A brief overseas recap, Summer in Australia, The Pyramid Rock Debacle and Hobart.

It has been a slow start to the year for the TBE crew but as we're finally back in the rehearsal room starting the writing and demoing process again it seemed like a great chance to update you guys on what we've been up to over the last 4 months or so...

We flew out for our overseas tour on the 18th of November. We flew Korea Air and in spite of a few concerns about the lack of tetris in the back of our chairs out of Brisbane (a lack that was more than compensated on the second leg of the flight), the flight was ace. We met a bunch of Aussies on the overnight hotel stay in Seoul and as Aussies seem to do overseas, we all ended up braving the cold and heading on a mission to locate Korean beer and soju (rice wine). We ended up in this really cool jazz bar (below). Mission accomplished!

We landed in London the next day and Aussies seem to do in London, we headed out  for a drink or ten. Our home base has become The Cross Keys in Covent Garden.
Our drum tech, Roger, first brought us here when we hit town in March last year. It's as cool as it looks...

The first show of the tour was in Cardiff.  Despite stupid hangovers and jet-lag, it all went off really well...
This was just the beginning of the blur of motorways that seemed to make up a lot of this trip.
It seemed we were heading North to then go South only just to head North again. Oh well, I guess that's rock n roll...
This is inside the van that was our home for a month...

Also pretty rock n roll, below is pretty indicative of the breakfast choices most mornings (and the weather for pretty much the whole trip).

Highlights in the UK included Glasgow (cool gig and a cool venue, not diminished slightly by a random bout of food poisoning), Manchester and Birmingham.

In the process, we caught up with a bunch of old friends (namely the hard drinking boys from To The Bones), and made some new ones in Slaves to Gravity.
They sound a bit like Shihad and like a drink too so we got along great from the start. This is them...

After the Birmingham show we grabbed the ferry to Calais and then drove to Paris. We almost ran out of fuel on the road so we ended up paying a old French woman (who didn't speak a word of English) 50 euros to put some fuel in on her credit card. It was hilarious.
Our accom in Paris was in the Pigalle area. This is where the red light district, The Moulin Rouge and many delicious crepe stands are.
We enjoyed our couple of days off by having a drink or two and by getting kicked out of a number of dodgy establishments along the main strip. Some serious laughs were had.

This might have contributed to any problems encountered...

 The Paris show was small and great and afterwards it was on to Utrecht in the Netherlands. It's an amazing country and there are many beautiful and fashionable people on bikes. This was the biggest show of the tour (except for the Aussie invasion in London). We had beers afterwards in dinky little bar. It was Uni night and the Christmas carols seemed to be flowing as regularly as the bad techno and the great beers. I have never seen young people singing Chrissy carols so loudly in a bar before... It was different.

Germany was amazing in general and to avoid a blog that's two miles long, here's the point form re-cap

We backed up Utrecht with an amazing night in Stuttgart. The venue has this crazy skull disco ball!

It was also in Stuttgart that we first met our new friends and support band from Sweden, Takida.
A week before they hit our support slot they'd played to 8000 people at a headline show in Stockholm…. sorry guys... This is them backstage in Munich

 
 Weisbaden was gorgeous, one of the only German cities to escape bombing in WWII,

We drank Glüwein (hot spiced wine) in the snow at the Christmas markets in Cologne.

After the show at the Logo club in Hamburg we went for Currywürst at the world-famous Reeperbahn. If you're ever in Hamburg, Herbertstrasse must be seen to be believed.

Berlin was great as always. Drinks with the Dukes of Windsor, accommodation next to the venue and a short drive to Dresden (the next show) meant a sore head for many the next day.

Whilst in Munich we saw crazy Germans surfing in a river in a snowy forest, ate at a traditional Münchener Sausage haus and drank more Glüwein in the snow.... mmmm....

Whether it was dodgy cold cuts in the backstage rider or perhaps something else entirely, 4 members of the touring party were hit with violent bouts of gastro.
This meant a few rushed stops on the side of the autobahn the next day and some, let's say, 'interesting' moments involving projectile vomiting during the show the next night in Vienna… Sorry to the guys at the club there...

It was a freezing drive through the bleak snow coverered mountains of Austria to Milan but it was gorgeous.

The gig in Milan was originally meant to be in this large semi-outdoor space whose defining characteristics was similar to those usually attributed to a large freezer. To everyone's relief the show was moved back inside at the last minute.

Mario, the singer in the support band, runs a wine bar in Malpensa airport which we generously partook off whilst waiting for our snowy flight out of Milan.
Barolo, the pride of Northern Italy, copped a small hiding.

We begrudgingly said goodbye to Mario and Europe as we said hello to Korea Air once again.
The trip home was pretty quick all things considered. We had a week to shake the jetlag which we'd mostly done by the time we hit Byron on our little mini-tour leading to the ill-fated Pyramid Rock festival. More on that in a bit.

The Byron show was sold-out. It was pretty amazing after all the small venues in Europe and the UK. Whilst it's getting better all the time for us over there, there's really nothing to compare to a hot sweaty room full of crazy Aussies screaming back every word. So thanks!!

This was followed up with equally excellent shows in Coff's and at Shelly's. We were totally ready to destroy the stage in Phillip Island…

That's when the wheels fell off…

We'd heard rumours of some massive storm that was supposed to hit the Pyramid rock site on NYE but after the hot clear dusty days we'd be having, I thought there was not a chance in hell.

On NYE day, we arrived onsite, we set up our gear backstage and then we saw the storm front coming up… holy shit… Beautiful Girls were on stage doing their thing… our gear went back in its cases and we tied tarps all over everything. Batten down the hatches!
We were assured it would only last half an hour so we'd still get our set, albeit slightly shortened…

After looking at the stage from a distance after the 'cyclone' had passed, it was clear that nothing was happening on that stage any time soon. Power was shorted and security weren't letting anybody within 20 meters of the place. We couldn't seem to get an answer as to what was happening from the organisers. They started to try and move Grinners and Empire of the Sun up to the small stage (we were still holding on to a slight chance that we might get a chance to play after Empire) but security put a swift stop to that due to the possibly of overcrowding on the small stage. We were gutted at this situation. we had spent a month in Europe and we had played these great warm-up shows and we were so keen!

The organisers of Pyramid didn't make an announcement to the crowd so there was 15000 very wet, very pissed off people who didn't get the NYE they wanted or deserved. If you were one of them, we'd like to offer what ever humble apology we can. We only hope it never happens again.

so what now…?

we've got 7 songs pretty much complete and we're going to keep putting songs together over the next few months in preparation for our new record. They're sounding great... quite progressive (whatever that means...)

Also, we're playing an O-week show in Hobart tomorrow night. It's called Ample Fire and it's at Tasmania University Union Grace St Rugby Carpark. It Costs $35 if your a student or $45 if not. We'll be playing with Muph & Plutonic, Miami Horror and Bag Raiders. Tickets on sale from the TUU Contact Centre Hobart, the TUU Shop Launceston and online from OZTIX

If you're around, come on down, we'd love to see you!

Also, we have a couple of big announcements due for the middle of the year. Stay tuned.

Cheers...

TBE