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

CCLXX - Cheltenham Frog and Fiddle
14/02/14

*START OF THE VALENTINE'S MANLOVE TOUR*

Ben Marwood
The Retrospective Soundtrack Players
Joe Summers

We had been looking forward to going on tour with Ben for years (read: badgering him to let us be his backing band), and we finally got round to doing it - eventually.  The weekend the tour started on followed a week of relentless rain, flooding huge swathes of southern England ie our route between our homes and Cheltenham.

I have to mention that on the way to the gig, somewhere near Oxford, we went over a toll bridge that cost 5p. Has anyone else been on this toll bridge? We were quite amazed and found it all rather hilarious, to the obvious chagrin of the teenager manning the toll booth.  We gave him 20p and told him to keep the change, which we thought was hilarious, but probably the behaviour of most people going over the 5p bridge.

We didn't have time to soundcheck, so we had to get to grips with the stage sound as we went, but the show still went pretty well.  Certainly it was a huge thrill to play to a fairly packed Frog & Fiddle, having only ever played there before to single figures. It's nice supporting someone popular.

Ben was superb and after the show we all went and danced to power ballads at 2 Pigs (it was Valentine's Day after all.) There is video evidence somewhere of us emoting rather passionately to Aerosmith's 'I Don't Want to Miss a Thing' - I'm sure it will see the light of day eventually. I think we got taxis back to our Travelodge - suffice to say that we were in various states of disrepair come the following morning.  Nothing like overdoing it on the first night of tour.