But we can’t go anywhere because my wallet has vanished. I’m sure it’s been stolen – I couldn’t just lose it – after all it’s about the size and weight of an early-90s mobile phone, stuffed full as it is with receipts and coffee shop loyalty cards and the business cards of the twenty or thirty most recent music industry wheelers and dealers that have drunkenly approached me after gigs.

Shaun and Mat are busy packing and unpacking the car, and I’ve been in and out of the pub to check the stage area about three times. I guess I should re-trace our steps.

We finished our second set at The Grand Junction at about 9pm. It was an early show at what may possibly be one of the greatest pubs in the world. What I’ve noticed about great pubs is that they’re often in horrible locations (ie. the outskirts of Glasgow, or Birmingham, or Swindon) and while Maitland itself is not at all horrible, there’s certainly very little to do in town. Actually that’s unfair, I’ve only ever been there on a Sunday, and each time the only shop to be open has been Kmart – but I do stand by my assertion that the absolute best pastime in Maitland is to drink at the rather grandiose, slightly run-down and almost definitely haunted Grand Junction Hotel. I’ve only been there twice but it has certainly become a personal favourite venue. I suspect my wallet is somewhere within its hallowed walls, but I can’t be sure. I’ll keep tracing back.

The journey from Bangor, south of Sydney, to Maitland was not uneventful. Firstly, we had to detour through Newtown to collect a wayward band-member that had become separated from the group in the very early hours of the morning. We found him looking dapper and refreshed, though we suspect he’d slept little. He and I were also wearing the same shirt – which was highly embarrassing and resulted in a shot-gun t-shirt purchase from the Newtown Salvos store. I guess I’ve already given away the fact that the wayward band-member wasn’t me – so for those of you playing at home that only leaves two.

I don’t think I left my wallet at the Salvos but I may well have left it at a Gosford service station later in the day. In a magnificent display of courage and judgement we managed to run the 70 litre tank in our hire car down to the final 1.5 litres of fuel. I was driving at the time so I suppose, technically, this was my fault – though I prefer to look at it as an achievement. Needless to say it was an expensive refill, but i think Shaun paid whilst I had a refreshing wee, so it’s unlikely my wallet got left there either.

Which takes us back to The Brass Monkey – another favourite venue in the less-bogan-than-you’d-think beachside Sydney suburb of Cronulla. It was an easy show for us, supporting the musically-brilliant Feral Swing Katz – a collection of the finest and most experienced country musicians in the land playing a repertoire of jazz standards, old school rockabilly and western swing. Michel Rose on the pedal steel blew my fragile little mind. I’m in awe of that instrument and anybody who can play it. I’ve tried, but to be honest i think I’d have a better chance of learning to ride a crocodile. Michel makes it seem like he’s just..ermmm…a ringin’ a bell. He’s a fine gentleman too.

It was a pretty full house, and the audience was a bit of a mixed nut selection. There was a gaggle of women at a table down the front that I mistook for being a hens party group. Then there was the couple in the front corner that I suggested (embarrasingly for them) might be celebrating an anniversary (it turns out they were on a first date – which I learned later when I was bailed up at the urinal by the slightly intimidating but essentially friendly male protagonist). Most interesting of all was the old couple (late 70s I’d say) in the back corner, that spent the entire evening kissing passionately. It was a site to behold. After our set, I thought I’d make things awkward and sit right next to them, but it made little difference – they just kept on a-smoochin’…

Perhaps it was their example that influenced our wayward band member.

A fine venue it may be, but the rider is a little tight at the monkey – so there’s a chance i may have gotten my wallet out a few times. But hang on, I was the designated driver…so maybe I didn’t get it out at all. Maybe I’d lost it before then.

Saturday was pretty lazy if I remember rightly. We’d played a good show in Wollongong (Bulli to be precise) the night before, which followed our interview with the most disinterested student radio presenter we’d ever come across at Sydney’s UTS. But The heritage in Bulli is something special – and Shaun’s uke-bass really came into its own in such a splendid acoustic environment. The steak was also good (I’m temporarily off the vegetarian wagon – and into meat with a vengeance) but the fisherman’s basket itself might have been more tasty than its contents (which I suspect had spent more time in the deep freeze than in the ocean).

But damn it – I know I had my wallet there. In fact I also know I had it on Saturday morning when I took Ash (our manager’s son) to his soccer game (yup – I was a soccer mom for a day – and a competitive one at that!) My conclusion is that I really must have lost it in Maitland – which is a worry.

A few years ago, when I was driving round Europe in a slightly diffferent band, it was suggested that I was affected by some kind of cosmic ‘black hole’* existing in some other dimension – invisible to the eye but none the less existing very close to my person. Within it I lost a wallet (twice), many keys, at least one mobile phone, two or three guitar tuners and any number of half finished beers. It was a kind of curse really – and one I’ve worked hard to rid myself of. In fact, in the process I’ve become sort of obsessive-compulsive – I’ll often return to my house or car two or three times to confirm that i’ve locked it, or closed the windows etc etc. Annoying yes – but I seemed to be finally free of ‘the black hole’.

Sadly, it seems to have returned, and found me at one of my favourite pubs, on an evening when I’d drunk just enough to let my ocd guard down.

It’s time to give up, cancel my credit cards and head to the Pool residence for a Kurri Kurri Curry before an early morning flight (which I can hopefully get on without ID).

How frustrating.

Good night.

* I know nothing about black holes and apologise if ‘cosmic’ is not the right word to describe one. Any reference to any form of science found within this blog should be disregarded, unless it’s written by Shaun. He knows about science.

A couch at The Phoenix. We didn't actually spot this one, people must have been sitting on it.

I wonder how many of this blog’s overseas friends are aware that Australia’s capital city is a small inland hamlet that goes by the name of Canberra? It doesn’t get a lot of press, but this purpose-built political hotbed played host to our little band just this Thursday past – it was indeed the very first stop on our now well-under-way Unfortunate Rose tour.

We’re unsure if President Obama reads The Wildes’ blog but, assuming he does, I thought I’d dedicate the first snippet of this tour diary to acquainting him with the long and short of a Canberra visit. After all, it’s likely that he’ll end up passing through at the very least.

Firstly, the president will be relieved to know that, should he choose EuropCar (as we did) then (as long as he is upgraded from a mid-size to to a standard vehicle – again, quite likely) he’ll be able to plug his iPhone in directly to the usb port in the commodore’s centre console (that is, provided he remembers to bring his usb cable). This is a handy feature – he’ll be able to charge his phone AND automatically have his tunes played, in alphabetical order based on artist’s first name, through the excellent stereo system. Hopefully the president will not have accidentally filled his iPhone with tunes from his ex-girlfriend’s computer, and the short trip into town will not kick off with Alanis Morrisette’s angsty anthem You Oughta Know… This may or may not have happened to us/me.

The trip from the airport to the city is, Mr President, delightfully short. Canberra’s version of “heavy traffic” is something similar to the self-checkout queue at Coles Express in Chadstone at say, midnight. I guess you won’t get that analogy being from America and all but hopefully our local readers will.

The short trip is useful when you have flown up in the early evening and still need to do a soundcheck. Our drummer, Mat, actually caught a separate plane and had to get a bus in to town. The fare was officially $9, but the driver graciously accepted the $7.25 that mat had on him at the time. This, sir, will be handy to know if Europcar is all booked up and you haven’t had a chance to exchange many US dollars at Travelex.

Once in town, Mr Obama, you’ll no doubt be directed to Parliament House. We drove over it accidentally on our way to The Phoenix, and I must admit I felt inspired. If I knew all the words to our own national anthem I’d have certainly started singing it, but as I’m an awkward Gen-Y hipster from Melbourne that grew up watching Oprah instead of Question Time, I burst into your anthem instead. True, I don’t know all the words to it either, but it sure is a stirring piece of music.

It’s unlikely that a US president would play a show or make a speech at The Phoenix, but should you get some downtime I recommend heading there for a pint. It has a distinctly British Pub feel – the staff are friendly and the punters that came out for our show were friendly too. There’s couches and tables and people kind of mooch around rolling rollies (of course they can’t smoke them inside) and (I imagine) hatching great plans, writing notes in notebooks and coming up with great ideas. We played with a good lad named Pete Ackhurst and a lass by the name of Hannah Gillespie.

We were delighted to see people singing along at the show, including the lovely Jen (who didn’t say hi) and made some new friends after the set too. Mitch and Tess spring to mind – the latter having recently gotten an invitation to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston (I think it’s Boston). Unfortunately she needs $20,000 to get there – perhaps, Mr President, an overhaul of the tertiary education system is in order? I also had a good chat to an Iraq war vet that had come down to the show – he had some reasonably fascinating things to say. I suspect though that that war has a little more to do with the previous administration…

I’ve no doubt sir, that when you come to Canberra you’ll make even more new friends than us – though I doubt you’ll be put up in any finer style than we were at Shaun’s cousins’ house. Never have I had a finer cup of tea, nor slept with a larger immitation butterfly hanging above my bed.

Our stay in Canberra was short, but we did squeeze in a TV interview on Southern Cross Ten (no doubt they’ll try and snare you too Mr President) and a pre-record on Star Country Radio (hosted by the above-mentioned Pete).

All in all it’s a pretty town – something like a cross between bristol in the UK (I know you’re a Skins fan sir) and errr…maybe Hobart (though I haven’t been there since I was 17). Before the show I had a chance to wonder the streets, and at no stage did I think I’d get shot.

There’s a review of our Canberra show on FasterLouder here, and there’s some mention of “women swooning”. If they swooned over us, Mr President, just think how how they’d swoon over you!

Stay tuned for further tour updates including Bulli, Cronulla and our visit to one of the world’s great pubs – The Grand Junction in Maitland…

The Wildes play The Excelsior in Sydney (Surry Hills) on Thursday, March 31st, 2011. For more dates visit www.thewildesonline.com/shows

For the uninitiated, Tamworth is our Australian country music capital – and the Tamworth music festival is a ten day event that happens every January. We’ve heard some say it reminds them of SxSW, but no-one yet has compared it to Woodstock or Glastonbury. It’s essentially about as far from a traditional music festival as I can imagine. This is the third year in a row that  The Wildes have performed at the festival. When we first came, nobody at all knew who we were – now they at least write our name on stuff.

The lineup...

It’s fifteen hours drive from Melbourne to Tamworth. We filled the time with brilliant conversation.

Photo – sleeping.

We arrived just in time for our radio spot on 2TM – they were broadcasting live from the main street. Our two song set was followed by an interview with Australian roots icon John Butler – possibly the healthiest looking man I have ever seen up close. We took a photo of him to reassure our Mums that the music business isn’t as bad for you as the media would have you believe…

Tamworth is filled with pretty singer-songstresses – Tenielle Nada is one of these. We caught a little of her set out the back of The Albert Hotel on our first afternoon in town. Our friends The Harnetts were also there – they were the first people to ever make us feel welcome in Tamworth and it is always good to see them.

Each year over 450 buskers perform on the main street during the festival. Between them they cover a catalogue of about 14 songs – most of them made famous at one time or another by Johnny Cash. I don’t know if the man in black ever made it to country NSW, but his shadow hangs long over Peel Street at all times. Some buskers actually play original tunes, whilst others are just genuinely authentic – it’s these two groups that impress us most.

We particularly recommend Mojo Bluesmen.  They leave all the dirt on every song. Hearing them is like eating peaches straight off the tree.

Thursday was hot and humid. Just like every other day. We drank coffee from an Espresso Bar on Peel down near the Albert and The Hog’s Breath Cafe. It’s the best coffee in Australia outside of Melbourne – but sadly I never got the name of the place. They also made toast with wholegrains ricotta and honey. Delicious. If you’re in town look fr the sign that says Espresso Bar – I think it’s the only one. That night we performed at a special event at the Town Hall – kind of a Grand Ol’ Opry style thing called The Buttercup Open House. It’s a Tamworth institution and we were honoured to get an invitation.

The beautiful ex-pat turned English rose Ange Boxall joined us on stage – just as she did all week. It’s hard to imagine somebody more at home in a country dress and a pair of cowboy boots. I expect she’ll be a regular guest on stage in future…

The shy country gal...

From Buttercup we headed to The Family to see Shane Nicholson perform. His show was beautifully understated – filled with the warmth and family atmosphere that is such a part of the real country music we always seek out. Of course, it Shane’s case, it really is a family affair – accompanied as he was by father-in-law Bill Chambers on guitar, slide and mandolin. Wife Kasey also made an appearance. Ange introduced me to the generous and humble Troy Casser-daley after the show and he regaled us with first hand stories of the very recent Queensland floods. He’d lost a lost of material possessions, but remained optimistic and thankful – he knew others had it worse. A truly charming and modest man.

Chambers, Nicholson and Bennett

Earlier this year we’d visited Tamworth out-of-season. On that occasion we had a great time with the radio host Kelly Fuller – presenter of the morning show on ABC New England. She asked us back and as usual I tried to take over the show. There’s something about getting behind a microphone that turns me into the attention-seeking 8 year-old that used to perform concerts on the large window sill at home. Eventually Kelly wrestled back control of her show in time for a much-delayed news update.

The coolest geek in country...

Our main performance of the week was at The Family Hotel. We were delighted at the crowd that shuffled in for our 3pm start.

Above-mentioned crowd shuffling in...

We were even more delighted that they stuck around for 45 minutes whilst the PA speakers were replaced (the horns had blown prior to the soundcheck). We knew by the huge cheer that erupted when the new speakers were brought in that we’d have a fun show.

Lads backstage...

Our set ended up stretching to a little under two hours and we worked through about two-thirds of our growing catalogue. It’s traditional in Tamworth for artists to throw in a few covers – but this year we bypassed that tradition. There were too many new songs that we wanted to try out. We gave away a stack of free copies of our new EP, and the crowd left smiling. A nice afternoon’s work.

We were sad to leave Tamworth this year. We saw a lot of music, we drank a lot of coffee, we sampled the popular NSW beers (before settling on vodka) and in my case I even wrote a couple of songs. The accommodation was luxurious as always.

Casa del Wildes

The drive home was long. We stopped at West Wyalong and were so tired we couldn’t even be bothered waiting for Jesus to drive through.

2011 is the new 21...

We were out of conversation, so we mostly played cds on the way home. We know a lot of our fans aren’t necessarily country music people – so in case you fit that category we’ve recommended some stuff that might surprise you and bring you over to the dark side…

Thing is, it’s now a month since we got off the road and aside from a splendid gig at the truly lovely Thornbury Theatre with Chris Altmann & Que Paso we really have just had our heads down in the demo process, testing out new material in ‘the studio’ (otherwise known as the house in South Melbourne that Mat, Shaun and myself call home).

We’ve demoed 20 songs – but we plan to get this down to 10 for the album. This means we’ll have left-overs for b-sides, giveaways and random YouTube videos. It’s nice to feel like we’ve got good material up our sleeves.

We also released another video – but I’m guessing if you’ve made it to this blog you’ve already seen it.

In the absence of touring news I might have to start putting up recipes again – my Mum made amazing Thai Chilli Prawns tonight – maybe I’ll put up hers…

Bye for now,

Lachlan

The show itself was recorded for the free live disc we’ll be giving away soon, and we’re hoping it’ll all come out ok. The Wesley Anne is always a little touch and go with sound (thanks to noise restrictions) but we got through without major dramas – and we’ll spend a few hours analysing the tapes when we get them.

This section of the tour was, for me at least, broken up by a little journalistic work – I interviewed songwriter Mark Simos on the Saturday afternoon – keep your eyes out for the transcript which will be published on this very blog.

The Piping Hot Chicken Shop at Ocean Grove and Anglesea’s Red Till were great shows – just as we expected them to be. Last time we played at “the Chicken Shop” we’d had to cut our set short – thanks to the dreaded Victorian noise restrictions. This time we started early and gave the full house a good one and three quarter hour set – generally considered “money’s worth” in anyone’s language.

Shaun backstage

With time to kill on the rainy and cold south coast, Shaun, Mat and myself decided to drive up to Geelong and check out “Inception” at the cinema. The other two liked it very much. Somehow, I myself managed to lose my ticket stub between the box office and the popcor counter, and so had to kill two andthree quarter hours in a dreary geelong shopping mall. The rest of the band found this more than a little amusing…

At least we got well fed in Lorne, with fresh seafood paella and local wine making up for Shaun’s asthma attack (which almost had him in hospital). Luckily, thanks to a scene I’d remembered from a Harrison Ford movie, I was able to awaken his lungs with strong coffee. He has since described it as “the only useful thing I’ve ever done”…

Lachlan

It wasn’t a long sleep. An hour or so into it I was awoken by a girlish squeal from below. Expecting to find the lovely Laura JC sat up and panting from a night terror I was instead greeted with a croaky “sorry but I’m turning on the light” from our panic stricken drummer. It seems, from his testomony, that he was “bitten” during his sleep – and that whatever creature was responsible for the bite had subsequently sped across the room and disappeared into thin air, avoiding capture.

The girl behind the desk explained the next day that it was “probably a bush mouse – nothing to worry about”, but the cockroaches we stumbled across whilst trying to track down our furry friend left us a little uneasy.

Still, our humble accommodation was in fact rather lovely, and it is is one of the reasons we very much hope to be returning to the Sunshine Coast very soon.

The second, and far more important, reason would be the audiences. Our next two shows easily lived up to the promise of Joe’s – although a waterhole was certainly missing from Saturday Night’s  “House with No Walls”.

This gig is possibly one of the best kept secrets on the live touring circuit. 80 or so people cram into a stunning home (yes it IS somebody’s home) half an hour from Noosa amongst a dense forest and beneath a spectacular starry sky. For a few hours we felt thoroughly transported into another world – it was hard (even for me) to be cynical and make wisecracks in such a setting.  Still, I managed.

After some sleazy onstage banter towards directed towards opening act The Hussy Hicks we settled in to a rather enjoyable set. The house really did have no walls – not even surrounding the bathroom or the toilet (which was, of course, a drop dunny). Luckily as a male of the species toilets really do have no walls at all in this world, but it was a little confronting for the ladies at first. You might think that, on this description, the house would be a vouyeur’s dream, but on the contrary – there is something so pure and good about this place and its owners and supporters that such purile thoughts could not have been further from our minds. We would like to thank Lynda and her partner, as well as the uber-talented Hari and the affable Hussy Hicks – not to mention the most delightfully hippy audience we have played to for quite some time – for making this such a magical evening. getting to crank up electric guitars in the woods is a very rare treat – we hope to get to do it again!

Also magic was Sunday afternoon at Peregian Beach. Hundreds of sun-drenched and barely dressed locals lounging attentively on the shore-front grass made us wonder why we insist on living down south – we really did feel like uptight Melbourne hipsters in our Jeans, shirts and shoes – all of which were foregone by most of the locals (I mentioned that if they ventured into most of the places we play dressed as they were they would need a series of injections). Topped off by Thai food with new friends Dan and Mary in the Peregian Beach square this would probably have been the perfect day (were it not for our delayed flights back to Melbourne).  Still, Tiger rewarded Mat, Shaun and I with exit rows again – so who are we to complain?

5AM: Board the plane. Pray for a safe flight during safety demonstration. Fold self into ball. Fall asleep.

6AM: Doze merrily through turbulence. No food, no drink. Seat doesn’t recline. Wake briefly. Same in-flight magazine as last week. And the week before. And the week before. And the week before.

7AM: Sinuses playing up on the way down. Pressure above right eye. Plane seems stuck in clouds for ever. Bass player asleep (though later will claim not to have dozed).

8AM: Touch down in Coolangatta. Stand on bass player’s glasses (he dropped them when getting off the plane). No damage to glass. It’s warm outside. Always feels like it’s the 60s when we walk on the tarmac.

9AM: In the hire car. Humming REM’s All the way to Reno all the way to Brisbane. Stop for a risky coffee in Burleigh Heads. Risk pays off. Coffee good. Dispel theory that there’s no good coffee between Coburg and Southern Europe.

10AM: Studios of 98.9 – Aboriginal Country Radio Station. Possible world’s nicest people. Welcomed with open arms. Pre-record interview with Dan and a few acoustic songs including cover of Tom T Hall’s “That’s how I got to Memphis”.

11AM: Hanging out with the 98.9 crew. Hayley’s new tattoos look amazing. All Sailor Jerry stuff. Left arm completely covered. Says she’ll cover the other when she finds a man and gets married. Not sure of reasoning behind this…perhaps she plans to marry a tattoo artist and get the work done for free?

MIDDAY: Driving in circles round Brisbane, looking for affordable parking.

1PM: Still looking for affordable parking.

2PM: Shaun and I meet Shane from The Verve Cafe (tonight’s venue). Free beer (first of many for the evening). Don’t really like Coopers but know not to look gift horse in mouth.

3PM: Move car to less affordable but more long term parking. Loiter in an Irish pub for half an hour or so watching the Mets Vs The Cardinals. Have no idea what’s going on.

4PM: Start of a long long soundcheck. Just Shaun as I as the others are still on the plane. Listen to the 98.9 crew send us and hank Williams through the airwaves. Resolve to one day cover the entire hank Williams Songbook – whether you like it or not (obscure Nighthawks at the Diner Reference for the geeks out there).

5PM: Lovely waitress. More free drinks. Lovely Brazillian guy explains to us how racist he finds Australians to be. We suspect he’s probably right.

6PM: People start to shuffle in. Even Shaun’s aunty is here! We sit down with her and her friend. They all have Lamb Shanks and I, the “vegetarian” have some kind of brandy-drenched prawn dish. Shaun’s Aunty resolves to set him up with a nice girl.

7PM: The others still aren’t here. We get the call to say they’re still at the airport cos Jetstar forgot to deliver Andrew’s guitar. It’s a little inconvenient. 98.9′s Luke Peacock comes to the rescue with a Fender amp. Looks like Wriggles can go electric all night.

8PM: Luke floors us with his songwriting. Great support act. His new track “My Shit” is a bonafide country classic. He’s up for a Q Music award for best Indigenous song and we think he should damn well win it.

9PM: We plug in and play. Can’t hear ourselves at all so we thrash and have a great time. New fan offers us a ‘herbal gift” for our troubles. Pretty sure we can’t accept such forms of payment. Very sure that we wouldn’t admit it on our blog if we did.

10PM: Encores. Post show drinks, merch flogging and pack up. farewell to Luke til next time.

11PM: A night out is planned but first we must check in to our Digs – Base Backpackers. We only booked for 4 but there’s 5 of us. Whoops…we’ll have to sneak Mat in later.

Midnight: Backpackers, bogans and beer drinking contest. We stick to the $4 vodkas and coke. After a couple my mouth feels sull of sugar so we resort to vodka and soda. Bar is no good, let’s move on.

1AM Friday: VB – or, by it’s offial name, The Victory Bar. Covers band with a drum machine play brown eyed girl, holy grail, sweet child of mine etc. Change rooms and it’s all “putcha hands in the air”. We keep our hands in our pockets.

2AM: Kebab time. Doner kebab for Shaun. Long discussion about whether Doner is actually meat. He tastes it and agrees with mat and I that it is not. But then again nor is chicken probably. I am safe in the knowledge that felafel is tasty.

3AM: Another bar, this time the Irish one from earlier. Sweaty bodies writhe around twixt the olde worlde veneer. Covers band plays unrecognisable tunes. Shaun home to bed.

4AM: Been up for 24 hours now. Try to sneak Mat in to backpackers. Fail. Can’t let him sleep out on his own so I do the honourable thing. We share the steps outside the backpackers for a while and politely decline offers of all sorts of pharmacuticals.

5AM: Find two vacant park benches in the park. Figure that millions of people do this every night and at least it’s warm in Brisbane. Damned uncomfortable though. Mat dozes until a local ne’er-do-well disturbs him by leaning over, scratching under his chin and calling “wakey wakey”. I chuckle to myself having seen the whole episode unfold.

6AM: On the neighbouring bench a yound English blonde politely explains to her new Aussie cowboy why it is not a good idea for them to sleep together – especially seeing as they just met and she “hardly ever” does this kind of thing. He struggles to understand. It may be because she is using sentences.

7AM: Bounce up fresh as a daisy from park bench. Collect car from undercground garage so as to take advantage of the cheaper nightime rate. Drop all cards out of wallet in the process. Didn’t sleep but feel ok.

8AM: We’re on the way to the Sunshine Coast. Shaun driving. I feel refreshed as I had a shower at backpackers but had to dry myself with last night’s shirt as I forgot to take towell from room.

9AM: iPhone shows just 5 % battery but enough to guide us to ABC studios in maroochydore.

10AM: Live to air with Annie Gaffney on the morning show. An excellent, knowledgable interviewer. I play an acoustic version of ballad of a young married man and mat and laura sings bvs. It goes down well.

11AM: Breakfastg somewhere beginning with M. Vege pie. Quite delicious.

Midday: Back on the road – this time headed for our accommodation in Noosa,

1PM: Arrive at accom. Stand in the street and do a phone interview with Tony from Inpress about next week’s Wesley Anne show in melbourne. Another knowledgable interview and we talk a lot about videos and Sean Genders.

2PM: Stroll around Noosa on my own, drinking coffee. Almost coax the stern german waitress into a half smile. Decfide to head back to the hostel and type up this blog. It’s taken me an hour. Still no real sleep in the last 34 hours. now off to soundcheck in Eumundi. Feel fine. ( minutes left on internet credit. Had better post.

Lachlan

The show itself was a long one, hampered a little by a less than perfect front of house mix and a late start due to a function next door. The lovely Anna Rose was in attendance, as was Cheryl Byrnes and several other Tamworth royals. We seem to be feeling more and more at home in this rather strange town, and I even found myself in a local recording studio the next morning laying down some guest vocals on John Cuncliffe’s latest project. I felt quite honoured to be working in the studio built by the late Slim Newton’s early 70s hit ‘Red-back on the Toilet Seat’ under the direction of Slim’s son Steve.

Not even a long drive out to the rather desolate Narabri could dampen our post Tamworth spirits, though the journey up to our fist-fight-marred show in Bundaberg went mighty close. As is often the case, we found ourselves staying at the local backpackers – and our scantilly clad and rather hilarious cosmetics salesgirl room-mate Joey really did provide the only highlight of the evening by stumbling in drunken and ‘with guest’ around 5am. Prior to that we experienced something akin to ‘on-stage death’ at The Club Hotel – a rather grand establishment with a great stage and PA, but also home an audience that was more interested in beating the shit out of each other than listening to our brand of twangy rock. Needless to say we packed up and sped through the vomit and blood covered halls in record time after the set – we’ve probably never felt so relieved to have gotten through a gig.

We will no doubt be thankful to return to civilisation in Brisbane this week…

The second leg of the Sue-Ellen tour began, as mentioned previously, last Wednesday – at the lovely Lizottes in Kincumber – where jus Mat and I played an acoustic show to a pretty full house and enjoyed the hospitality of Brian and Jo and the very welcoming Lizottes staff. Vegetarian pasta was on the menu (almost as good as the recipe below…) and Coronas were at Taco Bill prices. Staying in Terrigal for the evening, we attempted to savour the local night life but were left a little high and dry by early closing hours and watered down vodka at the big white nightclub overlooking the beach.

The next morning we were able to get a better feel for Terrigal – bathed in sunshine but battered by an icy breeze. Still, the coastline was rather lovely and we felt like we’d escaped to Devon or Cornwall or maybe even Brighton Beach. With sea air in our gils we headed north to Newcastle airport to collect our comrades and head for the Newcastle show.

The Wicko gig proved to be a great night out for all who made it along. Opening act (and former golden guitar winner) Flash Sheedy and his band of good ol’ boys set hearts racing with some damned fine Shadows-inspired surf rock – and we were pleased to take the stage in front of a well-warmed-up crowd.

We spent the night ‘in Jamaica’ (anyone who’s been upstairs at the wicko will know what we mean) and got a good 4 hours sleep before rising at the crack of dawn for radio spots in tamworth and armidale before the evening’s surprisingly raucous show at the tiny Armidale Club.

At this point in time I will send a shout out to our new friend from Croatia (she bought a disk so may well find her way to this blog) who kindly bought me a wine (after I complained on stage about losing my drink cards) and then proceeded to stumble and fall on the glass as she slipped onto the stage while dancing during the encore! She (and we) escaped relatively unharmed and we (but not she) headed back to our ‘salubrious’ digs at the Royal Hotel.

End of Part 1.

The show was sold out and the seated, musically educated audience were a pleasure to play for, even if I did have to ask one table to “shut the f*ck up” so that we could play Secret I’ll Take to the Grave to a completely captive room.

Next night in Bulli we played a short but well received set to a rowdier bunch at The Heritage Hotel – a ghostly little venue on the main road just north of Wollongong. I say ghostly because the venue is, apparently, haunted. Despite Shaun’s desperate pleas of “show yourself” there was no spirit forthcoming – although our car ride conversation (led by our master of macabre ceremonies Andy Wrigglesworth) was nothing less than spine chilling as he regaled us with tales of this nations most brutal serial slayings – most of which, he maintained, occurred in the woods engulfing the dark and winding road upon which we were driving.

After a few days off and some more flying and driving we now find ourselves in the upstairs green room of the Wickham in Newcastle – numbly staring at foxtel and (in Mat’s case at least) dozing ever so slightly.

But the weekend is looking good. The show last night at Lizottes was rather splendid,and after a restful day by the beach we are more than ready for our late finish at the wicko – as well as our early start tomorrow (we need to be in Tamworth by 10am for the first in a series of radio interviews and live to air performances in the area).

The picture is of some zines I spotted at a great little vinyl store in Newcastle this afternoon. I bought the Tom Waits biography from the equally cool second hand bookstore next door.

Lachlan