat some bad Mexican food, toying with the idea of turning up again at 1 am just to prove that we're not squares.  Because we are squares, we went back at around 7:30, just in time to catch Night Hikes play a good set of Will Oldham inspired indie-folk songs.  Generifus was a sweet guy and had some cool sounding songs, and then it was Adam Lipman's turn.  I know Adam will probably read this, so I don't want to be too nice about him, but he played a great set of his great songs.  So far all of the acts had played really cool concise sets of around 6 songs, so it made sense that the next guy would play crappy blues songs for an hour.  I played about 6 songs, then the blues guy decided he ought to play some more.  Adam was so horrified and amused that he forgot to take his guitar when we dashed out of the door.

Here's Adam playing:

 

We went back to Adam's mum's house in magical Half Moon Bay and sat in the hot tub for a couple of beers and to catch up a little beneath the stars before hitting the sack.  The next day, we went back to Adam and Malin's place here in Montara and started preparing for the big house show that night.  These preparations mainly revolved around making glögg, an operation involving a quite staggering amount of booze.  This and the other tasks involved in setting up the flat for the show were accompanied by a the consumption of a not inconsiderable amount of booze, leaving one member of the party in need of a restorative sleep-break before the first guests had even arrived.  The guests rolled in, but not as thick as the excuses from people saying they weren't coming, meaning there were ultimately only three people who showed up!  Adam felt pretty bad about organising an 'unsuccessful' show, but I reassured him that this was far from a failure and reminded him of some of the shows we played together last year.  We all had fun sitting around drinking and jawing and Adam and I didn't bother disturbing people's conversations with more than 4 or 5 songs between us, including a couple from our forthcoming country album.  We stayed up late playing cards, drinking and cracking jokes for each other and I'd be hard pressed to describe the show as anything other than a roaring success, despite it lacking most of the characteristics of 'a show'.

The next day was a bit of a struggle for all involved, but we got through it by doing some Christmas shopping in Berkeley, eating sub-par Indian food and, for those who could stay awake, watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  Today, Adam and I went for a walk along the beautiful coast here and doing a photo shoot for his new record here before he had to go to work.  I've been enjoying having a leisurely day off, taking a bath, tidying up the hungover hatchet job I did on my haircut in Vancouver and generally doing not very much apart from listening to Adam's records and slogging away at this blog.

Tomorrow I head down to LA for a show I'm pretty excited about at The Smell with a great sounding band called Brannigans Law whom I've been looking forward to seeing since the show was set up a few months ago.  I also get to hang out with Oana Marian and maybe Franic Rozycki if he's town, as well as the magnificent Taryn J Popplewell, who's going to take me down to San Diego for the final show of the tour on Thursday, which is sure to be a stormer.

 So the good news is that, with only two shows left, the next update can't possibly be as long as this one!  Thanks for bearing with me, internet.

Much love,
Hugh

Plymouth, Michigan - 5th of December

OK!  Hopefully I can bring y'all up to speed without having to stretch my update out to dissertation length this time.  Straight to it:

New York City is possibly my favourite place on earth to hang out in, but it's kind of difficult to get a good show there, so I had mixed luck on my four nights in the city.  The first one was last Monday, when I stopped in to play at Nick's open mic night at No Fun in the lower east side of Manhattan.  Almost every other performer was a 'comedian', and I only heard one thing that was recognisable as a joke all night.  It was really cringey, but kind of inadvertently entertaining.  And it was all worth sitting through in order to hear my friend Mike Rechner (from Prewar Yardsale) sing a couple of his terrific songs.  I rode the metro down to Ridgewood in Queens, where I stayed with friends Brandon and Linda (whom students of this blog will remember from Caponegro Urological Associates).  Their kind hospitality was rounded off by the offer of an umbrella as I was about to leave the house in the pissing rain.  Even in the cold and the rain it was fun walking around Manahattan to get to the megabus stop, and it was great to get the front seat on the upper deck for views of the city as the rain turned into snow.

I got into Providence in the late afternoon and met up with Chris Howard, an old friend from my undergraduate days.  We had a couple of drinks and some dinner in town and then walked over to the venue, a nice little art space, where we found an 8-piece saxophone outfit rehearsing.  I was added to the bill for the show by my friend Brendon from the excellent band Vio/Miré and it was fun to see him again.  My set was marred by controversy.  No really.  I made some joke about my songs being homophobic, the sarcasm of which apparently did not translate to the audience as I found out when somebody told me afterwards that I had "offended a lot of people".  This confused and upset me a lot and I'm still not too sure what to make of the episode.  It would probably be to everybody's benefit if I learned the lesson "don't ever tell jokes on stage", but unfortunately that seems unlikely.  Apart from that unsavoury incident, the rest of the evening was fun.  Paul Baribeau and Vio/Miré were both great and the sax band were pretty fun too.  Chris and I rode the train back to Boston, subtly supping from his hip-flask and stayed up late drinking, playing Pro Evolution Soccer, ineptly jamming and somehow managing to get crisps and salsa all over ourselves and his flat, as we discovered the next morning.

Here's me playing in Providence, my face aflame with hatred for people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer.

The next day was spent pleasantly if somewhat hungoverly in Cambridge MA, hanging out at the secret headquarters of Chris' company, playing ping pong, strolling around, eating good vegetarian food and generally having a nice relaxing day off.  It was great to see Chris again and I left Boston owing him several beers and at least two meals.  Thanks, Chris.  I hope I get a chance to repay some of your generosity next year.

After Boston I went back down to New York for three days.  My first show was at Goodbye Blue Monday, a cool bar in Brooklyn, with A Brief View of the Hudson, Sam James and the mighty Prewar Yardsale.  It was great to meet Sam, whom I have heard much about and I enjoyed his set a lot.  ABVOTH were a lot of fun too, and Prewar Yardsale were great, playing a rollicking set with new member Luke adding some shreddy guitar to the mix.  Here they are in action.  Nobody plays the upturned bucket like Dina.

 
The next two shows were both at a bar called Leftfield in the lower east side.  My first ever residency.  The first show was a lot of fun and I particularly enjoyed the sets from Brook Pridemore and Rachel Laitman.  I had a heckler in the crowd too, which I always enjoy a lot.  I hung around waiting to get paid, then when I got bored of waiting I went back to Ridgewood and joined Brandon for a drink at his favourite German style beer hall.  The next day's show was OK but fewer people and less fun.  Across my NYC shows, I probably spent three times as much money on beer as I made from playing, but this tour was never supposed to make financial sense.  I had a really fun few days walking around New York and it was great to hang out with Brandon and Linda some more in their beautiful appartment in wonderful Ridgewood.

From New York, I took a long Megabus ride to Pittsburgh, where I met some of the friendliest pan handlers I've come across.  Otherwise, downtown Pittsburgh was eerily deserted, but I figured out which bus to take to get to the venue in the south of the city.  I was distracted by the chatty man on the bus who told me he is probably going to prison tomorrow and asking if he could start a postal correspondence with me (of course!) and got off a few stops too early,but eventually figured out where I needed to go.  The venue was in the basment of a weird old 70's house and is run by some super sweet punk kids, whose enthusiasm and friendliness was quite touching.  Average Joey played a set of passionate, angry, political and somewhat navel-gazing songs, which was way better than those adjectives suggest.  He was great.  Then a local band called Breezewood played a fun set which had people dancing.  I borrowed their drummer for my set, which I enjoyed a lot and seemed to go down well.  Then this happened:

That's Dylan, who set up the show.  I'm pretty sure it's just an unfortunate coincidence that it looks like the entire audience is asleep, because I remember people enjoying it a lot!  He is a really sweet guy and has some great songs.  He also busted out a pretty awesome Mountain Goats cover at my request.  We stayed up later than was wise and I ended up setting my alarm for 2 and a half hours of sleep.  Luckily the megabus was almost empty the next morning so I actually got to lie down and supplement my sleeptime a little en route to Ann Arbor.

Ann Arbor is a cool town to the east of Detroit and a place I have always had a good time.  My friend Robert from Cardiff met me for lunch and a drink and was kind enough to take my suitcase off my hands so that I could walk around town unfettered for the afternoon.  I took advantage of this, looking through the record stores and strolling around the pretty downtown area, where I later met my good friend Dustin Krcatovich.  We walked around some more and had a pint before Robert finished work and drove me back to Plymouth, where we engaged in our mutual number one pass-time: drinking beer, chatting and listening to records.  We went out for dinner where I was regaled with the utterly bananas story of how he and his girlfriend Kourtney met and got engaged in Las Vegas, then sat at home and drank too much whilst listening to more records and having Bruce Springsteen singalongs.

The next day I took my hangover for a stroll around Plymouth and enjoyed some downtime before Robert got home from work.  Robert set up a show for us at a great little guitar shop by his house and this turned out to be a lot of fun.  Robert played a great set, featuring a surprise Peaches cover.  I played a fun set, with real life requests from the audience, which is always a little disquieting, then Robert's friend Chris played some jammy guitar songs before we all retired to Herman's Bar for some well earned refreshment.  Robert and I won a civil war rematch on the pool table, they had Leon Redbone on the jukebox and the beer was as good as the company.  A few people came back to Robert's where we did more drinking and record spinning before bed time.

Robert and I posing for the cover of our forthcoming collaborative LP: Big Buck Hunters.

Today I have a show in Ann Arbor with Dustin's reformed Actual Birds project, which I am incredibly excited about, and local songwriting legend Fred Thomas.  Also on the cards: trips to Detroit and Chicago with Dustin before my next show in Milwaukee on Friday.

OK.  Thanks for reading.  Any questions?

Philadelphia, PA - 26th November 2012

Dear Internet,

Sorry for the delay between posts.  I'm sure many of you have been frustatedly refreshing the site over the past week in the hope of more news, dumb stories and needlessly detailed accounts of my more mundane activities, but I haven't had a chance to sit down at a computer for a while.  Here I am though, in a student house in Philadelphia, with time to kill and a lot to catch up on.  Which means I probably need to apologise for this being a long post too.  Feel free to skip through and just look at the photos or whatever.

Alright.  Berrrminghamm, Alabama.  The show here took place at the Spring Street Firehouse, which is where Eric, the guy setting up the show lives.  I met up with him and we hung out for a little bit, before we rode over to Piggly Wiggly (yeah, that's right, Piggly Wiggly) to buy some beer.  Eric wouldn't let me pay.  He's a sweetheart.  We drank some of those beers and I chatted with people arriving for the show.  I played an OK set and people seemed to enjoy it.  I can't remember the name of the next guy who played, but the internet seems to suggest he was called Leeris Perth.  Maybe he was.  Anyway, he was good, but I would have liked less reverb so that I could hear his songs.  Then a fun middle-aged surf-rock band called The High Fidelics played a really fun set.  Side note: I am becoming very used to being the oldest person in the room when I play a show, which maybe explains why I make an allusion to their age, but nobody else's.  Anyway, I was drinking and having a fun time the whole show, then we went out to a bar across the street, where we sat around cracking bad jokes.  I had another drink that I really didn't need with Eric's housemate back at their place, then it was definitely bed-time.  I woke up with my first significant hangover of the tour, but it felt good to have blasted away the malaise accrued in New Orleans.

The next show was in Atlanta.  I got in to town in the mid-afternoon and was picked up by my host for the night, Angel.  He'd just been leading 150 people on a 7 mile hike, so was ready for a nap by the time we got back to his flat.  He went ahead and took one and I strolled around Atlanta, watching the sun go down from beautiful Piedmont Park

    

 and eating a great pizza topped with salad.  Salad!  My friend David once described salad as being like a shower for your insides.  It felt good.  Angel and I met up with some of his friends at a super fancy coffee place, then I headed over to Wonderroot for the show.  This was a roaring success and probably the most fun show of the tour so far, packed with enthusiastic kids, exciting local punk bands and people commited to making sure touring musicians get treated well.  Locals Spray Tan and Jebediah Springfield, plus touring Floridians Awkward Age all played great sets.  Here's Jebediah Springfield's imposing looking, but very friendly singer in action:

I couldn't get a ride back to Midtown where I was staying, so I walked about three and a half miles to get there, which was pretty nice and not as scary as some of the kids at the show had suggested it would be.  I ummed and ahhed about whether to accept Angel's invitation to meet him and his friends in a local bar or just go to bed, but convinced myself with some pretentious idea about the reason why I am actually doing this tour that I needed to go for a drink.  The bar turned out to be The Eagle, Atlanta's #1 gay dance spot.  I've been out dancing in gay clubs before, but this was a whole other level.  Lots of flesh and leather and sweat and blaring disco-house, and lots and lots of fun.  I stayed for about an hour at which point I was feeling a little overwhelmed and went back to Angel's to get a few hours' sleep before my early bus-ride out of town.  Atlanta!  A great time.

From Atlanta I went to Jacksonville, Florida, for another interesting, though slightly less fun time.  I ate a picnic in a nice little park full of homeless people, killed some time in the library, strolled along the riverfront, taking ANOTHER moody sunset photo for you all to enjoy:

then stopped in for a drink in a novelty Irish bar, where I met an affable drunk named Tom, with whom I chatted until it was time to head to the venue.  There was nothing much going on there, so I fugured I'd go out and find something to eat.  Apparently the only nearby option was Burger King.  I probably don't need to describe the meal.  Back at the venue, a couple of people had turned up for the show and some kid was playing woeful widdly widdly guitar on the dingy stage.  My host, James (another guy from the Couchsurfing web-site) was there, as was Tom from the bar.  James was really sweet, but Tom's drunken affability had crossed the border to lecherousness and he became pretty weird: "God you're trim; do you mind if I lift up your shirt for a second?"  I politely declined.  Anyway, I played a short set to nobody, but kind of enjoyed myself anyway, then haggled with the good natured bar-man about getting paid, took my $43 and ran away as fast as I could.  Back at James' place we drank some good wine and played songs to each other on his computer.  It was great.

I had no show the next day, so I rode the Greyhound up to Macon, Georgia (sitting on 40% of a seat, next to an enormously fat man) where I at least had a place to stay, with another Angel, this one female.  She was very nice and took me out for a drink with some of her friends.  I had another early start the next day to get to Greenville, South Carolina.  Greenville seems like a nice little town and my show there was in the house of a local promoter and film-maker named Dan.  He was kind enough to come and pick me up when my suitcase (guaranteed for three years: fit for the 'trash' after three weeks) broke and couldn't be dragged along any more without much mental anguish and loud swearing.  Dan was working hard at smoking a turkey and putting together other food for the evening's get together, so I walked over to a nearby record store and quite spectacularly broke my vow not to buy any records until California, but still only picked up a fraction of the things I wanted in there.  Back at Dan's I hung out with the evening's other performer the lovely Patrick, with whom I worked on a cover of 'Dancing In The Dark' which we later performed.  The show was a lot of fun: an older crowd of friendly, appreciative people, many of whom brought along delicious food to share.  Patrick played a great though short set, and, after the dessert course I played.  Then, in case this sounds like it's a little too grown up, a select few of us stayed up 'til 5 am drinking whiskey and talking nonsense about music, films, girls and other important stuff like that.

OK.  You're still reading?  Then I'll carry on.  Sorry.  Next up: Thanksgiving!  My show in Greensboro, North Carolina, was cancelled because it was apparent nobody was going to show up to a show in a quiet college town the day before Thanksgiving.  I wasn't too bothered about this, because I had a really great looking place to stay, through another couchsurfing hook-up, Dean.  He picked me up from the station with his wife an daughter, and we all went for a drink in a local bar before heading back to their farmhouse outside of town.  This was designed and organised by Dean himself, on the farm where his wife, Laurel, grew up, and it was a great house, set in some beautiful land.  They were great hosts throughout my two days in Greensboro, and it was great to sleep in a big, clean bed.  I even had an en-suite bathroom.  Dean and I stayed up to have another drink and sing some songs to each other before I crawled gratefully between the sheets.

I was excited about the next day, as I have never really experienced a Thanksgiving before and I was delighted to be invited along to Laurel's family's get-together.  There were about 20 assorted family members present and each one of them was lovely.  I ate a great meal and had a lot of fun hanging out and talking to people.  We went for a walk through the beautiful woodlands, I ate three different kinds of dessert (out of politeness you understand) and I played a couple of songs, as did the other musicians, including a Brazillian guy called Zekcker (sp?) who sang a protest song he'd written back in the 60's!  Here are some photos of my Thanksgiving experience:

I'm not sure if it's a universally recognised Thanksgiving tradition, but later we all watched the stupid but great film The Three Amigos!  The icing on the hospitality cake came the next morning when I was presented with a suitcase to replace my broken one.  Huge thanks to the Driver family!

From Greensboro, I headed up to Richmond, where I played in a punk house called Bauhaus Haus.  This was another fun show, though the sleeping arrangements were significantly less hygienic.  I played a fun show with a good Q&A session, going in both directions ("Am I still in the south?" "Kind of!" - "Is it true ya'll are gonna rise again?").  A band of lovely Canadians called Freak Heat Waves, (who've been on tour for about 11 weeks and still get along!) played, then a loud sludgy band called Glass Pennies, then local favourites The Blue Rajahs.  Here they are in action:

I didn't have a show the next day, but luckily my friend Andrew from Candyland in Columbia (see post from last tour if you can be bothered) was staying with his parents in Washington DC, and he invited me to stay there.  It was great to see him and hang out with his lovely, hilarious family.  I played bad Scrable, drank bad beer, ate a great meal, then we went out to a crazily-expensive bar, where I blew about three nights worth of show-money on a round of drinks.  Ho hum.

Here's a fun photo I took on my way out of DC the next morning:

 Ha.

Alright.  Nearly done.  From DC I rode the Megabus to Philadelphia, where I spent a few hours walking around in the freezing cold.  I found a Trader Joe's, which is the best foodstore in the states and stocked up on edible foods, ate a good picnic with numb fingers, and headed over to Mount Thrashmore, the venue.  The show here was an amalgamation of two separate shows which had been booked, so there were a lot of bands playing.  Touring bands Sleeping Weather, Sweet Weapons and Level Up, along with locals Trunks & Tales and Spanish Club.  Surprisingly, for such a full bill, everyone was good!  Here are Sleeping Weather:

 

I had fun hanging out chatting with people, played a fun set, then headed back to Jake's house where I was given the biggest slice of pizza I'd ever seen, which I ate while listening to Jonny Cash.  Then I went to sleep, then I woke up and started writing this blog.  An eternity later, here we are.  You're up to date.  You're bored.  I'm going to take a shower, then go to New York City.  Woop woop.

Thanks and sorry.

Yours,
Hugh
x  

Birmingham, Alabama - 16th November 2012

(You have to pronounce it BirmingHAM in order to distinguish from England's drabbest city.)

I'm in a public library and I am sleepy and I feel like I maybe don't look or smell too good, but I'm feeling pretty good otherwise.  Here's what's been going down:

The rest of my stay in Denton was great.  Brad and Micky continued to be excellent and fun hosts, and Brad doubled as a chauffeur, driving me around town to get some things organised.  On Monday I walked around in the suddenly pretty chilly Texas sunshine and ate in a novelty cowboy themed diner which, maybe on reflection, was only a novelty to me amongst its patrons.  That evening we ate some fine American cuisine, pictured below:

 

I also tried to make a curry, only to find that you seemingly can't buy curry spices in America.  I made something anyway, and it didn't taste too bad.  We also played a weird nerdy boardgame, where you had to settle a mythical land or something.  It was stupid but also fun.  I was rubbish at it.  It looked like this:

On Tuesday I rode the Megabus over to Austin.  Megabus!  Megabus in America is way better than both Megabus in the UK and the, more prevalent Greyhound over here.  The buses are clean and usually on time, both of which are far from guaranteed with Greyhounds.  Anyway, I got in to Austin and walked a couple of miles to Trailerspace records, where I was greeted with a cup of tea and a rerun of the Chelsea vs Shaktar Donetsk game on TV.  I felt right at home.  Trailerspace is a great little record store which doubles as a venue and hangout spot for skateboard kids and the occasional homeless person selling pecan nuts.  Kids started showing up and it was fun hanging out drinking Lone Star beers and whiskey, looking through the records and waiting for the show to start.

I played first and it went just fine, though nobody was especially enthusiastic.  I am starting to remember how to play some of my songs a bit better, but it's still a little sloppy at times.  A couple of other guys joined me for the last song, on cello and drums, which I thought sounded pretty great.  The other bands were Bitter Birds, who were cool and had a great drummer, and Quin Galvais + friends.  Quin is the guy who set up the show and he was really friendly and cool and I enjoyed watching his set whilst hanging out with his mom.

I had a place to stay organised with a woman called Pish on Couchsurfing.  She came to pick me up after the show and we stopped to get a cup of tea and have a chat before heading back to her place.  This turned out to be a trailer in a real life Texan trailer park, which was pretty exciting to me.  A 1985 custom built somethingorother, which is apparently much sought after.  It was certainly comfortable enough to get a good night's sleep in, undistrubed by her hilarious little, totally spoiled dogs.  Pish was a fascinating person to spend a few hours with and our conversation covered a lot of ground, including raw veganism, parking lots you're allowed to speak in and something called 'orgasmic meditation', which I assured her I will look into, as it apparently has a growing following in London!

The next day it was back on the Megabus to Houston.  I had another long-ish walk to the venue... SUPER HAPPY FUN LAND.  How could I not be excited?  I played at SHFL on my first tour, way back in 2004, to an audience of zero, which I was a little concerned might happen again, especially when I discovered that my deadly songwriting rival 'Sir' Paul McCartney was playing in town the same night.  I needn't have worried though, because the awesome headlining act, Branagan brought quite a few friends along.  I booked Branagan for this show myself because I thought they sounded great and they put on a great show, which I failed to adequately capture on camera:

Also on the bill was Kara Melton, who had a bunch of intriguing songs and a sofa she was happy for me to sleep on, although I was only able to do this for a couple of hours by the time we got there.  Anyway she was lovely and very accomodating, as was Debs from Branagan, who very kindly drove back in to Houston from her home in Sugar Land TX(!) in order to drop off the copies of my album which had been shipped to her address too late for her to bring them to the show.  I'm hoping I get to repay some of this generosity when she visits London next year.

Houston then, was pretty great all round.  I even got through my set without any fuckups.  On to New Orleans in high spirits, destined to be royally shat upon... First of all I had to sit on a frotty Greyhound for almost 8 hours, which at least gave me a chance to catch up on some sleep.  Greyhound bus stations always seem to be in the sketchiest parts of town, and New Orleans really exemplified this.  I live in the Knife Crime Capital of England, but I never feel remotely threatened walking around Peckham, whereas my 5 minute walk to The Big Top left me feeling pretty uneasy.  Anyway, I felt better when I arrived at the venue, a cool little gallery space with a stage for live music, run by friendly volunteers.  Unfortunately, that stage was not to see any live music on this particular night.  There were supposed to be two local bands on the bill, but only of them showed up, and none of their friends/fans came out to see them.  This meant we were reliant on my New Orleans fan base to fill the venue.  So the show was cancelled.  I also didn't have anywhere to sleep, which, after many attempts to figure something out, meant I ended up sleeping on a gross couch in the corridor of some skanky appartments upstairs from the venue.  This is what it looked like:

To add to the fact that it was filthy and very brightly lit, the residents of flat #2 decided to have some fun with me in the night.  The highlight of their general drunken obnoxiousness was when one of them came out with a 10" meat cleaver and asked me if I have a weapon, assuring me I was likely to need one, though I'm not sure whether he meant because of him or some other threat.  I'm pretty sure it was all just a joke, but I didn't sleep much anyway.  I've never been so glad to get up at 5:30 am.

Today, I rode the extremely comfortable AMTRAK train out to Alabama, feeling very glad indeed to be leaving New Orleans behind.  I got a lift out to this part of town from a friendly local, who was kind enough to give me a lowdown of the town's "gentlemen's clubs".  One of them is apparently "the country club of titty bars".  Great?  I bought some good bread, to go with the surprisingly good cheese (what's up, America?) and had a great picnic in a beautiful park just by the library here:

...then came inside to update this.  I have no idea what sort of show to expect tonight, but pretty much anything will be an improvement on yesterday.

Anyway, I am still having a good time all in all, and I am happy to be here.

OK.  I'm out of time on this computer.

More soon.  Keep in touch.

Hugh

x

Denton TX. At it again (11th November 2012)

Hey everyone.

Yes, I am going out on tour in the USA again.  Maybe that's unimaginative, and I know there are other countries in the world, but whatever.  Here I am again anyway.  Which means I am resurrecting this blog for you, my lucky readers.

Right now I am in Denton, Texas, which some of you will know is the gateway to The Promised Land.  For those of you who weren't aware of this ("Don't you boys know nothin'? The USA is the centre of JerUSAlem..."), I suggest you find out before it's too late, maybe starting here:



OK.  Here's what's happened so far:
I set out from Peckham at 5am on Friday morning, feeling confident that I was forgetting something super important and feeling sick with excitement and apprehension.  I rode the bus up to Holborn, listening to the mixes for my new record and hoping that I wouldn't hear any terrible mistakes, since I had just finished making it the day before and arranged for 100 copies to be sent to Houston.  There are plenty of mistakes on there, but none I can't live with.  If anybody wants to hear it, they can do so at http://hughjohnnoble.bandcamp.com/album/from-the-quill-of-hugh-john-noble 

My flight out of Heathrow was delayed by an  hour, which meant I missed my connecting flight from Toronto to Dallas Fort Worth by ten minutes.  That gave me six hours to kill in Toronto airport; a place with about seven minutes' worth of entertainment to be had.  Then THAT flight was also delayed by an hour, meaning I had bonus time in Toronto and I got in to DFW at about ten PM, leaving me with no choice but to take a taxi all the way up to Denton if I was going to have any chance of making it in time for my show at Rubber Gloves.  It was expensive, but I made it.

The show was fun.  I was feeling surprisingly sprightly on the back of a 26 hour journey, and the kids setting up the show, Evan and Matt, were really friendly, as were the guys from the Austin TX bands Knifights & Moving Castles whom I hung out with.  My set was a little rocky, since I have a bunch of new songs I haven't practiced and a bunch of old songs I've forgotten, but I mostly got through without too much trouble and it was a lot of fun chatting with the crowd, something I probably did a little too much of.  My Phil Collins joke bombed, but no matter.  There weren't many people at the show, but they were all really friendly and appreciative that I'd come out to play for them.  This is a shot that Evan took, just before I broke a string on the guitar I borrowed and promised not to damage:

After the show I went back to the house of this guy Brad Dougher who kindly agreed to host me through the 'Couchsurfing' website.  I got really lucky on this front, because Brad has turned out to be an excellent host and a great guy to hang out with.  He is something that many British people would struggle to imagine: a very proud truck-driving Texan who loves Lynrd Skynrd and shooting guns, who is also very broad minded and liberal and terrified of Mitt Romney.  In short, he's wonderful.  We stayed up drinking bad beer and listening to great records and then he was kind enough to give up his bed to me, which I entered gratefully.

The next day I met Brad's lovely house-mate, Micky, and we all went to watch a roller derby bout!  This may seem like an odd thing to do, and it certainly felt like it, but the pull of the free beer and live music was what sucked is in.  Roller derby is weird and confusing, but it felt great to be in Texas with good people, enjoying free (terrible) beer in the sunshine.  I also got to eat a creme brulee flavoured almond.  America!  It was rancid.  We drove back in to Denton and went for a stroll around town.  Denton is a lovely place and almost as magical as I imagined it would be after ten years of obsessively listening to Lift To Experience and fantasising about the place.  We went to a bar and drank some (much better) beer, looked in a great bookstore, then I went over to the venue for the show, J & J's Pizza.  This was another sparsely attended show, but also another fun one.  I got some free pizza and some free (terrible!) beer, which I enjoyed while the kids who set up the show, Death In The West, played a cool set.  Hunter and Chris from this band, joined me for most of my set, which was a little more shambolic than the previous night's one and a whole lot louder, but was enjoyable.  There was more drinking after the show and then another night in Brad's bed, since he passed out on the sofa and was impervious to my attempts to get him to wake up and sleep in his own room.

Today!  It is Sunday and I've been trying to organise some places to stay in other towns that I am visiting.  If my future hosts are as welcoming and entertaining as Brad and Micky, it's going to be a great tour.  I don't have another show until Tuesday, in Austin TX, and it feels nice to have a couple of days to relax and get things organised, because I have been so busy the past few weeks, getting my album finished and trying to frantically fill out the dates for the tour.  It feels great to be here and I am really excited about the rest of this trip.

Here is what's coming up:

Tue 13 Austin, TX

Trailerspace w/ Quin Galvais & Bitter Birds

Wed 14 Houston, TX

Super Happy Fun Land w/Branagan, Jim & The Toms, Kara Melton, Maddy Adeleye

Thu 15 New Orleans/Baton Rouge, LA

The Big Top (w/ Ebro + Pancake)

                       

Fri 16 Birmingham, AL

Spring Street Firehouse

                                                           

Sat 17 Atlanta, GA

Wonderroot w/  Jebediah Springfield, Awkward Age, Spray Tan

                                               

Sun 18 Jacksonville, Fl

Burro Bar

                       

Mon 19 Macon GA, Savannah GA

Help!

                                   

Tue 20 Greenville, SC

Something through Daniel McCord

                                                                                   

Wed 21 Greensboro, NC

The Flatiron

Thu 22 Greensboro, NC (Thanksgiving?)

Thanksgiving – day off

Fri 23 Richmond, VA

Bauhaus Haus

                                                                       

Sat 24 Annapolis, MD

200 Year Old Barn w. Koala Tea Time

                                                                       

Sun 25 Philadelphia, PA           

Jake Baseball's basement

           

Mon 26 New York, NY

Some open mic thing through Dina

                                                                                   

Tue 27 Boston, MA

TBC/Help!
                                                            

Wed 28 Providence, RI

                                               

Thu 29 New York

Goodbye Blue Monday w/ Churchill Downs, Sam James (The Wowz)                                                                            

Fri 30 New York

Brooklyn Fire Proof w/ Brook Pridemore, Dan & Rachel, American Opera

Sat 1 New York, NY

Left Field in the Lower east side w/ Rare Books, Mobile Wash Unit, Goodbye Ivan

Sun 2 Pittsburgh, PA

Dylan ‘Wolf’ Bahney’s basement         

Mon 3 Cleveland, OH

Help!

Tue 4 Detroit, MI

TBC/Help!

Wed 5 Ann Arbor, MI

TBC/Help!

Thu 6 Chicago, IL

TBC/Help!

Fri 7 Milwaukee, WI

Riverwest Public House

Sat 8 Minneapolis

Fuck Mountain

Sun 9 Seattle, WA

something with Zach Burba

Mon 10 Bellingham, WA          

Girl Guts House!

Tue 11 Vancouver, BC

House show w/ Rose Melberg, Bleating Hearts

Wed 12 Olympia, WA

The Northern

Thu 13 Salem, OR                                                                               

Possum House

Fri 14 Medford, OR

Something with The Seasons hopefully

Sat 15 Davis, CA

Robot Rocket Residence

Sun 16 Half Moon Bay, CA

Hangout with Adam Lipman, maybe play a show

Mon 17 San Francisco, CA

Something w/ A Girl Named T, hopefully

Tue 18 San Luis Obispo, CA

Rodi’s friend’s house or one of the cafes, hopefully

Wed 19 Los Angeles, CA

The Smell w/ Brannigans Law

Thu 20 San Diego, CA
Tin Can Alehouse w/ The Dirty Legs, Mandarin Dynasty, International Dipshit


Alright, that will do for now.  Thanks for reading.  Please all keep in touch to let me know how you're doing.  And I will try to update this in a few days with some more exciting news.

Much love,
Hugh
x