#theanvil

I think this is literally the first night on this insane tour where we get to sleep more than four hours. And damn, it feels so good. Waking up well rested on a beautiful day (ironically the weather in the UK is always good and the sun is always shining when we‘re over? What‘s going on here?) is really something that was long overdue after three really tough and stressful days. Let‘s kick off another absolute crazy day.

We have two shows coming up today. A matinee acoustic show at the LP Café in Watford at 4 pm that our good friend and UK promoter Giles arranged as well as a full band show in Bournemouth in the evening. This is a tight schedule but the whole crew is in a fantastic mood this morning so this one should be easy to manage. Our host Ryan in Worcester treats us with fine coffee and nice and nerdy talks about guitar gear. Such a legend.

We arrive at the LP Café in Watford at 2 pm and get offered more coffee from the very lovely and kind people at the café including Paul from the amazing Nervus who runs the whole project. I have a really mixed relationship with record stores. As soon as I start checking out the collection I literally wanna buy every single vinyl and usually end up completely broke. I try to force myself to not look further into the collection at the LP Café which in the end then makes me feel very uncomfortable not showing these treasures the attention they deserve.

We have some spare time left and go for a quick walk in the sun and take weird band photos with our good friend & photographer Ilkay. What a dude.

Back at the LP Café we decide to play the acoustic show outside, in front of the café. I think it would have probably sounded better inside but I love the atmosphere here and the sun is still shining. Coffee, sunshine, vinyl and bands playing. What else could you ask for? Thanks to the lovely people of the LP Café for making this possible.

After the two quick acoustic sets from us and Kid Dad we‘re straight off to Bournemouth. What a shame we couldn‘t stay in Watford for longer. Hope we can go back soon and play a full band show there. We have exactly 2.30 h left until Kid Dad are supposed to start their changeover and the drive to Bournemouth is a 2h drive. We officially ban the whole travel party from any piss stops. At least this time we are lucky, no traffic jams at all.

When we arrive at the venue at 7pm I feel relieved. We do the probably fastest load-in we‘ve ever done. This is what I love about touring with nine people in one van: the load-ins are so easy! The first band, Endea are playing.

After setting up the backline and the merchandise we get offered vegan burgers and curly fries, provided by our good friend & drummer in Death by Shotgun George. This really saves my life after sitting in the van for half the day and having no food at all. It‘s not a common thing in the UK to get food & drinks at a show. We can call ourselves really lucky that we have such care taking friends everywhere.

After a killer set by Kid Dad we play a quite short but super intense 35-minutes set, I think the best one we played on the tour so far. I‘m blown away. It‘s damn hot on stage in the beautiful venue „The Anvil“ where we already played back in 2017. It‘s our third show in this city and Bournemouth never disappoints. There are actually people singing along to all of our songs and it feels like each time we play here a few more people show up. This is fucking crazy. Thank you so much. The guys in Loose Tooth and Lastelle are up next, it‘s the last day of their UK tour today and I really enjoy their riffy Hardcore, Post-Hardcore. Check them out.

We are all well exhausted after the show, would love to visit the beach again but you sometimes just have to miss out on some things in order to have a good reason to come back. Day four of this tour and we still haven't really figured out how to load in the van properly as we simply have too much gear for the trunk. It takes us one and a half hours to load in everything including too many fights between the loading-crew-think-tanks. In the end we make it to George‘s parents house safe and sound where we happily fall asleep drinking ciders. Life could be worse.