The Dawn Chorus / The Retrospective Soundtrack Players - Blogging all over the World

The Old Oyster House, Portsmouth
Saturday 22nd November 2008

The Dawn Chorus

We were going to try to get the Marvellous Mechanical Band and B of the Bang in on this show but they both pulled out late on - losers. However, the OH does pay handsomely, which may or may not be the main reason why we did this show. Let's just say it paid for the hostel we shared with a scared portugese man in Plymouth which we still hadn't paid for (see below) and then some. In honesty I don't think any of us had a whale of a time but after the interval (!) it did get more enjoyable and it was nice to do a 16-song set, including 'Ringof Fire', which hasn't seen the light of day for quite some time. Big thanks again go to Big Al who put in a sterling effort setting up the PA and being soundman. Only a couple more shows now before a bit of a break and then maybe another tour in February. One month til Christmas, my favouritest time of the year.
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After 16/11/08 gig Camden Enterprise:


4 or 5 Magicians, 900 Spaces, A-Custom, Acropolis, Action Speaks Louder, Afrosnatchers, The AKA Band, The All-Singing Razorblades, Allo Darlin', Andy & Jack, Angelgear x 5, Apologies I Have None, The Arkwrights, Arty Karate, Ashford, The Autons, The Aviators, B of the Bang x 4, Rob Ball, Philip Barebones, Emily Barker, Chris Bath, Batrider, Beans on Toast, Belligerence, Bendigo, Steve Bland x 4, Blue Fox, Emit Bloch, Bodyhost x 2, The Boicotts, Adam Boucher x 2, Brenda, James Bright, Burn the Witch, Captain Fantastic, Carmen Rosa, Carmichael, Citizen, Lester Clayton, The Clowns, Contra, Kurt Cooder x 2, Alex Cornish, Covernote, Creepythinguy, Cymbiotic, Dali's Cat, Steve Dalzell, Tom Dangerous, Dead! Dead! Dead! x 2, Deadbeat Descendent, Del Nil x 3, Stanton Delaplane, De Squeran, The Deads x 2, Delboy French, Depot, Deville, Different Day, The Dirty 38s, Dlugokecki, Dropstone, Dumbfounded, Alex J Dunne, Dutch Husband, Echobeat, Elaine Dismissed, The Elements x 2, Elle Milano, Enjoy Destroy, Fade Out x 2, Fake Ray, Luke Ferre x 2, Fly Monkeys Fly, Fresh Legs, Frisbee in the Jewel Box, Funk Yer Mum, Geko, Get Amped, Gilbert, Gilkicker x 2, The Glad Rags, Golden Section x 2, David Goo x 2, Alaistar Goodwin, GROOVE, The Gun Show x 5, Luke Haines, Frank Hamilton, Hardly Heroes, The Heights, Hexicon, Rob Himself, Hobos and Eskimos, Hold Fast, Holy Roller, The Housewives, Hudson 10 x 2, HUMANS, I Am Jack, Idiot3, The Inklings, Introducing: Emergency Music, Ida Jacobsson, Joey Nightmare, Jukebox Vandals, Karmatribe, Kate Goes, Kid Idiot, Kill Kasper, Kody, Leptany, The Levels, Life of Byron, The Light Divided, Lisa Lindley Jones, The Lights Shine, The Little Ones, Living in Cities, The Lonely Cardinals x 2, Looking Through Glass, Lost Aura, Peter Lyons, Richie Madisun, Mantis & The Prayer, Mantra, The Marvellous Mechanical Band, The Masters x 3, Jo McCafferty, Dave McPherson, Melodramas, The Metropolise, The MFV, The Mindless Ones, Misty's Big Adventure, The Model Village, Momentum, Mono, The Mopes, Moses x 2, Mrs Poopars Automobiles, Mumble, The New Root, No Skidoo, Stuart O'Connor, Octograph (?), Operahouse, Openroom x 2, Ornament Birds, Otaka, Matt Park, Mrs Burns, Palais x 2, Jackie Paper x 2, Joe Parker & the Power, The Plymouths x 2, Poppy, The Racketeers, The Rebs x 2, Red Campion, Reikidogs, Relentless, Retrofect, The Ridgeway, Rivers of Sound x 3, Rockshore, Roland Shanks, Rolling Dog, Room 6, Rosie and the Goldbug, Rossco x 3, The Rudimentary Confusion, Rushing With Apathy, Sallyforth, Salvage, Sarah & Lewis, Saturdays and Sundays, The Shake, Shit Hot Llamas!, Silent Radio, Silhouette Showgirls, Sine Star Project, Sister Divine, Six Nation State, Something Pretty, Charlene Soraia, Spearmint, Jessica Spencer Band, Niall Spooner-Harvey x 2, The Stations x 6, Leigh Mary Stokes, The Strange Death of Liberal England x 5, Straylings, The Summons, Supergrass (DJs), Surprise!, Chris T-T x 2, Tali Trow & The Well Being, Tamerlane x 2, Paddy Taylor, Temple, They Don't Sleep, Thomas Tantrum x 2, Tomboy, Trinity, Frank Turner x 3, Umdongskulen, The Undefined, The Veils, Venice Ahoy!, The Vice, Videosprint, The Visitors, Jon Walbrin, The Waves, The Way, The Waysters x 2, Rich Webb, Whitewash, Wilf, Vaughan Williams, Winners, Wireless, Wiservice x 2, Michael Wookey, Wyldside, Zodiac

I'm not sure if I said all of these things, but I did definitely say most of them. John Earls is a lovely man, I hope to meet him in the flesh some day soon..........


By John Earls - "It's not a surprise the album is so concerned with death. The idea of mortality petrifies me."Ever since a demo arrived 18 months ago, Portsmouth country-rockers have been one of the most under-rated bands in Britain. Their album The Big Adventure was self-released, and they fit in tours around their day jobs."We're lucky," says singer Kyle Evans. "We don't actually mind our jobs."Kyle is a xxxxxxxxxx, and tried to keep his musical sideline a secret from his xxxxx."I'm impressed I managed it for a year," he laughs. "But when we played more and more local gigs, word was bound to get out."I enjoy xxxxxx. It'd have to be a very good label offer to get us to go full-time - I'd rather xxxxxx than be sat around doing nothing all day long."Such a down-to-earth attitude tallies with The Dawn Chorus' influences."I love The Decemberists, the Saddle Creek acts, who've had a steady rise," says Kyle. "For British bands, look at The Broken Family Band, who've released four albums with barely any publicity."Don't get me wrong, I'd love us to be like Radiohead or Arcade Fire, to have millions of people like us and keep the quality up. But we're realists."The Big Adventure was a way for Kyle to tackle his fear of death, but setting it to uplifting, brassy country-rock."With the music we write, you don't want the lyrics to be too chirpy," says Kyle, 24. "At the same time, you don't want to be too depressing."I write songs in batches, and hope a theme will emerge. I don't deliberately write concept albums, but it feels more of a body of work with a narrative."The band began two years ago, and at first were a regular indie band."Our keyboardist Paul joining was a massive change," recalls Kyle. "He plays trumpet too, and it added a new dimension to our sound. You think of how to incorporate them into the songs, not just having them as garnishes."My mum's tone deaf, but my parents had loads of cheesy '60s pop and I think that's where I get my love of melody."The band go on tour next week (yes, during half-term), and are already playing new songs done after the album."Doing this part-time, we appreciate gigs more when we do get to play them," muses Kyle. "We're at the stage now where we know what we're doing at gigs."We've got a mandolin player now too, and it looks like we'll strip our sound right down or get even more full-on next time. I just need a theme now..."

Sunday 16th November 2008
Camden Enterprise, London

The Dawn Chorus
Hexicon
Ida Jacosson

It was a great pleasure to play for Taka's last gig before he moved back to Japan, he's a lovely guy. Keith was a very sick boy, too sick even to shout or stamp. Hexicon were really, really good, one of the best bands we've played with. Nice to see lots of our London chums and also nice to have a setlist written in Welsh for the first time. Very, very tired at work the next day but that's the way it goes. Pro Plus is my friend.

x

Wednesday 29th October 2008
The Man on the Moon, Cambridge

The New Root
The Dawn Chorus
The Summons
Life of Byron
Living in Cities

What a day. Woke up in Plymouth faily hung over (Neil a bit more hung over) and all went for a nice greasy fry up and mug of tea. Lovely. Then got on the road and that's when things started to go a bit wrong. Got stuck in huge traffic on the M25 and it ended up taking between 7 and 8 hours to get to Cambridge. I stopped counting to be honest. When we got there it was that usual soundcheck scrum with a thousand people milling around and not getting much done, and somewhere amongst this we were informed that the promoter and sound man were both stuck in traffic ad wouldn't be coming - and also that they weren't sure if they could fit in 5 bands so we might not be playing (!). Although to be fair, this talk lasted very little time after we dug our heels in.

The barman who ended up doing the sound turned out to be a bit of a legend, but the actual sound in the venue was shocking - when we finished with the stampy bit on 'Blast' we managed to unplug both Neil and Paul. But it was the last show of the tour and there were only about 10 peoplethere so it's not the end ofthe world. I quite liked the Man on the Moon, hopefully we'll get to play there to more people one day.

END OF WORLD TOUR OF THE SOUTH

The Junction, Plymouth
Tuesday 28th October 2008

The Dawn Chorus

Where to start? There is almost too much to remember, it all got too weird at one point. I really hope that one day we can look back at this and smile. Although saying that, large parts of the Plymouth show already make me smile when I think back. It went a little something like this........

• Myself, Matt and Keef were due to leave at 1pm to get there nice and early and check into the hostel. But when I went to put some diesel in my car before we left I realised I had filled my tank from a tank of unleaded (not at a petrol station, I'm not quite that much of an idiot). This meant that I was stranded until my brother in law Al was kind enough to come and siphen (sp?) it all out and start again.
• Picked Matt up and got on the road just after 3. Around 30 mins later get stuck behind a seriously serious car crash and have to about turn on the 303. This wasted close to an hour.
• This is when it gets worse, when driving through a little village I momentarily took my eye off the road in crawling traffic and went into the arse of a the driver in font. Or their car. She was very nice about it and neither car was scratched but apparently she has a history of back problems, deep joy!
• Getting very late and quite dark now. Simps had awful wind and never gives you prior warning or even an apology afterwards, He just sits there like a dog with avsmug look on his face.
• We did at least invent a new game of making up awful puns, but it's an in joke that really won't translate into blog form.
• Finally got there just before 8 and it was basically a pub with no sign of a PA, mics, anything. PA eventually appeared but we had to go on a drive around Plymouth for mics and a stand.
• So we set up our own PA and sound check ourselves and do our set at about 10. It literally would have been completely pointless if new friend of the band Ollie hadn't have come down - he emailed us around the time of 'Town/City' and has been in touch ever since. Top bloke.
• There was also a strange guy called Michael who stood about a foot away when we played and gave us feedback between songs: 'more treble on the vocals!', 'more mandolin!'. He had a massive tooth at a different angle to his other teeth.
• At this point things got weird again - I could not find my keys for love nor money. I was getting seriously upset now at possibly my most idiotic day ever. Looked for them on ond off between half eleven and 1am when the pub shut. Lots more beers and Jagermeisters downed inbetween. I even called the AA to book a locksmith to get me back in my car. I'm starting to think now that this was all a big ploy by the bar staff to keep us in and drinking, as sure enough, the keys appeared BEHIND THE BAR just as we were leaving at 1. Very suspicious. I was overjoyed though, a lovely combination of being on the way to drunkenness and that euphoric feeling of not having lost something you thought was lost. We moved on into the hustle and bustle of a Tuesday night in Plymouth.
• Went to a reccommended student bar which was about the size of a garden shed. Cheap drinks though. There was another similar shed next door but you had to pay to get into that one so we moved on. We were all completely lost so got a taxi to take us to somewhere open late, but the place he took us to was completely inbred and local - think The Slaughtered Lamb from American Werewolf in London - so we went to that classy establishment Walkabout for another drink. Some of the boys danced to Mmmbop - this coincided with most people leaving Walkabout.
• Home to the hostel to wake up the poor Pole we were sharing a room with. Sorry mate, not that you'll ever, ever read all this tosh.
• That was our first visit to Plymouth.

x