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
Promo, TV Tapings and the Record's Release
Friday, September 16, 2005
We have been taping a lot of television shows since getting back from America last month. We did a Channel Four special, Top of the Pops, CDUK, some show in Amsterdam I don't know the name of and the Late, Late Show in Ireland. Except for the Channel Four thing, we only played The One I Love on all these shows. It is amazing how much time and effort goes towards putting that one song on the television. The show in Amsterdam is a great example...the amount of money spent on getting the band and crew over was probably more than most bands recording budgets.
We were on the Late, Late Show September 9th, the day the CD was released in Ireland. The following Monday, the 12th, was the UK release so I went down to Woolworth's to get a copy. That was very cool, getting the CD from the local shop not 2 minutes from where it was recorded. And it was in the number 1 place in the display. Paul McCartney was at 2. I should have taken a picture.
Tuesday the 13th was the North American release date. We did a surprise show that night at the Liquid Rooms in Edinburgh for radio contest winners. It's a small club in an amazing section of town. The stage was the smallest we've played with our expanded line-up and we were right on top of one another. I forgot to turn some midi thing on before we played Sail Away and since the crew couldn't get to me to fix it, they all pulled out their roadie flashlights and started flashing them at me. They obviously felt a bit helpless and it really showed, they had that slightly panicked look all night.
The show went really well, the sound was really good, we never get to play places like this anymore. The audience got to ask Dave questions for about 15 minutes at the end of the set. Then we left for the airport to take a small, eight seat prop plane back to London. The winds had really kicked up on this evening...when we were at the Liquid Rooms they had chairs out back getting blown around like they were pieces of paper. Getting on the little plane in that wind seemed like a bad idea. As I was imagining the news accounts of our demise, Dave and Clune popped open the champagne and the noise level went up a few hundred percent...and then we were off. I was really nervous but I knew it would be alright in the end.
So this Sunday we begin our next tour in Dublin and we can't wait. There's been a lot of hanging around since we got back from America last month but that's the end of free time like that for the rest of the year. I'll be back to doing weekly posts after this. They'll be more to talk about once we start touring.
