#jameschoice

In the summer of 2015, we were very grateful to be asked to go on tour with our friend, the amazing folk singer, PJ Bond. It turned out to be an amazing month-long journey across the continent of Europe, and our keyboard player and singer, Micky kept a diary the whole time to try and make sense of it all. Here is that diary, a long stream of words that go into as much detail of life on the road as possible. Thanks friends, we hope you enjoy it.

Photo by Mari-Liis Villete

Day 1 - Vienna

First days of tours come with a a big contrast and mix of feelings. There’s a hell of alot of excitement and anticipation, it can all seem a bit overwhelming, with so much planning and organisation, sometimes going back a whole year, leading up to it. The first day for us started with Puddel and I waking up on his fold out couch in Vienna with a list of shit to do. Running came first, in this beautiful park in the 28 degree sun. After a beautiful breakfast (Just to make you aware, I’ve got the feeling I’m going to talk about food a whole fucking lot in this diary), including leftover vegan pizza, we got straight on with the shit to do list. We made EP’s, melting candles to make wax seals on the envelopes, with help from PJ and Bernd. PJ and I cooked a mean couscous salad and roasted some root veg to go with it.  We ran around the house a bit, gathering all our shit (I’ve got a horrible habit of spreading out my stuff all over a place if I’m staying there for more than 15 minutes), did idiot-check after idiot-check, and went to meet with the rest of the band at our practice space. Dario arrived in what would end up being our huge, beautiful, orange-and-black tour bus from Slovenia. Kathrin and I hadn’t met Dario before, so after trying to make a good first impression (we would now be hanging out for the next month), we loaded out and hit the road for our long, arduous journey.

‘Big Orange’ - Cis, PJ, Kathrin, Puddel, Micky, Georg and Bernd.

20 minutes later we were at the venue. I hadn’t played Das Bach before, but Puddel and the band had told me it was like a home to them, with Klaus, our friend who runs the label ‘Schall und Rauch Platten’, organising the shows there. I was opening the show/tour playing solo, which I was really excited about, but also a little blagged by the idea of playing three times. Still, people were really warm and friendly in the crowd, and it was nice to play Bernd’s guitar again. Next up was JC&TBD, playing full band live together for the first time properly. The energy and response in the room was incredible, and we were all definitely feeling the love of it being a home town show for us. The new songs in particular seemed to ring out, and people were really into them. So, we headed into PJ’s set with alot of energy. We’d worked hard on the rehearsals for days before hand, and it was really great to feel it come together for the first time. A few teething problems appeared, as you’d expect (My main fuck up was mistaking ‘Stop being bad’ for ‘I’m in a bad way’. I guess you can probably guess the reason why…), but it was still a really cool and buzzing show altogether. We split up after the show, with me, PJ, Puddel and Dario staying in the nice cosy quarters above the venue. Puddel and I attempted to stay up drinking beer and watching Game of Thrones, but both kind of collapsed (this task was done in the van the next day). Day 1 was awesome, tomorrow would be Graz, and time to kick shit into gear.

Mari-Liis Villete

Day 2 - Graz

Today was the first of what was going to be many peeling of selves out of bed from the heat, squinting a little through the slight hangover, remembering where the hell you are this time, and still buzzing from the show the night before. It was baking hot. Puddel and I wandered out of the accomodation to find some food, ending up eating one of the best Falafel wraps I ever had from a street vendor, who was a nice guy that said he played the turkish guitar, and showed us pictures. Today’s drive to Graz wasn’t too massive, but the scenery was really beautiful, and Puddel and I spent most of it on the back seat shouting ‘FUCK’ while watching Game of Thrones.

Mari-Liis Villete

I was really excited about finally visiting Sub. It’s one of the many places where friends of mine from all over the world speak incredibly highly of as a venue and social centre. It was exactly what I was expecting, that perfect mix of punk freedom, but completely self-organised, with anarchist principles binding it all together. We got taken care of really amazingly by Klaus, Robert and Mike, who are all incredibly kind and dedicated people, who more than anything else just seemed to want to have good music on at this amazing venue, so thanks!

We filmed a session with the guys from Little Brown Couch outside the venue in the sun. If it’s all finished, a good tour diary writer would put that below. It was a pretty special thing to do, with people walking and cycling by, and many of them stopping to listen to the music.

A few hours later, after soundcheck and food, (more vegan pizza) people began piling in, and there was a definite buzz about the night. I was feeling alot more confident about everything than the night before, and was relieved to not be playing solo, as I really wanted to focus on the bands. NAPAEA opened up, the cousin of our friend, Verena, from the Liberation Service. She played really well done folky acoustic stuff, and had a beautiful voice. We played afterwards, and both our sets felt amazing. It was one of those nights where you felt like you couldn’t really play something wrong even if you tried, and the energy from the crowd was incredibly warm and appreciative.

Before we knew it, it was 5am, the sun was rising, and we were all pretty fucked. After a drunken load out, we drove to Chilla Villa, the home of our friends, Tom, Toni, and Jack. I’d been told there’d be dogs, something which excited me a hell of a lot. Once we arrived, I made a special bond with a rescued dog called Spikey, and we hung out in the garden for as long as I could keep my eyes open, before crashing out in a pile on the sofa.

Day 3 - Salzburg

I woke up feeling pretty fresh. The night before I was on the verge of being pretty fucked, so swapped for water for a few hours, and put my lack of hangover it down to that. Water and hydration is important, never forget that.

So anyway, we got up, and I properly took in the beautiful house and surroundings that our friends live in. Puddel and I decided today would be great for a run, and so we headed to the woods just outside Chilla Villa, which were stunningly beautiful. We ran past Llamas, Goats and unspecified birds. After breakfast and a photo, we jumped in the van, for a longer drive to Salzburg. I rode up front on this one and got to know Dario alot better, and was blown away by the landscapes. I’m a big fucking fan of mountains, and this journey was really stunning.

Chilla Villa, Graz

We made a quick stop to pick up the Tote Bags, made by our really talented friend, Mike at Anti Form Clothing. We were doing good for time, so we decided to head to the nearby Attersee lake, which was rammed with people due to it being A) baking hot, and B) a bank holiday. We got in our swimming gear and jumped in, each of us finding our own way to shout ‘FUCK’, when the cold hit us. I quickly got adjusted to it, and it felt awesome to be swimming in open water, and came out feeling mega refreshed.

Once in Salzburg we headed to the promoter, Tomas’ house to eat, where he treated us to some really nice pasta, and a traditional Austrian speciality, Knödel. Puddel, Cis and I were walking over to the venue and talking about wanking when we encountered a guy who was totally wired on drugs that asked us about Bono from U2 and claimed to be the king. Pretty modest guy.

We were playing at Denkmal tonight, a place I played once before about 4 years ago with Alt Track. It was pretty much up to us to sort out the stage and sound tonight, but Dario did a really good job of fixing everything up. Salzburg is Puddel’s hometown, so it was nice for him to play to and see all his old friends. We loaded out, I experimented with some drunken Parkour moves out in the car park, which left everyone visibly stunned, and we went to the crash space.

Day 4 - Rorschach

Today we were heading out of Austria to Switzerland. For those who haven’t done the border crossing to Die Schweiz, particularly as a touring band, before, then basically it’s kind of a stressful thing. They’re really tight on their tax stuff in terms of merch sales, so we really carefully accounted for what merch we had in the van and made some lists to try make sure they had nothing to moan about. We had to head into Bavaria/South Germany, and within moments of crossing the border from Austria we were being pulled over by cops. I’ve had this experience before, and it can be pretty blagging and intense, so I sensed the stomachs of everyone in the van dropping. We opened the door to be met by the faces of about 7 or 8 German cops, all with guns, shades, that sort of thing. I gave them my best, innocent smile and we clambered out of the van. They seemed pretty amused/interested in the fact that between us we were Austrian, English, American and Slovenian, in a Slovenian licence plated van. We told them we were a country-folk band to to try and lessen their suspicions. They explained to us in German that they would ask us if we’d ever taken drugs, and if we said yes, that we’d be tested to see how recently, which would take 4 hours. I fought with my conscience for a few seconds, trying to weigh up honesty versus logistics, but with a heavy heart, I looked them in the eye and said a deep, resounding, ‘No, never.’ (At this point I’d like to apologise to my parents for in one fell-swoop, lying, and therefore admitting to you, the reader, of having taken recreational street drugs.) They rummaged around in the van, and asked for stickers as memorabilia. I hadn’t quite understood their German, and was concerned that they were gonna test us anyway, but before we knew it we were back in the van, very relieved, and back on the road to Switzerland.

The rest of the journey went off without a hitch. I was hoping for more Alpine beauty, but I had a feeling that’d come later. One thing that was really cool on the way into Rorschach was seeing the Bodensee, a huge lake that sits on the borders of Austria, Switzerland and Germany. We arrived at the next venue, Treppenhaus, and were greeted by our really friendly promoter, Andi. The show was cool, we got treated to really nice, free drinks all night, pizza from a restaurant, awesome sound, and a small but pretty appreciative crowd. Tonight was my first time ever playing in Switzerland, and it’s always interesting to suss out the vibe of a brand new country when playing music. Compared to other places, I have to say that they all seem quite reserved when it came to gigs. The attitude towards money and spending over there really does blow me away, with nobody really seeming to want for anything, or to worry about money at all. Being skint and incredibly frugal all my life, I couldn’t quite relate to this. But fair play, that’s their culture!

Treppenhaus, Rorschach

After the show we decided what we really wanted to do was go for a night swim in the Bodensee. We found a nice little spot and while the others jumped in the see, I sat with Puddel for a bit. I planned to swim, but was mid-conversation while removing my clothes, and later realised I’d had my jeans around my ankles for a good fifteen minutes or so, and that maybe this wasn’t the most dignified way to sit in public while in a country like Switzerland. I finally got in the See, and found it really surprisingly warm. As we were swimming, we saw flashing lights all around the edge of the lake, which someone explained meant that a storm was approaching. And before we knew it, the winds started picking up, and the rain came. We ran to the van, grabbed our shit and got to the hotel only slightly drenched.

Day 5 - Luechingen

Today was gonna originally be a day off, but our friend Andi managed to hook us up with a show about 25km away in Luechingen, playing for a guy’s birthday party. We’d slept separately, with PJ, Dario, Kathrin and I stopping in a little hotel. It was a nice, comfortable place to stop. We got back to the venue to meet with the rest of the band, and hung out there for a few more hours. Puddel and I went for a run along the See and started our now regular German lessons. It was unbelievably hot, but a nice run.

We still had hours to kill, and got kindly invited to go hang out at Andi’s parents house a little outside of town. They had a really beautiful home, with a pool out in the garden, which alot of us made good use of. Andi just seemed like the kind of guy who loves to take care of bands and his friends, and made us feel really welcome. For a couple of days I’d started feeling a bit of a sore right ear, and after touching it, had felt what I’d assumed was a bit of loose skin/scab or something, but decided to have a proper look in the mirror. And so it turned out that what the loose skin was, was actually an insect that had start burying itself into my ear lobe. I’d really never seen this before, and so, slightly pale, went and showed it to the others, who proceeded to react quite shocked in German, while I stood there somewhat panicked, feeling as though I might be quarantined at any moment. It turns out it was really nothing though, a tick that likes to do this sort of thing all the time on the mainland. Dr Dario said he’d dealt with this alot of times, so he yanked the little mother fucker out clean and sweet with a pull of some tweezers. The whole experience with the tick had left me feeling somewhat violated and degraded, is all I can say.

I’d started to feel a little bit shit and ill, so I spent the short journey up in the bunk of the van for the first time. It’s pretty chilling and also kind of weird, as you can see the road flying by above your head, while also feeling a bit like you’re in the grave/womb. Read into all that however you like. Tonight we were playing at Baandruum, which is basically just a really big house with a practice space down in the basement of the Garage where gigs happen. We met our new friend, Sdenko, who PJ and Puddel had already played for once before. He’s a really wonderful, warm and friendly guy, and made us some really nice pasta. We were planning on playing in the Garden tonight, but there was a big storm forecast, so we decided to move it into the basement. 

Tonight was the first of a couple of acoustic shows on the tour, so we figured it’d be a good time to rehearse this properly. It was a very different vibe, but definitely worked well with PJ’s laid back folk style. It was a funny but nice vibe with the whole birthday party thing, and we got received really nicely by everyone. After the show we hung out, drank beer, and the birthday people had a jam around the fire til the wee hours.

Day 6 - Zurich

The morning was a little shaky and slow for some of us that’d stayed up boozing. I was unfortunately at the beginning of a couple of days of feeling really ill with flu, so it was all a little shit for Micky Dey. This was somewhat appeased by sitting down with Bernd and Cis and polishing off an entire snack/nibbles box of salted crisps before the journey. After that, we got all our shit together, and hit the road for Zurich.

The show tonight was at El Dorado Bar, this cool place that prides itself on having 101 different bottled beers from all over the world. I was pretty stoked to see that they had 4 bottles of Sam Smiths, the beer that’s brewed in Tadcaster that I’ve drunk and sold for longer than I should have at my home, the 1 in 12 Club. I got recommended to try this really beautiful German IPA, which I forget the name of.

Mari-Liis Villete

The vibe tonight was, again, kind of quiet, not the busiest of shows. The really nice promoter, Ian, said it was probably because of the weather having been good that day, and also because of it being Sunday. The performance itself was probably the tightest we’d played so far, particularly for PJ’s set. Dario recorded the whole thing, so that’s pretty cool to look back on.

Just as we were about to load out, the humidity that felt like it had been building up for days suddenly cracked, and we were hit with, what I can comfortably say, was the heaviest storm I’ve ever experienced. I’m into storms and lightning in a massive way, and so I sat by the open french window with a beer and watched it all happen. Storms, I always think, are basically just nature sort of saying, ‘fuck you, don’t forget I’m here and can do some crazy shit when I want to.’ In fact, the first and only other time I’d stayed in Zurich ended with a storm close to this level, where I’d watched forked lightning approach from behind the mountains in the distance while I tried to sleep rough under a bush.

We were all a little hungry, but after learning that the pizza of an average takeaway costs over €20 in Zurich, I instead demolished a bag of nuts. We split up for the crash space again tonight, which for Me, Georg, Bernd and Kathrin (we named ourselves House 1 Team) would be with the promoter’s friend, Tom. Him and all his housemates were really welcoming, and had the biggest TV I think I’d ever seen in real life. I slept pretty bad as we were sharing the room with the worst snorer I’d ever met in real life.

Day 7 - Day Off/Kuzeb

House 1 team got up today knowing we had some shit to deal with. We’d learnt at the Zurich gig that we’d left an important bit of the Hi Hat stand at Baandraum, so had to go pick up another from a place round the corner. The guy at the drum shop was really nice, and could’ve easily taken us for a ride, but sold us one for pretty cheap. We went to the store on the way back, and I was left feeling very sad at how expensive everything was again. I don’t want to live in a world where a tiny pot of Hummus costs €4, is all I can say. I got a €4 tiny jar of peanut butter instead.

While we ate we were all a little concerned, as Dario had slept somewhere else in the van and kind of gone off the radar for a few hours later than he said he’d pick us up. Our worries for his wellbeing were unfounded though, and he showed up a bit afterwards. Phew.

Today was the only day off we ended up having on the tour, despite many attempts to fill it. This kind of felt alright for alot of us though, particularly as Kathrin and me were both suffering pretty terribly with flu by now. PJ had some stuff he wanted to try clear up, so while we waited for him, we had a nice wander along the river and lake of Zurich. Despite the cost, Zurich is a really beautiful place with really nice inhabitants, and it was great to see it properly again.

Another thing on the list of shit to do was to get Bernd’s guitar fixed. This was half an hour on the way towards Geneva, where we planned to crash that night, so worked out pretty good. We checked out the guy’s workshop, and he was a really nice man. He said it would take an hour to mend, and recommended wandering down into the Alt Stadt (old town), while we waited, so we took his advice. Literally the very first thing we saw on the way into town was a huge building with an Anarchy mural painted on the wall. Dario said something like, ‘Look, a squat, maybe we could play there…’, and so we parked up, wandered round the edge to the garden, and spoke with a guy we found out later was called Fabian. We originally asked if we were just ok to park there while we waited for the guitar, but he invited us inside to have a drink and relax for a bit, which we were really grateful and happy to do. We saw the venue space, which I was really excited by. It had a bit of a cross-vibe between the 1 in 12 Club back home, and the EKH, a squat with a venue I’d played once in Vienna.

This building, Kuzeb was really stunningly beautiful and organised. They had the venue space, the cafe, kitchen and bar, sleeping spots for over 20 people, a bike workshop, print and art studio, allotment, gym, climbing wall, cinema screen… and it felt like we really only just scratched the surface. Coming from a background of DIY/anarchism, it was so incredible to see an example of this sort of organisation put into such action. Having a building is one thing, but having the people and the skills to turn that into something creative and useful for so many people really is what transforms it into something amazing.

So, after exploring, we hung out, had a beer, played some Fussball, and eventually asked if it might be alright for us to stay a little longer, and to buy and cook some food for us, and all the people there. They were more than happy to let us do this, which was great, and actually had a shop upstairs where they stored bulk amounts of vegetables and other ingredients, all really good quality and cheap from local producers. PJ and Kathrin set to work to make what turned out to be an unbelievably beautiful meal with tons of vegetables, couscous, a kind of dhal, bread and salad. Fabian and the others at the squat were really into the food.

It was a little late by this point, so we asked them if it might be ok for us to crash, which again, they were kind of enough to say, of course. And from then we just had the coolest night! We tidied up after the meal, had some more beers, they set up the table tennis table up in the enormous gym, which saw us play many, many rounds of Ringerl (a kind of version of table tennis with many people, where you all run round the table after each shot. I was kind of sucking tonight after years off the game, but it was still really fun).

Our new friends had said alot of times that it’d be great to hear some music, and so we got the guitars and double bass from the van, and sat round this beautiful old upright piano they had in the cafe. And so for the next few hours, each of us took turns to play music to the really appreciative new friends we’d made. It felt so great to be playing music again in what we felt was gonna be a day off, and the songs seemed to take on a whole new meaning in this sort of environment.

During the playing, I was actually kind of surprised to see how blown away/excited people like Fabian seemed to be in response to the music we were playing. Part of me imagined that this sort of thing, a band turning up needing a place to crash, then hanging out, cooking, and maybe jamming, must happen really often, but he said otherwise. That for him, it had been the first time this had really gone on, which made the whole thing seem even more special to all of us. What a fucking beautiful thing. We all gradually headed to our enormous crash space of triple-bunk-beds, and I fell deeply asleep for the first time on the whole tour.

Day 8 - Geneva

I woke up with that sweet relief that comes from feeling better after three days of feeling the shittest of ills, having had more than 5 hours of sleep, dodging a potential hangover, and with the general afterglow of the cool night we’d just had. I’m pretty hygiene obsessed, even on tour I’ll try my best to get a shower every day, but I kind of felt like stewing a little in that squat/tour smell I’d no doubt acquired over the last 24 hours. Breakfast was an awesome mix of the leftovers from the night before, something we were all more than happy to re-experience. I hung out for a little bit with a dog and a cat, and we packed up our shit to leave. We said bye to our new friends, namely Fabian, who was hoping to come and see us again in Bern a few days later. I think there was no question amongst all of us that we had been incredibly lucky and blessed by the last day, in a way that almost felt like it had been meant to be. All I can say is that I was the happiest I’d felt maybe since Graz.

The journey was pretty stunning today, passing some really mountainous regions on the way past Bern towards Geneva. Puddel and I did our watching of the new Game of Thrones (holy fuck, am I right?), and we rolled into Geneva pretty early. The venue we were playing, Kalvingrad Usine, was situated right next to the river, a section that was sort of like a dam/hydroelectric thing, with the water looking really teal green and choppy. That, mixed with the brutalist and geometric style architecture of the buildings surrounding it had a sort of cool dystopian vibe, and reminded me of something out of A Clockwork Orange.

Usine was again, just a perfect example of punk, creativity and organisation totally realised. An enormous complex, the main room was split in two, with one huge stage for when the room is, I imagine, around 1500 capacity, and a smaller stage (I can safely say, the one we were playing, though my heart did jump a bit when I saw the enormous one), of around 150 cap. The band facilities were really unreal, with a massive and nicely done up backstage room, balcony, clean and comfortable sleeping places, offices, and it seemed to also have rehearsal places, a few different bars and clubs… Pretty incredible place. Again, the sound was unbelievable tonight, and Dario did an amazing job.

We were the first two out of three bands tonight. Both our sets seemed to have a really solid, tight feel tonight. I think for the first time it felt like we were all working in our muscle memory, and could now settle in and really start to perform. The crowd was proper responsive and cool, and left us all feeling really positive.

But unfortunately, there was a situation looming on the horizon that none of us could have expected.

Now, I’m not gonna name and shame or specify in too much detail as to the circumstances, but I think it’s an important story to tell. We were sharing our backline (guitar, bass amps and our drum kit minus snare drum and cymbals), with the third and final band of the night. We’d met them all before the gig, and they were really friendly and likeable, and we’d all sat and eaten dinner together and got to know one another. Before the set, their drummer approached me to ask if I could take a few pictures of the set with their camera, something I was more than happy to do. We talked a little more, and he was about to head backstage when he sort of last minutely said, ‘Oh, by the way, at the end of the set we usually move the drum kit out on to the gig floor. Is that alright with you?’. I said that it’s not actually my Drum Kit, as it belongs to Kathrin, but that I’d ask for him, and that I’m sure as long as it was taken care of and that’s all that was happening, that she’d most likely be cool with it. I asked her, and this was of course fine, but on the same conditions of being careful that I’d already insisted on, so we were good.

Their set began, with them playing instrumental, very riffy rock stuff, wearing masks, and generally being very energetic, with the guitarist heading into the crowd alot, and were pretty entertaining. Musically, it really wasn’t my kind of thing, as I felt that there was no emphasis really put on the songwriting, that every riff was basically the same, and there were no dynamics whatsoever. Still, they put alot of energy into it and I could see the appeal.

Here came the point where the drum kit got lifted by both the band, and some members of the crowd, out on to the gig floor. I’d been sat at the Merch desk up until now, but decided I’d wander round the gig floor and keep an eye out and check everything was ok. As far as I could tell, they were being pretty careful with it, so I had no complaints and headed back to the merch desk. I half-watched for a bit, until I saw flames in the corner of my eye. I looked up to see that the drummer was spraying lighter fluid, or paraffin onto his cymbals, but in doing so, all over our drum kit and stands. He then set these alight, to cheers from the crowd, and to the dropping of my mouth and stomach. From there, it somehow only got worse. They then lifted the drummer into the air on the stool, with the crowd holding up our snare stand, cymbal stand and floor tom, which he absolutely battered in mid-air. After this, it was returned to the floor, where the band encouraged members of the audience to beat the living shit out of the drums with their sticks. By this point I’d gone from shock to utter disgust and rage. Both Puddel, PJ and I were then wandering around, totally in disbelief at the display of selfishness and disregard that was right there in front of us. I was shaking with anger, and had no idea how I’d be able to contain it when we’d eventually come to tackling this situation.

The long and short of it, is that we, while doing our best to keep a cool head, explained how not okay this was, and insisted that they paid for new drum heads, and plastic cymbal holders, which had melted from when they SET THEM ON FIRE. The reaction of the band was difficult to gauge. They were obviously apologetic, but claimed to have had absolutely no knowledge of the fact that this was our kit, having assumed it was a house kit. This, I can counteract in two ways, one being the conversation the drummer and I had moments before their set, and also just the fact that treating even a house drum kit in this way would be just as disgusting The promoters were amazing in helping us to communicate our demands for payment of the damage they’d done, so thanks to them, but while the property itself was obviously important to us, I think deep down we were all just lost and baffled by the attitude these guys had towards the sharing and care of gear. It’s no wonder they don’t tour with their own backline, and this can surely not be the first time that this sort of situation has occurred. In the end, we dealt with it in what we thought was the right way, organised and pragmatically, but in a way that I hope will ring in their minds, and hopefully change the way they choose to go about their practice as musicians. It was one of the least punk things I’ve ever seen happen, and the whole thing continued to go through my head as we headed to sleep in our really cosy quarters by the river.

Day 9 - Bern

We dragged ourselves up pretty early today in Geneva and sat in the offices of Usine to eat our breakfast, brought by our friend Amédé, that included this really awesome banana/chocolate cake thing, which was still warm. We hung out a little longer, had some more slightly awkward conversation with the other band, and got on our way to Bern.

Puddel and PJ had set some pretty high expectations for Bern, having played the same venue before and saying that the whole city and experience was beautiful last time. We showed up pretty early, and split up into a few groups to go exploring. Puddel and I decided we’d go running, as he’d done this before along the river and knew a nice route. PJ, Kathrin and Cis were gonna meet us halfway on a bridge, where some of us might jump in the river. The run was awesome, flat and hugged the side of the river the whole way, really great. Half way back to town we found the others standing on the edge of the bridge, assessing how dangerous/cold the jump might be. We discussed it for a while, and I decided I’d rather not make the jump, preferring to kick back a little after the run. PJ and Kathrin eventually talked themselves into it and leapt off the bridge and into the fast current. They shouted that it was fine (despite later saying it was fucking freezing), and floated quickly downstream. Me and Puddel ran alongside them as best as we could and met them at the public pool. There I was fucking delighted to jump into the really cool water and swam 10 lengths or so. It was a free, outdoor pool, something I’d love to go to every day if I had the chance. We then wandered to find some food, taking in the amazing views.

We met the others at tonight’s venue, Cafe Marta. This was a tiny little bar and venue situated in some of the older Bern cellars that had been turned into restaurants and similar businesses. The room was beautiful, with a really high roof and lovely acoustics. We had a beer/wine, ate some Gnocchi and played the show. The JC set tonight didn’t feel too good for me, as it was another acoustic show and we still hadn’t really figured out how to do this properly. The songs seemed to drag a bit and none of us seemed to be in the vibe. PJ’s set was really cool though, and his sound seemed to suit this room. One of the nicest things about the show was that Fabian from the squat two nights ago came and saw us play with his friends. He’d said he might be in Bern that day, so it was really great to see him again.

We hung out outside the venue for a fair bit, drinking beers and talking, something we hadn’t seemed to do alot of in the last week, as we tended to rush off to bed pretty quick after the gigs so far. We were staying at the lovely promoter, Adrian’s apartment. We crashed as soon as we could, as we were to get up at 7am for the 10 hour journey to Italy the following morning.

Day 10 - Rimini, Italy

So like I already said, today was always gonna be a really early start. We hit the road, kind of bleary eyed at 8am. I was feeling pretty fucked, so headed straight up into the bunk of the van, and fell into sort of semi-consciousness for a few hours til we were close to the Swiss border. We passed alot of really beautiful mountain ranges near the south border, and apparently I’d missed alot more, but fuck it.

Here starts a pretty frustrating and boring section of the diary. As I’d already mentioned, the Swiss are a pain in the arse when it comes to tax and merch, and we’d already done alot of work to make sure we wouldn’t get fucked by them and lose our deposit. So basically for the next three hours, we were sent back and forth to different, and the same places again and again. Some of us waited around for hours for some information, but really just had to sit tight and watch while the potential of getting to the gig on time slipped by. Eventually, after even more waiting, we were allowed to pass through, not really paying anything whatsoever. Fuck borders.

Then we had another 350km of our 700km journey to get done. It was real fucking hot in Italy. Cis and I rode up front with Dario and shot the shit for 4 hours, and eventually we rolled into Rimini just as a hazy sun was setting. It was really close air, and felt hugely Italian, as you’d expect, being in Italy. The promoters were lovely people, and as soon as we arrived we were treated really kindly, and food was ready straight away (vegan pizza and  this really great onion cake was on the menu.) We were playing this massive kind of town hall/community centre, with a big stage and really high roof. Beautiful space.

The rest of the night went off pretty much without a hitch. Both sets were solid, and while the crowd wasn’t massive for a room that big, the Italians are a lovely bunch and felt really warm towards us. We then drove to our crash space at a hotel on the beach, where some of us went for a night-swim. I decided I felt like at least ten minutes on my own, so didn’t head with them, opting for sleep instead.

Day 11 - Turbigo

I think there’d been a plan to meet early and go for a run/swim this morning, but we all overslept a bit apart from Dario and Georg. I improvised a weird vegan breakfast from the stuff on the breakfast table, and went for a little walk with Cis down to the beach, about 50 metres away from the hotel. I wasn’t too sure about the vibe of the beach, being much more used to deserted/slightly desolate but beautiful beaches in the UK. This one was basically just a tourist beach, with hundreds upon hundreds of deck chairs laid out the exact same distance apart from one another, and a shit load of people around. Not really my kind of beach, but I appreciate why it’s that way. We had a little walk in the sea, which was really warm and clean, took a quick photo, washed off our sandy feet and jumped in the van.

Today we were heading about 4 and a half hours to Turbigo, a town sort of close to Milan. This felt like a very easy drive compared to the day before. It was gonna be PTEC Festival, what we’d assumed was an indoor type festival in a venue, but it turns out the set up was outside the grounds of a school. They were still setting up when we got there, with a big stage, nice looking rig and lights, and all seemed pretty cool. One thing we all noticed and remarked on was the lack of a cover for the stage, and with one look up at the sky, we all had the same prediction. Still, we loaded out (after a quick game of basketball and football, which saw Bernd and I be victorious), set up, sound checked, and had everything sounding beautiful. 

We then got given a huge stack of unbelievably good pizza from a pizzeria round the corner. It was the best vegan pizza I ever had in my life, with this olive paste used for the sauce, really fucking good. We had a beer and all had a sense that maybe today was actually gonna work out really great. It was short-lived, as moments later, it rained. And rained. And rained. We scrambled to the stage and did what we could to take care of the gear, and waited for it to stop raining. It didn’t. So, again, to cut a long story short, we hung on to the possibility of playing on the drenched stage for a few hours, eventually deciding that even it stopped raining, the potential of playing an electric set of music on a stage full of uncovered power sockets that had been drenched by the rain didn’t seem all that tempting.

So, in the end, we did it guerrilla/DIY, the way we knew best. We got everything packed, ran it over to the marquee, found some palettes to build a stage, set up some lights, one of the monitor speakers, and we had a gig venue. Things were running mega-late, but it didn’t seem to matter anymore. There were 70-100 or so people in front of us, and we just had to make this work. And it did, thank fuck. It ended up being actually a really cool set for both bands. I think people were even more focused on the music because of how hard we had to work to make it happen.

It was a funny night, with it going from really smooth and professional to unbelievably chaotic and stressful in a short space of time. If I had to say I learnt anything from it, it would be to get a fucking cover for your stage, right now.

Day 12 - Castiglione Delle Stiviere

We all slept inside the gymnasium on the kind of gym mats that you land on when you’ve been doing high jump or something. It wasn’t the best sleep I had on the whole tour, if I’m frankly honest with you. Two flies seemed to be having a competition to see how many times they could fly into my face/open mouth. Puddel had taken a bit of a tumble down some stairs the night before, so after checking he was alright, we got pizza for breakfast, gave the van a much needed tidy and clean, and jumped inside to head for our last Italian show.

We got to Castiglione Delle Stiviere nice and early. It was the first place we’d played in Europe so far that had that really old, traditional vibe to it. All the streets were pretty much empty, the buildings really ornate and beautiful, and the weather had that close, hot feel we’d had in Rimini a few nights ago. We got to spend a rare few hours hanging out in a park, catching up on some shit, drinking coffee, eating the worst pizza to be found in Italy, and climbed to the top of the hill where the church sat, seeing an amazing view of the region.

The venue, Arci Dallo had a really beautiful, DIY vibe from the moment we headed inside. The gig room was small, but really intimate and well kitted out (the presence of a ping pong table increased this feeling a whole lot). We were welcomed really warmly by the promoter, Marco, who had helped us out with the gig really last minute to fill our last gap. The whole night ended up being one of the most fun and exciting of the whole tour. The food we were given was absolutely stunning. They’d made us some really typical and traditional pasta, which made me realise just how shit I am at making pasta. We all ate together round a table, with wine and beer, the hot Italian air blowing through the window… really something. Stomachs filled, both sets turned out unbelievably good, with the crowd being massively excited by it all. The James Choice set in particular felt really flawless, and really seemed to mend the stressed vibe we’d been experiencing for the previous 24 hours.

Tonight was always gonna be a drinking one, and that’s what we did. Here are PJ and Marco to leave that up to your imagination.

Day 13 - Lyon

We woke up in the cool and comfortable accommodation above the venue for another very long journey to France. The air was a bit cooler today, something as a Northerner I was pretty relieved for. I lay my hungover head down to sleep in the bunk for the most part of this journey, after watching the majority of the most incredibly depressing documentary about a hit man who used to work for the Mexican cartel. Exactly what you need when you’re hungover, thanks Bernd. I woke up just as we were hitting mountain country again. We had a quick stop for a bite and rest and had a good old look at some serious mountains.

We rolled into Lyon, a new city for me again, and climbed towards the venue that sat on the hill side overlooking the river and what seemed like the old town of the city. Today was going to be another acoustic show, with the venue, Kraspek being really tiny and intimate, and much more dedicated to folk and acoustic music. We were treated to a really beautiful curry and wine sat at a long table. One of the things I’ve learnt from touring, and therefore about promoting gigs, is that a set meal time where the bands, promoter, sound guy, bar people…etc… can all sit together and eat is a really special thing to have. It’s a time where the music/organisation can sort of be put aside, and everyone can just get to know each other and share in some beautiful food.

The acoustic vibe seemed to fit tonight better than the previous times. We ran it just with Acoustic guitars, Keyboard, Double Bass and Snare with brushes. Only Puddel and PJ had mic’s, but the backing vocals just sat over the mix really perfectly. PJ decided to do things a little differently tonight, starting with playing 4 or 5 songs completely solo, including some really beautiful new ones we’d only heard a few times before. It was actually sort of strange and special to see PJ playing on his own, as I’d almost forgotten that this is the area of his career that he’s spent 10 years specialising in and perfecting. All being said, he’s just a brilliant performer. We joined him onstage for 3 songs full band, which again, I felt like was a really nice way to progress and give an arc to the set. We then finished the set playing the most emotionally wrought song, ‘Calm in the Corner’, out on the gig floor, with just PJ, Puddel, Kathrin and me singing. The silence between the notes and the balance of the harmonies was rich and beautiful, and it was one of my favourite playings of that song of the whole tour.

Something I should’ve mentioned earlier is that we had another very, very long drive to Belgium looming the next day. The journey to Lyon had been an expensive one, with the Italians and French being pretty crazy about tolls for roads and tunnels. Without traffic, the next journey was gonna be around 8-9 hours, and 750km in length. We discovered that if we added another 100km to it, then we’d be able to avoid pretty much all the bastard tolls, but that we’d need to have a ridiculously early start to be able to get there in time. Dario then suggested a night-drive, setting off straight after the show, and this idea got passed round and agreed to be the best way. I’d like to mention that this suggestion was made a few hours after Dario had already driven 8 hours from Italy to France. The man is a machine, is all I can say.

I’m a big fucking fan of night drives, so I was pretty keen on this idea, and figured it was time to ride up shotgun again and take one for the team with Dario. I’m also pretty into car DJ’ing, and spent the next 3 hours sticking on some bangers to the van of entirely sleeping people. We drove through a huge storm, and then drove some more, til the sun started to peak over the horizon. Eventually, you could tell that we were both nearing the edge of our energy levels, and we decided to stop and crash out for a few hours. PJ and Puddel were up in the bunks, and the rest of them were generally littered across the seats and floors of the back. Dario stuck his seat back by a few degrees, and I wound myself up into some pretty unnatural positions on the passenger seat. I believe at one point my legs were pretty much out of the window. We didn’t sleep too long, but it was good and important to hit the reset button. It was kinda nice it being just the two of us doing this together. We didn’t say much, but four eyes are always better than two on a drive that long.

Eventually the sun was fully up, and we were driving through Luxembourg. The rest of the van started to stir with the rustling sounds of our friends waking up. They all seemed to have slept pretty well, and were happy to rise to the knowledge that they’d slept through a massive part of the ride. We stopped for some food and a piss, Dario and I high-fived, and I decided I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, so climbed up into the bunks for the rest of the ride.

Day 14 - Oostende

When I woke up, we were just about to arrive into Oostende, for our first show in Belgium. It was early afternoon, and when we stepped out of the van, there was this really nice, bright, crisp freshness to the air. It turned out we were actually right on the North coast of Europe. I think I was the only one that was into the temperature. We had a couple of hours to spare, and all of us apart from Dario and Cis decided we’d use it to get some clothes clean at a laundromat. My show clothes were caked in sweat and beer by now, so it was definitely a good shout. It felt sort of weird to be doing a domestic chore after two weeks of touring, and it definitely needed all 6 of us to figure out how to do something like work a washing machine.

Once this momentous task was over, we all headed over to Jeugdhuis OHK, a youth centre, and met the promoter, Xander, a lovely guy. The gig room was a little rough and ready, but we set up on the floor and managed to get things sounding good, and ate some really nice tofu with peanut butter and pasta. It was definitely the most tired all of us had collectively felt, and everything was a little slow to get going, but we managed it just as doors opened. We played to a pretty small, but nice crowd. It was a Monday, and apparently a week where alot of people had essays and exams due in, so it was pretty understandably quiet.

After the show, we hung out a little later and drank some nice Belgian beer. Bernd and I shared a couple of games of chess, with him absolutely breaking my balls, but showing me a couple of tricks to improve. For sleep, we positioned ourselves at various points throughout the venue. I balanced myself on this very thin, hard sofa, but managed to fall asleep pretty quickly and soundly, while Puddel strummed his guitar and sang away in the gig room.

Day 15 - Leuven

We woke up hungry, and in bad need of a shower. While we’d washed our clothes yesterday, Cis and Dario had headed to a nearby pool for a swim and to get clean, so we decided this was definitely a good call for the couple of hours we had spare this morning. We wandered over to a store, bought some amazing bread and vegan delights, and sat outside on the grass to eat our breakfast. I know I shouldn’t be too surprised, but I’ve always been amazed/amused by the reactions of ‘normal people’ when they see a group of people eating together in a fairly DIY environment. I think when you’re on tour, you just get so used to doing everything collectively and not in your usual way, that you forget the ways that the rest of the world choose to do the same things.

The pool was a short walk away, and I was really happy to be jumping into water again. It was a 50m pool, so much longer than I’m used to, the deep end felt seriously deep, and kind of intimidating to be swimming towards. I thought so anyway. Also, there didn’t seem to be much chlorine, but instead it was just crazy salty. Not the most pleasant thing to accidentally get in your mouth. Either way, I swam 10 or so lengths with Puddel and Kathrin, had a bash on the slide, which was pretty trippy with some weird lighting, then kicked back in the jacuzzi/whirlpool for a bit. That sort of thing feels pretty unreal when you’ve pretty much put your body through hell for two weeks straight. We all showered in one long line. We wandered over to the sea front, and I felt really happy and excited to be by the ocean, and as close as I’d be to home soil for another 2 weeks. We headed back to the venue, did a load out, and said a seeya later to Xander (he’d be heading to the show in Leuven later that night), and jumped back in the van for a much less exhausting ride than the night before.

We arrived into Leuven a few hours later. Puddel and I had spent the journey watching the finale of Game of Thrones, having spent the last 24 hours failing to avoid spoilers on the internet (the main character dies at the end.) The streets seemed much busier with young people than Oostende, which boded well for a potentially busier gig. Again, the venue was a youth centre called Vleugel F, but with a really nice PA, size, lights… We ate some really amazing vegan lasagne type thing, with crusty bread. I’d needed 10 minutes on my own for quite a while, so I sat and ate outside on a bench, and had a few moments to myself, something I was really happy for. I’m pretty happy being alone most of the time, and so I’ve always found that when you suddenly find yourself not surrounded by people, you really savour that, as much as I loved everyone else on the tour.

We filmed a session with Sergio for Start a Scene Sessions, out in the car park, playing a pretty stripped down version of Gravity/Motion with Puddel and Kathrin. 

The show started busying up little by little, and there was a really nice buzz about it. Both sets turned out really good tonight. It was a little hard to hear what was going on, but it turned out fine. Cis was a little tipsy by this point, and was smashing out some club bangers through the PA while we tidied up and loaded out. 

We hadn’t been out drinking much after the gigs before this point, and the nice promoter, Karel wanted to take us out to try some of his favourite beers at a place in the central square. We sat down and I finished off a couple of gig cans of cheap beer, before being given a nice glass of strong drink. Think the name had something to do with Goblins or something. The clock turned midnight, and we remembered that it was now Kathrin’s 20th birthday. Happy birthday Kathrin. A few beers down and we were inside the bar and satisfying a long-held need and desire to dance. The DJ seemed pretty miserable up in this wooden booth, but he was sticking on some pretty good 70’s surf rock and old timey music. Cis and I had recently discovered that we share the exact same method of dancing (I can assure you that all best dancing is done in the knees, and a little bit to do with your index fingers). We hung out a little longer, left Bernd and Kathrin behind at the bar, had a pizza, picked those two up again as they now wanted to go to bed, took a nice, drunken stroll through the city, saw this enormous, ridiculously decorated building, and found ourselves back at Karel’s house.

Day 16 - Zele

I’m not sure how many of the people who read this are gonna be drinkers, but I assume a fair few. If you are, then I assume you’ll know what I mean when I say that hangovers can take many different forms. Some come at you in a whirlwind of pain and vomit, sometimes it’s just a dizzy falling overness, often it’s just a dreary weight on your eyes that makes normal conversation near impossible. I woke up to what I, and some of my friends in London have named ‘the false dawn.’ I woke up and felt incredible. Birds were singing, the sun was shining, breakfast was cooking, the shower was warm, the coffee was wonderful, chat was leisurely and relaxed, and I’d clearly dodged any potential hangover. Good morning world.

2 hours later and I was pretty much laying in the foetal position, one eye closed, not really forming proper sentences, and when I did, being aware that words of no meaning were pretty much just falling out of my mouth like wet tissue paper. Never mind.

We arrived in Zele, again, pretty early. We met the promoter for the gig, Wart, and he took us for a little drive to the nearby village to sit by the lake and hang out for a few hours. It was a nice spot to sit and kick back for a bit and eat some food. My hangover was a little appeased, and again I felt like spending a little bit of time alone, and went for a nice stroll along the lake and through the little village. I didn’t see much, failed to find a place to buy a frisbee, but some space was nice.

After that we headed over to the venue, JC Juvenes, another youth club. We were originally planning on playing another acoustic show tonight, but with the size of the room and the pretty good PA, and a desire to rock out, we went full band. It was Kathrin’s birthday, like I already said, and we’d had an idea to make her a mix CD with each of us adding a couple of tunes. We had to manoeuvre quite sneakily to get this done, but done we got it did. The gig, again, was cool, kinda quiet again, but the people who were there were really into it, bought alot of merch, and hung out with us afterwards.

The crash space tonight was at a scout hall. It was a little tight and dusty, so I decided to sleep in the van overnight for the first time with Dario and Cis. It was a nice, cool night, and actually really quiet and comfortable to sleep up in the bunk.

Day 17 - Castricum

I woke up pretty early in the van, with the plan to go for a run with Puddel and Kathrin. It had been a few days since we’d done any proper exercise apart from the swim the day before, and I think all our bodies were feeling pretty fucked. There didn’t seem to be any nature to run at, so we opted to break into this running track at a sport centre. It was totally deserted, and kind of weird to run in this perfect circle, but we did about a 10k, and started feeling alot better after it.

We had a nice shower, breakfasted, and climbed in the van for the ride to Holland.

Again, we had a bit of time to spare, and Kathrin wanted to meet a few friends in Amsterdam, and most of the rest of them wanted to pick up some of the Dutch’s finest legal substances. So, we dropped them off on the way to the gig, and I really enjoyed the drive through the streets. I’d only ever been to and played in Amsterdam the one time last year, and I’m always really happy there, mainly just because the cycling infrastructure makes me unbelievably jealous.

We got to our destination pretty early, had a little wander, did some internet stuff and drank a coffee at a nice little bar, and went over to our friend, Rowald’s house to eat. I’d only just seen Rowald a month ago, at my home town, where I was putting on his band, Sweet Empire at the 1 in 12 Club. I’m really fond of all of them, so it was really nice and special to see him again, this time at his home. He lived with his partner, Stefanie, and welcomed us all in to his really beautiful and comfortable house. He’d cooked us this beautiful vegan, thai curry with amazingly cooked chewy tofu. Content doesn’t quite cover my feelings after that meal. We sat around for what felt like a long time, and I was a little antsy that we were only planning to get to the venue for 8pm, being used to the standard, gig o’clock time schedule of UK gigs. We got to the Baakerij, and did a really fast and efficient load in and set up, something I’m pretty geeky about when I feel like I want to do something quickly. It’s nice to be proud of little victories on tour.

People were turning up and filling the little room, and it was pretty exciting to be playing to a room full of appreciative friends and strangers again. The James Choice set went unbelievably well, totally tight and with loads of energy. The crowd were super into it, and came over to tell us so straight after the set. A few comparisons to the Weakerthans were thrown around, something we’re always very happy to hear. The PJ set was just as great, with the crowd losing it and dancing for the first time on the whole tour.

I discovered half way through the PJ set that Bernd had played the whole gig while on psilocybin truffles he’d had picked up for him. I was really amazed about this, as I thought it had been the tightest and heaviest he’d played all tour. I couldn’t help but laugh as he spun round to face the drum kit, a huge grin on his face, eyes wide, and throwing himself into his guitar riff. What a beautiful face. We all felt really great after that set.

I packed up my shit, had a few beers, wandered round a little, but I’d had an itch in my mind the whole time since I’d heard about Bernd tripping. I’ve always been a big fan of psychedelic drugs, but they’re not something I get much opportunity to do. I’ve missed the last couple of picking seasons in the UK, and never had chance to pick any up where they’re legal. So, I talked to Bernd about how things were going for him, and he said he’d taken a little before the first set, then topped up, and was finding it all pretty mellow, manageable, but really cool. I asked if he’d be up for sharing, just as PJ headed over and asked the same thing. We split the rest, taking about 15-20 of these little truffles each. I’d had these before, and they don’t taste great, and kind of have the consistency of mouldy nuts, but I munched them down regardless. I immediately had that nervous kind of excitement I’d felt before when taking psychedelics. The only slight concern was that it was now 1.10am, trips can last up to 6 hours, and we had to be up for a long drive to Germany the next morning. But fuck it…tour…etc…

(The next section of the diary is a little document of the trip that occurred after taking these truffles. I understand not everyone is interested/into this sort of writing, so I figured I’d give you an advanced heads up. I’m not a regular drug rambler/much of a hippy, but it was an important experience for me, and I really felt like writing it down and sharing it, so feel free to read, or skip ahead.)

We loaded out. The rest of them had just smoked butt loads of their weed, and were all feeling pretty drunk and high. We jumped in the van headed to Rowald’s house. This was just as the trip started creeping into my head. I was sat in the front row of the van in the back, with Cis. We were both finding it pretty difficult with the amount of drunken shouting going on, and I was trying to stay calm with all the chaos, lights flashing past, and generally just trying to not be sick as the truffles settled in my stomach, with kind of body rushes and shakes happening. I’ve always found that taking nice, relaxed breaths, and trying not to take anything too seriously is the best way to deal with this sort of situation.

The other times I’d had these truffles, it had never been too visual, and a bit more of a mind trip. But as we arrived near our parking spot, shit was starting to get real fucking trippy. The houses, all red brick began to drift backwards into the edge of vision as we slowly sped past them, the air felt chilly but electric as we climbed out of the van, and I felt really light and strange as we walked towards the house. I’d not drunk too much, so my mind was pretty sober, and speech pretty clear, something I was relieved I could hold onto. I’ve never been one that likes to be the fucked up person, and instead just wanted to relax and enjoy whatever happened in front of my vision and to my mood.

Once we got to Rowald’s house, we sat up, and he treated us to his whiskey collection in his warm living room. It was really the perfect situation for me, with the rich, burning taste of the drink waking up all my senses, calming everything down, and being the perfect, simple thing to talk about and latch onto while the room and all its’ decorations shifted and buzzed around me. Time really loses all sense of normality when you’re on mushrooms, with me feeling like we’d been sitting and talking about at least 5 hours, but by 3am, about an hour and a half after arriving back, we were laying back on our mattresses and drifting a little closer in the direction of sleep.

My head and body were still whirring away, and it seemed so was Bernd’s, so we sat up on our beds, looked around the room and had a really good, mind-settling talk. Once the lights got turned off, and after Rowald said good night, suddenly the room had a whole new vibe and atmosphere, with the early light just beginning to illuminate the blinds. The black patterns of wavy flowers rippled from side to side, the black and white image hanging on Rowald’s wall in front of me seemed to blow in and out from the canvas, and Bernd’s whole face seemed to ripple from total darkness, back to the colour of skin, and back to blackness, as we talked more, laughed, and shared stories.

It felt like time to sleep, and I lay back and thought through some of the stuff I felt as though I’d learnt from the trip. I don’t want to get too sentimental, but the times that I’ve tried mushrooms, I’ve always had a really special experience that has seemed to strip away the negative characteristics I often think I show, and leaves me feeling the most calm, relaxed, honest and open I’ve ever felt. As things started to slowly return to normal, I thought about the ways I don’t like to be, and how often it’s through my own choice and ego that these kinds of traits get shown. Impatience, frustration, and selfishness are the words I’d put for them. Touring is where feelings like this can really encroach on you, with the extreme relationships and ties you have to the people around you, mixed with the pressures and lack of sleep sometimes making you act or say things in certain ways that you wouldn’t normally want to. All I can say is that the trip reminded me of the things I like and dislike most about myself, and left me with a clearer feeling of the kind of person I wanted to be, and I really felt as though I’d hit the reset button. What a beautiful night.

Day 18 - Heidelberg

As you can probably imagine, the morning after’s of nights like Castricum can sometimes be a little bit strange to handle. I woke up feeling pretty fresh after just two hours of sleep, and my friends around me began to stir as well. Luckily for us all, Rowald and his partner had prepared a beautiful breakfast, with homemade bread and hummus, and various other delights. A coffee and plenty of water later and I was feeling good, with the same feelings of warmth that had been there the previous night still hanging around.

Today we were driving to Heidelberg, about 350km away. I tried my best to sleep in some weird positions on the front seat, as did everyone else, apart from Dario of course, the trooper. When we arrived at the venue, Villa Nachttanz, we were all a little bit wary, as we were basically in an industrial estate, and the place looked a little unassuming from the outside. But after climbing out of the van and into the venue, all those doubts were deemed totally unfounded. It was by far the biggest and most impressive looking venue of the tour so far, with a massive stage and PA rig, and lovely gear all over the place. We were all in a pretty excited mood for this show now.

After a lengthy soundcheck, we did some odd tasks (we’d run out of some handmade merch stuff). We ate some amazing lasagne-style vegetables and bread, had a beer, and before long the venue was filling up. Tonight, it turned out, was the re-opening of Villa Nachttanz, as they had moved premises. So, it was set to be really busy with alot of people coming to check out the new building. By 10pm, when the first band, Deadnotes played, it was absolutely rammed. A big contrast from the last few nights. Deadnotes were great, playing sort of melodic, emo punk stuff really well. The JC and PJ sets were both pretty solid, and a big proportion of the crowd was pretty fucked and dancing. It didn’t feel too much like they were there for our music especially, but it was good to play to such a big crowd.

After we’d finished it was pretty late, and people left the gig room and out into the DJ room/bonfire outside pretty sharply. I had a good wander round, made a friend at the merch desk, and spent the rest of the night with them by the fire, drinking more beer and having a proper talk and relax with someone new for the first time in a while. The band went off to different crash spaces, and we hung out til the sun rose and got a taxi back to where we were staying in the Alt Stadt. I went for a walk past some of the old buildings and got given a bit of a tour by my new friend. We hadn’t had much chance to see the cities we’d been playing in for a few days, so it was cool to catch all the deserted streets in the early morning light.

Day 19 - Holzerath

I woke up feeling pretty good, considering this had been the second night in a row of lasting on about 2 hours sleep. I wandered through the, much busier, streets again to find my friends at their crash place. We had a nice breakfast with some very hungover/still drunk housemates, jumped back in the van, and started making our way to Holzerath Open Air Festival. I managed to get one more hour of sleep in the bunk alongside Bernd, and woke up to the feeling of being rocked back and forth, as the van climbed hills and passed through thickly wooded forests. We all climbed out of the van with a big old amount of excitement, realising we were just surrounded by stunning nature on all sides. It felt as though it’d been a long road since the lakes, mountains and oceans we’d been treated to in Austria and Switzerland, so it was a beautiful point in the tour to get back to some trees. We were on time, but everything was moving a bit slowly with sound/stage stuff, so we happily spent a few hours playing frisbee, lounging around and going for strolls in the forest.

We set up and sound checked on the stage, which was formed into a few trees, making branches stick out all around you as you played, awesome, and people began to arrive in droves. Before we played, PJ explained that this whole festival had been put on for us, and to celebrate a birthday of one of the promoters, which made us feel pretty special. Both sets went beautifully, with the sun going down for PJ’s set, and small lights illuminating the grounds in front of us, showing the few hundred people sat on logs and really listening to the music. The night before in Heidelberg had been an awesome show, but it did feel a little like the crowd would’ve enjoyed just about anything, whereas tonight it was a much more focused audience, and it really seemed like people got what we were trying to do. We both had really good merch days, met alot of people after the gig, and drank alot of beer and schnapps, and I was blown away once again by the amazing thing that is Polenta.

Day 20 - Regensburg

The sleeping place after Holzerath had been another youth centre just down the road from the festival, which had alot of nice sofas and cushions to sleep on. They’d left us a whole fridge full of beer, too, which was awesome, but I think we were all a little bit beer-ed out. However, we felt concerned that the people who’d hooked us up with it might’ve felt that something awful must have happened if we left them entirely untouched, so we had a few for good measure.

It was a pretty innocuous drive to Regensburg, our next stop. We breakfasted at a little gas station, and spent alot of the journey watching South Park.

There was some sort of Mayor fest happening in Regensburg today, so the streets were packed. We piled into the venue, Couch, and were met by the really nice promoter, Michael (it’s always helpful to have an easy way to remember the promoter’s name). He’d brought us some really nice, still-warm vegan pizza. Tonight was another acoustic show, so we did the usual complicated manoeuvring with the gear on the small stage, debated using a pretty out of tune, old piano, had a beer, played half a game of chess with Bernd (I’d seriously upped my game in the last few days), and before too long, the place began to fill up.

Photo by Michael Suess

It was kind of a difficult show for sound and communicating with the crowd, just because of the way the room was shapeed, but in the end this turned out to be a really nice Sunday night show, and it was nice to be inundated with people wanting to speak to us/buy merch afterwards.

Once again, at the stroke of midnight it was Georg’s birthday, so we piled outside and sang him happy birthday. They were all in the mood for a party, but a couple of us were needing to sleep off the last few night’s lack of lying down. So, PJ, Dario, Cis and I headed back to Michael’s place, a nice little flat he keeps on his own.

Photo by Michael Suess

Day 21 - Berlin

Today was another long drive. After meeting the others at their crash place, we got on the road. Things were running a little behind already, so we didn’t get chance to eat the awesome breakfast Puddel had sorted for us til a gas station a little further down the way. About an hour later, after everyone had started to relax into their hangovers/sleeping positions, we suddenly realised we were being followed by police. They then overtook us and stuck on a sign saying, ‘Bittle folgen’ (please follow). After shouting, ‘Police! Wake up!’ to everyone in the bunks, we all jumped into seating positions, stuck our belts on, and nervously sat there following the van to wherever it was taking us. We re-clarified our stories incase it was going to be a drug test, but our hearts sunk a little more when we realised it was a weighing station. For those of you who don’t know, German police are also really into setting a limit on how much weight you can carry without having a certain driving licence. We drove up to the weighing thing, knowing that the limit was 3500kg, and saw the figures spin way over this to 4200kg. Stomachs a little more dropped than we thought possible, we pulled off and waited to see what the deal would be.

This big, bolshy bastard came up to Dario’s window (who gave him his standard friendly smile and hello), looked us up and down and said, ‘Finish.’ Dario smiled back, and politely asked, ‘What is finished?’, to which he replied, ‘Finish. No more.’ After asking him, ‘Well what are we to do?’, (at this point I imagine we were all picturing how much gear/how many people we’d have to leave here to get to the legal weight), he told Dario to get out of the van and follow him, and we saw him stroll away with him.  We sat in relative silence, and I wondered if this was the day of the tour where all our nightmare chickens would come home to roost and all the money would have to go on a massive bastard fine to some knob head cops. Dario came back to the car, opened the driver door, climbed inside, sighed, and said ‘70€, and we can go.’ With a rustle of paper, a big breath of relief, we were out of there and back on the road. We talked it over for the next few miles, about how ridiculously dysfunctional this system is, and basically all agreed that ABCAB (All Bavarian cops are bastards).

We arrived to a rainy Berlin, a city that I’ve passed through and played in two times before, but barely feel as though I’ve scratched the surface of. Even after having lived in London for three years, Berlin has always felt pretty enormous to me, and I’ve never known anything about the Geography of the areas I’ve been. That’s kind of an exciting feeling of unknown that I love about being on tour, that total loss of position and understanding of where the fuck in the world you are. So with that vibe, we rocked up to the Ramones Museum, another venue I’d never visited, but heard huge amounts about, and know countless friends who’ve passed through (the evidence of which is inscribed in permanent marker and photos all over the walls). We loaded in through the rain, and had a well deserved crash out on the sofas, taking in the history around us, had a beer, and ate some stunning vegan Oreo cheesecake.

Tonight was another acoustic gig. By this point in the tour it felt as though we’d totally nailed and found the right dynamic for these shows, and by now I actually really looked forward to the tightness and intimacy of the quieter gigs.  I met Flo, the owner of the Ramones Museum, and was excited to see him wearing a Petrol Girls t-shirt (I share drumming duties for PG’s with the wonderful Zock from Astpai), and we had a nice chat about them, as they’d passed through Berlin with Zock just the month before. The whole thing of crossing paths and following bands and friends around all across the world is another part of touring that blows my mind and makes us all smile.

The Ramones Museum, Berlin

After a neat setup, with the help of a really friendly and skilled inhouse sound person, Tomasz, the room, covered from floor to ceiling in Ramones memorabilia, began to fill up with weeknight gig-goers, and we played a really nice James Choice set. The PJ set was definitely the best acoustic gig we played on the whole tour. The PA was at that level where it just lifted the sound, never came into play in your mind, effected your performance or caused any issues, we just played and it felt beautiful. Half way through the set, we were joined on stage by an incredibly awesome dog, something which excited me hugely. He climbed up quite alot of times, actually. We were told later that usually he just hides and tries to cover his ears, but he was really digging the music that night, which I think we all accepted as the highest of all compliments.

We sang Happy Birthday to our beautiful friend, Georg mid-set, and surprised him afterwards with an ice cream cake and a really good (so I’ve been told by my Austrian family) bottle of Schnapps we’d picked up in Holzerath. We’d not had any chance to eat properly since we arrived in Berlin, so the lovely promoters, Steffi, Lotta and Yvy treated us all to a late night Pizza at a place a short drive away. It was one of the best Pizzas of the whole tour, and it was so nice to have 10-15 of us all sat on a long table at midnight in Berlin, eating pizza and drinking beer/wine. We decided to go out a little later, and ended up at a bar down the road. There I had a pretty bad time at losing at table football (I really need to work on myself), and encountered, without a shadow of a doubt, the two least giving-a-fuck bartenders in the whole of Germany, and headed back to Yvy’s apartment to sleep. She had a really nice place, and treated us to a whole spare room with really comfy mattresses and clean linen..etc… It was a really good sleep for us all, fuck yeah Berlin!

Day 22 - Leipzig

After that pretty blissful amount of sleep (admittedly it was probably about 5 hours, but that’s a fair amount by touring standards), we woke up to another really incredible breakfast and shower. It’d been a while since I last ate an Avocado, so it was good to fix that. On our way out of Berlin we stopped at an enormous and incredible music shop, where Puddel and Dario wanted to check out some gear, and the rest of us wanted to touch all the expensive gear we couldn’t afford. This place was huge, and I checked out some hybrid drum kits, which I’d never seen before, and tried out about 25 different types of drum sticks on 10 different practice pads. We bought about 15 euros worth of gear and headed for the van.

So Leipzig, I’d always heard was a pretty big punk/anarchist town, which seemed true as we rolled in, with alot of cool graffiti and a nice free vibe about the streets. We arrived and parked round the corner from the promoter, Zgone’s apartment, and he took us up to grab some food and dump our stuff. We met his lovely partner, Jenny, and their baby son, Janosch. Babies/kids/pets are always a nice thing to encounter on tour, as they remind you of the INNOCENCE AND PURITY OF LIFE.

So after a lovely Chilli and these sweet peanut butter oat cake things, we headed literally round the corner to the venue, Kulturcafe Manfred. We discovered an incredible and previously unexplored loading in technique, through the open window of the gig room. Fastest load in of the entire tour. It was cool to be back in another real, mucky squat venue, and the guys who took care of the space were really friendly.

For me, I felt like we played a little sloppy tonight. I think I had it in my head since the other shows that from now on I always wanted to keep totally focused/sober for the rest of the performances of the tour, but in Leipzig I felt like my mind was constantly wandering, and the amount of schnapps we were being sent up on stage made the sobriety thing a little difficult, and the room was real smokey for the first time in a while, and my voice truly wasn’t having any of it. But fuck it, the crowd was cool and we had a fun night!

Afterwards, Cis, Georg and I felt like crashing, and the others went out for a few more beers. This is the first night of the whole tour I was told that I’d been snoring. I’m so sorry, Cis.

Day 23 - Würzburg

We awoke to again, another incredible breakfast. Fuck me, Germany is good for food. Jenny and Zgone had a rather strange but likeable collection of fancy dress clothes, and we decided to take a funny photo, documented below. They were also keen for PJ to film a couple of songs on their sofa, which he was happy to do. We decided to sing one of his more serious songs, with Puddel and I sat in ridiculous fancy dress, removing a little of the sincerity behind the song. Pretty emotional performance though, and Janosch was loving it.

Today was another journey where I didn’t know what direction we were headed in, but I believed it was towards Bavaria, meaning it was another day of feeling slightly nervous about the cops again, but the journey had no troubles,. It is, however, worth noting that we stopped and filled up on Gas at some point along the way. I know this seems fairly standard and unimportant, but you’ll understand why I mentioned it a little later on.

We arrived at Kurt and Komisch in Würzburg 5 hours later. I say, we arrived, but first we went into the bar next door, introduced ourselves individually to two quite confused looking bartenders, before asking where we should set up. We were told to go and do it next door, at the correct venue.  This seemed like a good idea, practically, so we did just that.

Kurt and Komisch was quite a trendy place, and goes down as one of the darkest venues I’ve ever played at. It was more of a club than a venue, but the layout was cool, and Dario got the club PA system sounding sweet as per usual. Ollie, the lovely promoter, took us all out for dinner at a Falafel place down the road, and we took in the sights and sounds of the town. Apparently the population is hugely made up by students, and there’s a highly proportionate number of women compared to men. Pretty great town.

When we got back to the venue, there was a really nice number of people around who seemed really up for it, so that was a good start. Tonight there was another band on the bill, Brickwater from Nürnberg, who were really good and nice gents. Both our sets went really great, awesome energy, and sounded lovely from the stage. There was a couple of people in the crowd in particular who were super into it, and dancing…etc… which was wonderful for a weeknight in Würzburg. Mid-way through both sets, I think we all came to a pretty sad realisation that tonight was the last full band gig that all of us would be playing, as Kathrin was flying home for another gig the next night, an acoustic show. It was really cool that we made the most of the last gig with all of us involved, and we decided to get real fucking drunk to strengthen that. So, we did, the venue gave us shnapps and beer after eowirnwne… I remember having a really lovely, long talk with Georg about pretty much everything, a guitar was being passed round a circle of some of us, and we all generally had a lovely night, thanks Tom and the good people of Würzburg.

Day 24 - Hannover

The good feeling never lasts. We all woke up with a start to PJ apologising, but shouting that we needed to get the fuck up and go to Hannover to film a last minute session and record something last minute for radio. I felt sad. I’d been lying in bed for about half an hour, and was about to go shower my disgusting body when this abrupt wake up call happened. Never mind. We all shakily got up and out the door, to wake up Cis and Dario, who had to go do toilet stuff, so we waited in the van/lying in the grass/being hungover. Georg and I discovered the most Rock/Satanic church of the whole tour.

Hail Satan

The journey to Hannover, which we needed to be quick, took fucking forever. The closer we got, the slower it took. PJ sat formulating the 30 minute window we had to park up, set up for the film session, record it, get himself back in the van and drive to a radio station to be live on radio moments later. We don’t fuck around. The guys filming the session for us were really nice and professional, from LaMosiqua One Shot Sessions. We smashed out PJ’s in two takes on this grassy roundabout. 

After that, PJ jumped back in the van and away for his radio session, and we stayed to film a James Choice session in a nice square down the road. Afterwards, Puddel treated us to some vegan Sushi from down the road, and we had a nice wander down the main street, which was really cool and bustling and warm, with loads of smells from various food places wafting around.

Tonight we were playing in a house owned by our friend Sandro, who is a lovely Italian chap living in Hannover. He treated us all to some incredible Pizza from a Pizzeria on the road we’d explored earlier. On the walk to get food, PJ said something along the lines of, ‘Hey, so who paid for the gas yesterday?’. We all continued to smile and walk casually down the road, knowing this to be a question of very little consequence. The lack of an answer to PJ’s inconsequential question did seem a little strange, as that sort of thing is usually met by a response of, ‘Me’, or ‘I did’, by someone, namely Dario. However, after several repeatings of the question, it would seem we had to draw the conclusion that we’d filled our tank up to the brim with gas, but had utterly failed to do the second, quite important part of the transaction, which is actually paying for it. We laughed, quite alot, but with a certain degree of sickness and worry brimming in the laughter. It seemed like the most ridiculous, impossible thing to have not paid for a full tank of gas, and to not be in a prison cell right that minute. We knew we had to deal with this, but first it seemed much more important to eat the Pizza, so we did that and decided we’d tackle it later. I say we, Georg did the horrible task of calling the German cops and explaining to them that we accidentally drove away with 130 euros worth of someone’s nice, delicious petrol. Only on this tour… Still, to all law enforcement authorities, it’s been taken care of and we’ll never do it again.

Anyway, you want to hear about the Pizza. It was fucking sublime, and we ate it out in Sandro’s nice garden with a beer, while his tiny apartment filled with nice people. The room we were playing in tonight was really tiny, and already boiling hot, but turned out to be a really beautiful show. It was also Kathrin’s last gig of the whole tour with us, which was really sad, but a special gig for that, once again. Realising it was the last time we were all going to be in the same room together for a very, very long time, we all hung out in a big group for the rest of the night, talking about the tour, sharing stories, and going over some logistics that need to be dealt with at the end of any tour. After long, sweet hangs and more beers (and a sandwich with vegan meat that Puddel made me that was honestly the closest I’ve come to spitting out, refusing to believe it wasn’t real meat. It took alot of convincing me to eat it, but Jesus it was realistic.) I decided to go crash in the van with Cis and Dario. So, I said my sad goodbye to Kathrin, as she was grabbing her flight at 4am, and sidled off to the van for the second to last sleep of the tour.

Sandro’s Place, Hannover

Day 25 - Bielefeld

So we came to it, finally, the last day of this massive tour, and the last chapter of this equally lengthy tour diary, you can very nearly go back to your knitting. I woke up next to Dario, who’d said he’d had a bit of a shit sleep with a bad back, which made me sad. I headed inside and had my second shower in that place, we did a steady pack up and loaded the van for the second to last time (I’ll stop doing that soon, promise.) We decided the only respectful thing to do on a day like this was to have pizza for breakfast from the same place as last night, so we did just that. We met Glen, PJ’s friend and booker on the high street, and again, had just some of the best pizza we’d ever had in our lives. If you’re ever in Hannover, please go looking for this place. Something I decided not to mention that throughout the entire tour, especially since Berlin, my shoes had taken a terrible turn, and essentially weren’t shoes anymore. The only thing that could really connect them to the shoe world was they smelt fucking terribly of feet, and had done for a month now. I decided I couldn’t bear to sit next to someone on a flight with these monstrosities on, so I treated myself to a 20 euro pair of shit plimsoles from a shop down the street, and chucked the old faithful vegan shoes in the bin. Farewell old friends, on to your next adventure.

Bielefeld was an easy 100km drive, so with Kathrin’s empty seat echoing the empty seat she’d left in all of our hearts, we drove there in an hour and a bit, to the venue for our last gig, Plan B. PJ had said before that Bielefeld was one of his favourite German cities, so it was pretty exciting to be here for the last one. Plan B is a really cool bar that serves awesome vegan and veggie food, and loads of nice beers and Fritz Cola flavours.

The trickiest thing behind Kathrin leaving a day early, is that it was down to me to try and play the drums for James Choice that night, something I hadn’t done since January 2014. So, luckily we got there early enough to run through the whole set, where I felt like I was playing probably the worst I’d played for a long time. So, brimming with confidence I threw down a vegan burger, a beer, and did a really long warm up, trying to get my head straight. It was a bit of a sketchy last set, if I’m to be really honest… But it did come together somehow. 

While the venue was rammed with people, many hung around outside while we played, and mostly seemed to be there for PJ’s set, which became evident when we headed on stage for the last time as PJ Bond and Big Orange. We clinked glasses, and smashed it out to a really wonderfully appreciative audience. It was one of the main times of the whole tour where PJ seemed completely on it and in totally had the crowd in the palm of his hand. It was his night, and it was great to have that happen in the last gig. Mid-way through playing Neighbourhoods, that cheeky little bitch Dario brought us all shots, to cheers from the crowd. After the set, we all, disgustingly sweaty hugged, kissed and thanked each other for an awesome end to the tour. Fair play, Bielefeld, is all I can say.

After the gig, I think we were all feeling the pretty raw emotion of having to gradually say goodbye to one another. Georg was to be getting a flight home, and PJ was staying in Bielefeld to head to the UK the next week, so it was to be Dario, Cis, Puddel, Bernd and I driving South through the night to Nurenberg, where I’d be flying home the next day. So, we did a slow, sad pack up, drank more beers together, and by then it was time to say farewell to Georg. This saddened me deeply, but away he went from my life again. 

So, there were 6. We all mingled around a little longer, and did a careful final load in to the van. The really kind owner of Plan B, who unfortunately I don’t think we ever got the name of, was really generous, and sorted us out with a Pizza each, tons of Club Mate for Dario, and a few more beers for the road. What a star. We all gave him a huge hug, said various goodbyes to the friends we knew in Bielefeld, and congregated around the van to say goodbye to PJ.

It’s really hard to know what to do and what to say at points like this. As a group, we’d been together constantly for almost an entire month, the longest I’ve spent entirely with one set of people in my life. Through all the ups and downs, highs and lows, deep down I just really loved each and every one of these people, and felt the same amount of love back from and between them. PJ went round and hugged each of us, we spoke our own private words of  goodbye to one another, and with a few last shouts and waves and miss you’s and love you’s, off he went around the corner as we pulled the big orange van out for the last drive.

It was a sad, but oddly thrilling and beautiful ride. I sat up front with Cis and Dario, and Puddel and Bernd leant over our seats, so all five of us were in one long, smiling line, and we spent a few hours talking about the whole thing, from start to finish, our favourite points, moments and feelings we’d had we might’ve not shared, but after saying it, someone else may have shot in and said, ‘No way! I was feeling the same thing!’ or ‘Fuck, I threw up that night too…etc’, and seemed to have all the long, friend talks about deeper things than just loading in, and traffic, and sound checks, which tours can easily become consumed by. It was a beautiful and bonding time, and I’m so glad I got to have that chance to unwind and unravel my mind.

5 or 6 hours later, and it was just Dario and I awake again in the front seat, with our cargo of sleeping friends laying across the seats and bunks of the van. We talked longer, as the sun started to peak over the edge of the skyline, and eventually we were in a service station a few miles away from the airport, and it was time to sleep. Cis kindly gave up the bunk for Dario, and I tangled myself up into a sleeping position across the front passenger and driver’s seat.

A few hours later, we woke up to the chaos of a Saturday morning in a service station just outside the city centre. I can only speak for myself, but just the journey from the van to the bathroom made me realise I was 100% not ready to be reintroduced back into normal civilisation just yet. But sadly, that was where I was headed. It was a very short drive to the airport, and I began to feel the nerves of the real world pulling me back from this journey. I didn’t really know what to say by this point, as I knew time was running out, and I didn’t want to say anything heavy, and I didn’t want my last words to this group of people to be inconsequential. But once we rolled into the airport departures, it didn’t matter anymore. I tightly hugged each of them, (Dario a little too tight), and wished them a safe last part of the journey, wished I could be with them, and that I couldn’t wait to be back playing music with them again soon.

Because, as the bright orange and black van roared off into the distance, that’s when I realised deep down, what this whole tour had truly been born out of, centred upon, and been led by. More than any other tour I’d done up until til this point, the music we’d played every night of that month had just been the most important and crucial thing to one and all of us. Seven musicians from different corners of the world, who met by chance, became friends, and ended up heading out together, with a Slovenian driver and a big van, on a huge journey, playing music together that came out sounding incredible, and sharing individually in one collective adventure, made possible by the generosity, fire and passion of strangers, who are now friends, all across this continent.

And that’s how I think I’m going to end this, thanks for sharing in it.

To hear our music, and help us pay for the next journey, you can visit here:

www.jameschoice.bandcamp.com www.pjbondmusic.bandcamp.com

This diary is also on it’s way to being made into a Zine, which you can purchase from us a little later in the year!