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
The Tour Begins
Friday, August 05, 2005
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. The night was one problem after another for poor Dave, guitar was out of tune in the first song, his in-ear monitors kept dissapearing and finally, his mike at the piano slowly slipped away from him while he was singing and playing. That's where he stopped the song, jumped up and yelled something about not being able to get a break. He was so wound up I thought he might just walk but he made a joke about it, called god a *** and picked up where he left off. It was the best part of the show.
Prior to Boston we spent two days in New York. We played Webster Hall on Tuesday and the Conan O'Brien show on Wednesday. Dave also taped a solo performance for VH1. Dave's every waking moment was spent with somebody from the record company guiding him through an assortment of meetings, interviews, performances and whatever else they can think of. Promo is the classic double edge sword because you want to talk about your music and get it out there so you go along with the plan. But the actual experience is hard work and it can sap your energy really quickly. This tour we're on is a 'promo' tour so Dave's doing this kind of schedule for the next two weeks. It's hard enough on the rest of us and we're doing a fraction of the work, I hope he gets through alright.
This whole trip started when Dave flew to Los Angeles last Thursday to film the video for The One I Love. I didn't get any details about the video except Dave really liked working with the guys responsible for the whole thing. I think we'll get to see it in a couple weeks. We all met up in Toronto the following Sunday to start the tour. We played the Carlu Theatre which was a really nice venue, I couldn't vouch for the sound in there but the place looked great. At the end of the show I went out to the lobby and it was like a scene from the Towering Inferno...there were like 
hundreds of people queing for four lifts and every few minutes when they would open there would be this surge in the crowd that gave me the creeps. I went back to the safety of the backstage where the scene was equally surreal. We had the strangest assortment of people back there but I won't get into that. The show went so well, we were so happy to see the new songs get such a response. Lately and Now & Always were two I remember as going over particularly well. We're assuming this stuff is unknown to most of the audience but maybe it's not. I did wonder if there were downloadable versions floating around the internet but I've been too busy to look.
So after Toronto we went to New York and I've covered that. It's been an amazing start to our tour and it's only going to get better. I'll have some more for you next week including the Philly, Washington D.C and Chicago shows.
