UK Tour Highlights

The Weirdness Continues

You know back when your grandparents used to sit you and the family down and show you “holiday snaps”, endlessly cycling through that clicking, whirring projector as you nearly died of boredom, saying things like “here’s George by the cave…. here’s another one of George by the cave... what is THAT one, George? Is that still the cave?”

Your nightmare returns. *Click*

This was our tour setlist. It’s true, not only are we aging, our violinist Momo is 5 months along or something like that. Watching her blast out the fiddle parts every night—even when it was 400 degrees on stage and loud as a 747-400—was truly amazing. Cheers, Momo! And cheers Steve! The little one is going to be born with a mohawk!

Next we have a video. *click*

This is Aner. Everyone say hi. Hi Aner! So our drummer (the SSB) was on a flight to London from Vancouver that was unexpectedly grounded in Iceland. It was looking like he was going to miss the first show. Yikes. So, who has already flown to London from Israel, with his cymbals and drumsticks, ready to learn a bunch of songs on literally no notice? Dreadnoughts superfan Aner, that’s who!

Luckily he only needed to play the soundcheck as the SSB made it just in time. And that’s him, cranking out Antarctica, a song he’d just learned two hours previously. He actually came on stage and played “Sleep is For the Weak” at this show and again at Cursus festival three nights later. Epic. *click*

We did our usual pint-or-three-and-a-bunch-of-shanties with the Silver Darlings, who came onstage for our London gig and roared out a lovely tune to give us a break. This was us early in the evening doing a French tune that’s called… something. Oh, and speaking of inspiring women…

I visited the graveside of Emmaline Pankhurst, legendary suffragette and one of the people we wrote Daughters of the Sun about. It was actually quite moving. This was a woman who endured several weeks of force-feeding (i.e. torture) in jail as the authorities relentlessly tried to discourage her movement. And the UK granted universal women’s suffrage two weeks after she died, in 1928. Hero.

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On stage, night 2 in Nuneaton. I had visited a second-hand shop that day and bought a puzzle called “Santa’s Helpers”. We asked for volunteers to try and put it together, on a table on stage, before the end of the next song. They managed about 7 pieces. So people just started streaming on stage to help, and about 3 songs later they had managed to put it all together. And here it is. This just goes to show you how incredibly stupid our fans are. It took 11 of them 15 minutes to put a 45-piece puzzle together. Come ON.

As a prize, I gave them all the 2-disc Director’s Cut copy of Spiderman 2:

The madness starts at 27:20 of this video, and the prize winning starts at 46:45, which means it took them almost like 20 minutes actually. idiots.

https://fb.watch/kTgqEObIb7/

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An entirely salutary defacement of property in Chepstow, Wales. *whirrrr* *click*

The SSB at Cursus, and the full band after that last show: Karen, the SSB, Momo, Steve, myself, and Cumulo-Dingus. We drank a lot of cider, but one of us was absolutely loser pissed, titanically obliterated on farmhouse scrumpy, and fell asleep in the front row during The Longest Johns set. Lol. You can sort of tell which one from this photo. Guess who it was in the comments and win a prize. *click*

And finally, here’s myself and the wonderful Robbie from the Longest Johns sharing the final song of the festival. A great band and a spectacular night overall.

ONWARDS!!!!!!!!!!11