Never Enough Notes e-zine // reviews + interviews + music

BABESHADOW recently toured with the lovely Florence And The Machine, and have sent us their exclusive tour diary written as they travel down the country in a beaten-up Astra.

.

Listen to BABESHADOW here: http://www.myspace.com/babeshadowband

After a long day of rehearsing we set off in my beaten and bashed up old white Vauxhall Astra. Somehow Dave and I managed to squeeze all our backline and baggage into the car with still enough space to have a whole seat each.

Nine hours and 1000 leg stretching stops later we arrived in Edinburgh where we’re joined by friends from London to start the first two nights of the tour with a plethora of alcoholic drinks and late nights. BabeShadow backstage consisted of a ladies football changing room, plenty of toilets and a waft of sports kit in the air, the perfect aroma before hitting the stage.

We spent the next day in Edinburgh wondering the hills up to the castle and eating haggis, oh we’re all cheesy tourists at heart. The second night in Edinburgh my identical long lost twin appeared to confuse our friends, was glad to see the pictures afterwards of me watching my own gig.

Blackpool was next, our hotel booking went rather wrong and we ended up with a room that wasn’t paid for and we couldn’t all sleep in so we spent one night in a room no bigger than our car then moved on to an amazing B&B owned by a rather deaf woman, I must say that was rather lucky.

Had the most amazing gig followed by a day of the worst people, a day off in Blackpool took its toll and we all ended up more drunk on tequila than we’ve ever been and all woke up in a citrus bedroom.

On Sunday the lovely Mairead and Tabitha took us for a pleasurable day out to Blackpool’s pleasure beach where a slightly sick Dave and I managed to fight our way through a hangover by going on rides that were about to fall apart. Blackpool is definitely the pleasure capital of the world.

Wolverhampton was really normal, everything kind of went right, had another amazing gig, got drunk, bought loads of stuff from a junk shop and Dave discovered his love of knives, guns and generally offensive weapons. Onto the HAMMERSMITH APOLLO!

London was the best yet, our pro road crew did so well with our bass amp and security couldn’t have been happier with us for the people that were on our guest list. I think that we spent the three nights in London being far too wobbly. The problem with playing early is that you then have too many hours to kill before everyone else has finished working. Had a great party on the last night with plenty of Jamesons and BabeShadow crew/drums interaction, namely the creative bass amp carrier fell in love with Johnny from the drums and is now happily living with him in New York.

Overall I’ve come to the conclusion that tours aren’t very good, petrol is really expensive and I don’t think I want to play guitar ever again.

Tom BabeShadow.xo