This Town Needs Guns

We’ve been added to the bill of this years Y Not Festival in Derbyshire. It’s a pretty sweet line-up check it!

x

Hello,

We’re going to be pretty quiet over the summer while we retreat into a rehearsal room and write some new songs. We will from time to time, be popping our heads out to enjoy the sun at these places:

12 Jul - Groomfest w/ These Monsters + Tiger Warsaw + more @ The Horse and Groom, Lincoln.

26 Jul - Truck Festival w/ Ash + Supergrass + Colour + more @ Steventon, Oxfordshire. Tickets:
http://www.wegottickets.com/f/682

4 Sep - Under The Oak Festival w/ Jonquil + more @ A field somewhere in the Cherwell Valley. Tickets:
http://www.wegottickets.com/event/49538

19 Sep - Southsea Festival w/ Blakfish + more @ Edge of the Wedge, Portsmouth. Tickets:
http://www.wegottickets.com/f/604

Come along to one or more of these if you fancy it.

x

Hello,

So we played a bunch of gigs last week with the fantastic Love of Everything and Joan of Arc. The lovely Elisse of LoE fame has written a blog about their European tour with lots of nice photo’s and sunny comments about the people they’ve met/the bands they’ve played with. If you have some time you should read it.

Jamie has also started selling some limited edition prints of his artwork. You can browse and buy at your own leisure over at www.fullll.co.uk.

So Jamie has kinda given up on the tour diary, so I’ll cover the last few days.

Madrid

The drive from Barcelona to Madrid was epic. For some reason I was under the impression that it would take 3 hours to get there. It was only thanks to the guys in Ulysses that we got to Madrid in time as they warned us the night before that it would be more like 6 hours. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Spanish countryside. Having (like most Brits) only ever spent time near the coast, it was interesting to see the wide variety of different terrain that lie between the two cities. Wide open plains, with crazy rock formations give way to huge mountain ranges and on to wide open farmland. So strange…but beautiful.

When we finally arrived in Madrid we met Carlos, who had kindly arranged both our Spainsh shows. Top guy! He is some kind of big-happy-cuddly-bear-man. He has a really booming gravely voice and sounds like he’s been smoking since the womb. Tonight’s venue is pretty awesome. The soundman is quite typical of his occupation. Sometimes you come across guys like him, larger than life but totally pro and just know exactly how their venue is going to react to what you’re doing on stage. Sound was excellent and he and his team were really helpful.

Sadly we had started to run out of merch by this point. There were a few sad faces at the merch table when people realised we’d run out of all the vinyl and quite a lot of the t-shirts. Still…they were smiling after we played. Such a cool crowd. So appreciative of what we were doing. Thanks to all of you.

After the show we planned to meet up with a friend of ours from our last tour (Benny from Cologne). Unfortunately, Madrid’s insane traffic had different ideas. It took us 2 hours to find our hostel (which was a 5 minute drive from the venue) and somewhere to park the van. We had no idea where we were going, but got to see a fair bit of the area around Gran Via. When we booked into the hostel Jamie asked the receptionist where the Chico’s and Hombre’s were at. When he finally realised that he was actually refering to Chris and Tim (who were in a different room to us) and didn’t require directions to the nearest gay bar, we met up with the Collis’ and headed back downstairs to grab a quick 3 a.m. drink with Carlos, the Ulysses boys and a British guy we met at the show called James, who had been kind enough to join us on our little Madrid driving experience. Apparently there were some Spainish celebrities at the bar, but as our knowledge of Spanish soap opera is non-existent it was kinda wasted on us. We just got drunk, said our goodbyes and crashed into bed at 4.

Bayonne

Bayonne is a bit of a blur really and to emphasise that, here is our day in bullet points.

• Woke up around 9.
• Buy eye drops. Find van. Eat massive omlette and salad.
• Drive to Bayonne. 6 hour van ride. Another day of beautiful and varied Spanish countryside.
• Get to venue. Enchante!
• Eat awesome food.
• Meet nice people.
• Soundcheck.
• Walk around town.
• Watch support band ‘Arch Woodman’, who were really good.
• Play.
• Pack up.
• Sleep.

This was probably one of the strangest days of my life. We were all exhausted and knew that the next days 9 hour drive to Paris was going to be totally brutal. Unfortunately, we weren’t our usual selves I don’t think and it all felt like a bit much. Thank you to the lovely people we met in Bayonne, who made us feel so welcome.

Paris

So the next day we woke up around 8:30. Already I was receiving text messages from Julien in Paris, who was trying to make sure we were up and would get to Paris in time for a 4 o’clock sound check. Unfortunately, the rest of the guys had made it pretty clear that they were going to get up when they wanted to get up. In fairness, we were all complete wrecks by this point in the tour. As usual I got up and got ready first, but today I decided I would take the opportunity to take a look around this beautiful city. The first thing I set out for was a bakery I’d seen the night before. The whole tour I’d been practicing my French (which is pretty terrible), so I was pleased with myself when I successfully managed to purchase a pain au chocolat and a baguette without uttering a word in English

After that I just kept wandering around the city centre. I popped into the Cathedral which was deseptively big. It was a bit like stepping into the Tardis…only with a few more crucifixes. It didn’t look like much from the outside, but inside it was incredible. After that I bowled around the market looking for anything I could pick up and pass off as a gift for people back home. I returned to the van empty handed

The drive was stupidly long. The highlight of which was being mistaken for being Metronomy at a services in the middle of France somewhere. I blame Jamie’s hair.

We were making pretty good progress until we reached the outskirts of Paris. Sat nav was teasing us that we were only 20 minutes from the venue. Unfortunately, traffic was killer and it was a further hour and a half before we got there. No time for soundcheck. Bummer!

We hung out with the guys from Apes did Ensemble who are a really great bunch. One of them kindly helped me park the van which in itself was an adventure.

I can’t remember the name of the first act on, but she was a solo pianist and was ridiculously good. Apparently she plays in an electro band that are quite a big deal. Unfortunately my knowledge of electro-dance music is as extensive as my knowledge of Spanish soap operas.

We played at La Fleche D’or that night, and it was a venue we had been informed by just about every band we know who’ve played there as being amazing. They weren’t wrong. It was such a cool venue and really big. By the time Apes did Ensemble were playing there were about 200+ people there. The sound was phenomenal and the boys put on a great show. For the first time in ages I was nervous about playing. The two support bands had been great and we were about to go and play to a huge room full of people (sans soundcheck) who had (for the most part) never heard of us or our music.

I needn’t have worried. We played well and the crowd were fantastic. They were really appreciative and we were even called back to play an encore

…that’s when things got a bit silly.

The night was going really well. We sold out of the remaining merch we had brought with us and everyone was in a party mood. After a few hours I decided to head back to the hotel (cos I knew I’d have to drive Paris to Oxford the next day and we were booked on a fairly early ferry), we packed the van with some help from the AdE guys, before Jamie and I drove back to the hotel. Aside from a minor detour in an underground carpark that nearly resulted in the loss of the top half of the van, it was pretty uneventful. Jamie headed back to the venue and I tried to get some sleep. Next thing I know is it’s 4 in the morning. Jamie and Tim burst into my room and thrust a mobile phone at my face “Tell Chris where he needs to go, he doesn’t believe us”. It’s probably important to point out at this stage that we were staying in a hotel called ‘Mister Bed City’, so it was hardly surprising that a completely hammered Chris was struggling to believe the other two guys. I tried to give him directions and some names of the other hotels in the immediate vacinity. After that the phone went dead. Chris’ phone is about 9 years old and is no ‘duracell bunny’.

It’s 8 in the morning and time to get up for the long drive home. I go over to Tim and Chris’ room leaving Jamie to go for a shower. Low and behold, Tim has spent most of the night awake worrying about where his brother is, until half an hour ago when he got a text message saying he couldn’t find the hotel, so he was going to get the Eurostar back to London. Ridiculous, but a fun way to end the tour

Wooooooooo!

Barcelona

After yet another colossal drive we finally made it to Barcelona, where we met Jordi (promoter) and the guys from Ulysses. After soundcheck, we had food in a nice sports-bar, but the menu may as well have just been crayon drawings of flying fish and a goat called Jizzy Lemonstage. None of us can read/write/speak Spanish so it was a bit of a chore. It sounds completely lame of us but the only Spanish we could muster was HOLA and QUANDO! QUANDO!.

The venue was so smokey that Tim’s eye started to weep like a horrified Ukrainian cobbler. The stage was really high up in this venue and we met an awesome guy from Mexico who was studying in Barcelona named Tona. He didn’t speak much english but was smiling and generally a very positive young man, he is the first official Mexican This Town Needs Guns fan who has been to see us live. Ulysses were great and sang really nice harmonies and played some very decent songs. We later learned that they had been a full band until two weeks previous to the gig and the drummer had turned his hand to playing the guitar and melodica.

We hit Las Ramblas where Tim was grabbed by an 8ft tall Nigerian transexual hooker in the street as we frantically searched for a bar to rest in for a post-show cerveza. Some one said to me ‘you want the ‘ashhhhh no?’ I declined. We were staying in a hostel which had several more hookers turning tricks in the street. It would’ve been okay if they were visually arresting but they appeared to share common charecteristics with a herd of wild boar, shuffling around and grunting.

The following day we walked around Barcelona looking for somewhere to deposit our cash again. No luck. We went to an Italian restaurant which was overpriced and we felt slightly like the sneezing waiter was mimicking a bird eating spider and making a web around our monies.

QUANDO! QUANDO!

Bordeaux

On arrival at Bordeaux we drove over a HUUUUUGE bridge and all the buildings we passed looked amazing. We were staying at a girlfriend of Heliport’s apartment and she’d cooked us a fine meal before the gig. The venue was under a bar and the narrow spiral staircase was a completely unforgiving bitch to take our cabs and amplifiers down. We sat in the bar and a local tried to tell me a joke about ducks and quacking, it was something like ‘Five ducks walk in to a bar, the first duck has a lemonade, the second has orangeade, the third and fourth have coffee and the fifth got a taxi to an onion patch in Texas.’ Don’t ask.

There was a local who looked like Mac (the sound guy in Oxford) and was jumping around and biting his finger at me for some unknown reason. We didn’t play to many people but we still had a great time as it was Stu’s birthday and we all sang happy birthday. The guys from Heliport did a great job of clapping to And I’ll Tell You For Why, the likes of which I have never witnessed before, this made me very happy!

A member of the Audience: “SEND THE STEAK”

[Confusion from Team This Town Needs Guns]

It was a literal translation of a French proverb akin to ‘Give it some stick’…much hilarity ensued.

It was sad to leave the following morning because JF (Jeff/ Geoff) and the rest of Heliport had been such fine hosts. We scoured Bordeaux, like we’d scoured the rest of Europe for a bank which would allow us to pay in the money we’d accumulated from the shows we’d played. Unfortunately none seemed interested in us depositing money. We were away from the van for about twenty minutes, in which time we were given a parking ticket. Bummer!

We were supposed to be playing the BSM showcase today in Brighton. Unfortunately Chris (drummer) tried drumming for the first time since his operation last month. Needless to say, he discovered that he was in a lot of pain. We couldn’t realistically play today, so last night we pulled out. We’re all really gutted. Please go check out the other bands today if you’re in Brighton. They’re all really great.

Rennes

Rennes was funkalicious. I bought some batteries and walked around a market square similar to Gloucester Green in Oxford. There were people who could tell I wasn’t a vampire, I think it is something to do with my pulse. Anyway it was a bit 28 Days Later and I worried that I may get bitten. Rennes is a beautiful place and if you get a chance you should go there and visit ‘URBAN Phil’ - I am told he wears yogurt pots instead of sunglasses and has an inversed mohawk.

We had a couple of interview style things from some people posing as British Gas, not really. BUT! Yes, we had some nice cake and answered questions, drew pictures and talked general nonsense.

The character Creative David became ever more talked about; we had been inventing extra members of This Town Needs Guns: Urban Phil, Oleg the Serbian, Whacky Jack and his Spindly Fuzz Piano, Luigi Smith, Tony Bolony (born from Tony Calamari [see Wiesbaden]). Anyway they effectively made us a 20 piece rock outfit.

The gig was pretty good fun, the venue was small but perfectly formed, like a froglet. The crowd consisted of a Canadian, some French and a sewing machine. We met a french version of Micheal Barry.

We stayed and drank for a while and gave some of the people whom had interviewed us a lift home. Heliport were awesome this evening. We went to the Woofy House which is where a few of Heliport lived and they had a deaf jack russell called… any guesses?? WOOFY.

Lorient

After 11 hours on the road we finally made it to Lorient at around 11pm. I entered the bar and heard from the stage ‘IT’S THIS TOWN NEEDS GUNS’ there was a huge roar of approval and we managed to catch the last three songs of Heliport’s set. It was exciting to see them as we were set to spend the next three days together. We had to use all of their backline (to save time on changeover) and played a rather rushed set. There was a very friendly bald tattooed drunk who shouted a lot of things wearing Elias’ denim vest, or at least a very similar one. He left partly through our set, not because he didn’t like it, but I think he needed to purge his stomach as he was looking rather worse for wear.

Everyone was so nice to us, despite our lateness and we were given ‘Calamari Ameriquen’ for dinner which was very tasty indeed. I slept in what looked like a crack den; it was a narrow room much like the underneath cupboard of a staircase with a single mattress in it, still, it was a good night of sleep.

The following day we visited the beach and it was a lovely windy day with many kites flying above us. Lunch for me was pretty salty; I had a pizza which had about twelve anchovies in a nice pattern on it.