- First show is    Thursday, May 10th @ The Haunt  (7:15pm)

- Second Show is   Friday,  May 11th @ The Haunt (1:00pm)

Click on the poster below for tickets & more details!

The track listing for the EP is: “Love Love Love,” “Go,” “The Silence,” and “The Streets.”

Here’s a little video of some of the day.

We took off from Auckland at 1 and had a real short road trip up to Matakana. To get to Matakana you turn right at Warkworth, BUT, if you turn left instead you’d get to the great Kaurawhero Community Hall where I recorded the Avalanche album. It’s nice to be back in the same area.

We arrived and hung out in our band room which was actually an amazing room inside the winery, it was stocked full with the local wine. I’m going to get very used to this tour…

It was a great first night. We met lots of really lovely people and it was amazing to see the Mutton Birds play their sweet songs! I sang the final song with Gin.

Today was Goat Island!!!!

Here’s a photo I didn’t take. But it’s what it could have looked like for us… Instead it was cloudy and murky, but still awesome!

First we walked to the Mangawhai shops to get some sweet deli rolls.

Then after that we took off to Goat Island. On the way we took a wrong turn and went waaay too far, but it was OK because we got to see this opshop. Which was WAAAY over priced. But had some cool stuff.

Goat Island was amazing! We actually didn’t see much because it was so murky and overcast but I managed to see two fish!! And the swim was worth it. This will be the tour of swims… If i have anything to do about it.

Tomorrow we head off to Whangarei! Where our day will be full of opshops. Yussss.

The show on Sunday before the world cup game was great. Big crowd, 12,000 people, and a great atmosphere!

Kiwi Day Out was the next day. We went down to Queen St to see the parade along with probably 100,000 other people. We had 30mins till our call time after the parade finished so we raced back to the car and drove straight into standstill traffic. After 10 minutes of moving about 5 metres (we didn’t even get out of the parking building) we re parked the car and just ran all the way to the Domain. We arrived with about 20 minutes till we had to go on, rearranged the setlst and input list last minute, just for good measure and to confuse he heck out of the video guys.

Then we were on and it was great!! This was the biggest show we’ve ever played. The official count for the show was 100,000 but I have no idea how they count that. My estimate was around 50,000 but I’m not sure how I came to that either. It was just a bloody enormous crowd.

They had pretty flash microphones too. The flashiest I’ve ever sung into, they had a pop shield cushion and everything. It was like singing into a teddy bear.

We hung out with Jason Gunn, Alice said she was more star struck than when she met Thom Yorke from Radio Head. Then we all got to dance on stage for Dave Dobbyns slice of heaven. This is pretty much the highlight of my musical life! and here’s a video to prove it.

Oh yeah also we won the rugby, great job All Blacks!

Between Osaka and Kyoto there is actually no country side, from what we saw anyway. All the houses and factories ran together and at one point there was just a little more space between them. Which was probably the country side.

In Kyoto we saw a 16th century castle with a moat, we waded across a river, walked through a bamboo forest and saw a ton of temples.

Tonight I’m playing with KT Tunstall, and because my band couldn’t come over with me I have a few little things prepared on my reel to reel tape machine.

The only thing is it’s 230v and Japanese power is 110v…. So it’s a race to find a power convertor before tonight!

I had a mammoth day of press scheduled in Brisbane so to get there in time for it we were booked on the 6:40am flight to Brisbane. I still had some special little blue sleeping pills from America so as soon as we were in the air i took 2. I normally cannot sleep at all on planes so these little blue pills are a life saver. Even still, the ultimate power of the blue pills only let me sleep for an hour and left me a little groggy. I watched some intrepid journeys. Hopefully one day TV1 will send me to ride a camel across karizakashamashamastan.

We didn’t take any photos on the first day so this is an artists impression of us in karizakashamashamastan.

We landed at 9 and get out of the airport at 10. My first interview is at 10:30 at the Warner offices in Brisbane so we boost into the city. For the rest of the day until 4:30 I was either glued to the phone or had people come in to talk about the Australian tour and the album release over here. After a 3 hour sleep the night before and a whole day of press we are absolutely shattered and drive to our accommodation which is right next to the venue we’re playing that night. The accommodation is a backpackers, which is cool, except that this backpackers doesn’t provide you with any blankets at all, an oversight none of us thought to check. No towels either, so no showers after the show. Living the freaken dream!

After a freezing cold night with no blankets i had just a morning of press which is sweeeeet. At the first radio interview Patience from The Grates was there, i saw them play last time i was in melbourne so was awesome to meet her. Then down to the Gold Coast for some TV and radio stuff. Got free passes to movie world the next day!!! stoked as!

That night was the Gold Coast show, our first one with Busby Marou, who, by the way, are absolute legends, nicest guys you’ll ever meet. The show was upstairs at an equivalent of a New Zealand RSA except a real flash up market one where your roast meal is still a roast meal with boiled peas and carrots but served with nice silverware and sparkly wine glasses. The show was packed out! All the locals came. We had a sit down audience (which i secretly love). No one sang along to Love Love Love which was cool, kinda like going back to the old days haha. Except one girl was singing, i couldn’t hear her but from the way her mouth moved i swear she was singing bum bum bum. Nice friendly locals, Australia so far is good.

Tomorrow is Movie World!!

This and more in the next blog!

It was last weekend and this is our road trip down.

Saturday morning, everyone meet round at Bens to load the van and head off.

Alice baked cookies!

thats 10 house wife points Alice!

A quick stop to get some coffee and we’re on the road! how do you get to Ohakune? Well, its by Ruapehu, which is by Taupo, so we head off in that direction. After a turn off to Tauranga to take the back way to Taupo, we decided we don’t actually go through Taupo. Stopped down a gravel farm road to call a friend for directions, after some hilarious looks from farmers who’s road we were stopped on, we were back off again, in the opposite direction.

We stopped in Hamilton to get a map from the AA to get an exact way (AA members get free maps). But denied! They’re closed on Saturday. Note: the look of defeat.

So a stop at a petrol station and a sneaky photo of one of their Waikato maps set us right.

Taumarunui for lunch.

ITS A DOUBLE RAINBOW!!!!!!

We arrive at Mardi Gras and it is FREEEZING. We sound checked in gloves and i was trying to figure out if there was some way to hold the guitar pick with my gloves with out it slipping out, gaffer taping it to my gloved fingers did cross my mind, but i hardened up. Tough as.

The show went well. my fingers even warmed up by about the third to last song. And I’m pretty sure not even that many people cared that we weren’t a dubstep band. No fire cannons this year though, bit of a let down. Although there were a lot of people in animal costumes which almost made up for it.

We made friends with The Good Fun who played after us. They told us their amazingly funny story of how the festival security guards wouldn’t believe they were in one of the bands. So they separated them off to interrogate them about who played what instrument to see if they were telling the truth hahaha.

The end.

Group shot.

-Dave