Diary Archives
08.23.2006
Final Diary Entry
Our final leg of the year long Life in Slow Motion tour started with our bass player Robbie's Dad being hospitalized for what the doctors said would be his final time.
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06.15.2006
European Festivals/South Africa
We got back together to rehearse and perform a radio show at the Church at the end of May, but our bass player and his wife had their first child, Finn Malone, on the 21st and Robbie needed to stay home.
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05.08.2006
Byron Bay/New Zealand
Our first show in Australia was the Byron Bay Blues and Roots Festival - a really cool hippie festival held over five days in this amazing part of the country.
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03.11.2006
USA Tour
We started March 1st at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. We've played here before and remembered it fondly. Like the Fox in Detroit, this is an amazing looking and sounding venue.
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02.07.2006
European Tour
2006 began for the band with a couple days rehearsal in the Church where we learned a few new songs and ran over the others. Everyone was in top form and looking forward to our European tour.
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12.13.2005
UK Tour
Manchester Evening News Arena...we got in to Manchester on the Saturday of George Best's funeral. Robbie threw his bag in his room and got a taxi to Man United game...
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12.05.2005
Start of the UK Tour
Dave's larangytis brought our American tour to a screeching halt back in October and the healing process was slow.
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10.16.2005
Toronto, Washington D.C. and New York City
We started our latest tour in Toronto, two months to the day after our last show in Toronto.
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09.26.2005
UK Tour
So this has to be the shortest tour I've ever been on. It lasted six days! Can you really call it a tour if it's less than a week? Maybe it should be called a leg.
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09.16.2005
Promo, TV Tapings and the Record's Release
We have been taping a lot of television shows since getting back from America last month.
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08.30.2005
Promo Tour Wrap Up
From Boulder Colorado we flew in to Seattle for a day off which also happened to be Clune's Birthday. Dave had something special planned, we were told to meet at the pier at two in the afternoon.
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08.16.2005
Boulder Colorado
Boulder Colorado is the site of the long running, annual "Triple A" Radio Convention. This was the original show that this tour was built around.
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08.05.2005
The Tour Begins
So I am in the back lounge of our bus, driving from Boston to Philladelphia overnight. Our show at the Avalon tonight went really well, for everyone except Dave.
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07.13.2005
Rehearsals in North London
My name is David Nolte and I'm the guitar player in David Gray's band. Dave has asked me to update his website weekly in the form of a tour journal which will start today.
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Diary Entry
Final Diary Entry
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Our final leg of the year long Life in Slow Motion tour started with our bass player Robbie's Dad being hospitalized for what the doctors said would be his final time. He'd been very sick for a while but things were now much more serious so Robbie stayed home and Tony Shanahan came in to substitute once again. It was very strange and sad to end the tour without Robbie, I can only imagine how he felt. It was the right thing to do because his father did die a few days before we ended the tour. The band's final show with Robbie was in Galway last month, which was one of the most enjoyable shows of the tour. It's fitting for him to finish in Ireland.
We came to Denver, Colorado to start the tour at Red Rocks Amphitheater. It was a big deal to get to play there. The place is amazing. It almost looks fake, like a Universal Studios Tour set. There's even a big Red Rock in the dressing room (along with rats!) We did an extended sound check for Tony's sake and half way through, the winds kicked up violently and knocked amps and guitars over. Then these huge raindrops came down, sending the crew running around to protect the gear. We kept playing and it finally calmed down and by the time of the concert the weather was great. Playing Red Rocks was really cool, it's a venue we've all wanted to play for a long time.
The next morning I turned on my computer and found out that Arthur Lee had died. He was singer/songwriter and leader of a great L.A. band called Love from the mid 60s. He'd gotten really sick, really quick and had been in and out of the hospital since the first of the year. Tony had just played a benefit concert for him in NYC. to help with his medical expenses. I was lucky enough to have played with Arthur last year on a three week tour of the UK with Johnny Echols, the guitarist from the original band and their band Baby Lemonade who had hired me to sub for their bass player who had just had his first child.
We flew from Denver to Boston and drove out to Newport, Rhode Island for the Newport Folk Festival. Now any Dylan fan will know all about the Newport Folk Festival and Dylan's controversial electric debut there. This was the place for folk in the early 60s and we were all excited to play here. Unfortunately it's not the early 60s anymore and the magical folk festival is now brought to us by Dunkin' Donuts. This is a fact that is driven home with the display of anything and everything Dunkin' Donuts over every inch of the festival grounds. They even had a catch phrase "Newport's Groovin' With Dunkin'" It was a big bummer, very oppressive, their corporate colours are particularly ugly and you could not escape them. Dave spoke up about all this a couple times and it got one of the powers that be down to talk to him and try to explain it all away but I don't think that helped much. The show itself was cool, a beautiful outdoor setting and a nice crowd, but right at the front of the stage was this older couple...asleep. The woman with her mouth wide open...for the entire set. I should have asked Rosanne Cash if the woman had been asleep for her set too. Rosanne Cash played just before us and she was great. She played Crescent City by Lucinda Williams, one of my favorites. She was the highlight of the festival.
From there we went to New York to play Randall's Island with the Dave Matthews Band. Or DMB as they're also known. Or, if you're backstage, Matthews. What a weird show that was. They have some of the best catering I've ever had. They have a ton of security (I didn't expect that) They draw a lot of people and the gig went well. Matthews himself introduced us. I didn't understand everything he said but it seemed good. The only downside was the porta-potty smell. It was always there but once in a while the winds would kick up and it would come in really strong.
From there we drove to Montreal for our own show. Dave hadn't played there since 1995 when he opened for Radiohead. It was a really good show, playing with Tony was becoming more and more comfortable and everyone was enjoying themselves. The good vibes carried on into Ottawa and another great show. At the Ottawa soundcheck this guy and his guitar appeared in a balcony way up in the theatre. He yelled down something about being a fan who couldn't make the gig but wanted to play a song for Dave. So he did, from way up high, we could barely hear him. He played his song, got some applause and got taken away. That was interesting.
Our next tour stop was Sandpoint, Idaho. We were going to have a day off there...at a ski resort on Schwitzer Mountain. It was a remote, rustic resort, 30 minutes from anything resembling a town. The sportier members of the band and crew enjoyed their stay here. The gig was another outdoor event, we had rain at the soundcheck but, thankfully, the show was dry. The crowd were unlike any we've ever played to. The most conservative portion of the audience were in lawn chairs at the very front while the nuttier, enthusiastic people were kept to the side of the stage. When we played Please Forgive Me these people moved in to the front and it all kicked off. It was like a punk rock sort of move but the people moving in all had facial hair, sunglasses and trucker hats. The security tried to get them to go back or at least sit down and the people sitting down yelled at them and the nutty people either yelled back or blanked their opponents and watched the show. The next song was Lately which starts out nice and quiet. All I could hear was the mini riot going on in the audience. People ended up adjusting to the rush on the front and the nutty people stayed. The remainder of the show was one of the wildest reactions we've ever had. It was over the top...Northern Idaho, who would have thought.
We returned to Canada for the Edmonton Folk Festival. That was the day we heard Robbie's Dad had passed We all felt bad for him and it was all I could think about during the day and throughout the show. We played outdoors, at night, to a big crowd on a hill, Dave dedicated Freedom to Robbie. The next day we travelled to Vancouver for a day off before our final show. It was Clune's birthday and we all went out to dinner at a restaurant called C. It was on our first US tour last year that we celebrated Clune's birthday with a boat trip in Seattle, a strange coincidence to be back in this part of the world on his birthday and a reminder of just how long we've been touring.
And then we played our final show after 14 months. I always find the end of tours to be weird and this one especially so. No one really knew what to say to each other. At the end of the night I was feeling like I'd been at a wake. I have trouble writing this final bit of the diary, it's the reason this is coming out a week after the last show. How do you wrap it all up? I guess you just say goodbye
