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
UK Tour
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
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...he said there was a full minute's applause for the man - that was really moving. Dave was taping a TV show in Dublin that kept him from traveling with us and he was really jealous of Robbie when he found out he'd gone to the match. He got sincerely bummed out about it.
The show was really cool for us, the audience were really up for it...you wouldn't have known it was Sunday night. This is the biggest place we were playing on this trip and it was a little overwhelming. When you have that many people shouting at you all at once it does funny things to your head. You're obviously thrilled but it sucks away at your concentration and constantly threatens to overpower the sound your putting out from the stage. I can't imagine what it would be like if everyone thought we sucked, let's hope I don't find out.
We went to Glasgow next, The SECC Hall. We remembered doing a great gig here in 2002. Our gigs in Glasgow are always special, there are a small group of people that Dave and Clune know who are always there at soundcheck, the people at the gig are always really nice and the audiences are always so cool. We did an overnight drive to Wolverhampton after the gig and played the next night at the Civic Hall. The room had a really nice sound to it...a downside to arenas is a big mushy sound, it makes it harder to do quieter songs. This place was very cool to play and the audience was also very cool. Bournemouth was next...this was the first place I played with the band when I rejoined in 2002, a sentimental favorite. We had a day off here and stayed at the sea side. It was really beautiful, totally different from the Southern California beaches I grew up with. I love British beaches - especially in the winter.
Cardiff was next and Dave had a ton of family and friends there...they were everywhere. Again, we'd played here in 2002 and remembered it fondly. This was a perfect show for us as a group. The audience were amazing and we all felt like we'd played really together well. It was a big buzz for everyone. It's times like this where you see Dave go from happy to ecstatic. It's like he'd just single handedly won a championship football match. Thank you Cardiff.
The problem with nights like this is that there's a gig the next night. You know it will be different and that messes with your head a bit. Nottingham was next but instead of being anything less than what we'd been through in Wales, it was just a happy extension of the previous night's good vibes. After the show we all got on the bus for an overnight drive to London and our driver Mic had Christmas Crackers for all of us. I'm brand new to this concept and I had my first thanks to Mic. It's this exploding tube that bears a small gift, a bad joke and a paper crown that you wear the rest of the evening.
So we're now in London, playing four shows to finish the tour and that's what I'll cover next week.
