Hey guys.

Just an explination if some of you noticed that I'm still here in Australia when I should be in LA. 

The L'Acoustics V-Dosc Technicians course was due to start on the 7th of Feb but last Friday was postponed due to a higher than usual workload at L'Acoustics.  I'll be heading over to the States now in March  (hopefully....)

Until then.....

- Andy

The last day of the tour......quite sad.  I've been enjoying the tour, while I never was a fan of rockabilly in the past, I definatly am now.  All of Jim's and Darrell's tunes are really cool and if you're interested in hearing more, go pickup the Kat Man CD.

Unfortunately in NZ we didn't get to see much of the countryside, but I was quite pleased to see that NZ did live up to its reputation.  I didn't get to visit any strip clubs, but going from the advertisements running in some of the tourist brochures I picked up, it's a different type of club that gets the Kiwi's hot.  Ladies and Gentlement, the NZ peep show (sorry, Sheep Show, Freudian slip)

I'm sure their 'Live Show's" won't be as good as the Crazy Horse's Live Shows, Miss Nude OZ is quite talented.

Well, today's Auckland, and again we didn't get to see much of it outside of the venue and hotel.  The most prominent landmark in the skyline is Auckland's Sky City, I'll have to return one day and bungy jump from it.  Was also cool to see some sorta sling shot thing outside another venue; will have to give that a shot too.

The NZ side of the tour was partly organised by a lovely dude called Noddy, who organises the NZ Beach Hop - A large get-together of hotrodders and those that enjoy said hot rods.  He organised for a bunch of these cars to come to down to the gig, and he defiantly helped make the gig a success.  Proceeds of the Beach Hop are donated to various charities that help children, and Noddy is definatly the type of person that makes you aware that everyone can help change this world.

Sitting at the airport at 3am allowed me to have a listen to the desk tape I made, ensure all the luggage was fit to travel and stand up to the abuse of the Qantas baggage handlers, and even grab a shot of what the terminal looks like with only a few souls residing in it.

Today's gig is at the Indigo Bar in downtown Wellington.  The flights were long and tedious, and the announcement that we were beginning our decent into 'Windy Wellington' gave Jim a moment of deja-vu as about 20 years ago the exact same thing was mentioned.  Well, the pilot lived upto his side of the deal, it defiinatly was a rough and windy landing, though the scenery outside the plane made up for it.  Wellington is definatly one beautiful city.

Have you ever noticed how the capitol city of a nation is always well landscaped and cleaner than the other cities of a country.  Such as Canberra compared to Sydney.  Wellington is exactly the same. 

I also stumbled across some fellow roadies setting up for Wellington's annual Christmas Parade.  Glad to see I wasn't totally alone in this foreign country and that crew over in NZ are also made to work at 7am on a Sunday morning....

The gig was in a very reflective room with a EAW 850 rig.  While the PA was good, the room wasn't, and I was bombarded with Darrel's guitar rig as it was pointing straight at me.  Never to fear, just a matter of walking around a lot more and making sure it sounded even in the room. 

While we're at it, give it up for the amazing Mr Darrell Higham!!!!  Darrell is truly one really cool cat and I had heaps of fun hanging out with him on the tour. 

It was cool to see that parking meters over in NZ take payment by credit card or by SMS, definatly a change from Sydney's parking system where we recieved 2x $170+ parking tickets on day 2 of the tour.

Wellington is definatly one great city and I hope to visit there again soon.  I urge you all to do the same.

Day 10 in Brisbane saw us having a 'travel day' and allowed us to have a night on the town.  While the Brisbane strippers don't have the dancing and seductive talent like their Adelaide counterparts, they made up with the ability to touch. 

The venue in Brisbane was the VERY nice Tivoli Theatre, I had heard that it was a very well setup venue and it was correct.  The PA was a Triple Nexo Alpha (Triple 4 way), and while it's not my favourite sounding PA its definatly a great one.  It always sounds very clean and refined, and needs a bit of work to get it to rock and sound big.

I was also waiting to get to Brisbane before I attempted another desk tape recording.  A visit to Factory Sound while in Melbourne allowed me to purchase a few items to help my situation, and I added compression to the recording which also helped improve the sound.  I was quite pleased with the result, including a recording of Jim's "I'll f*cking have you motherf*cker".  A few uncool things happened at the Tivoli, the worst of which was 2 guitars being stolen from the support bands.  While the security was present at the venue, it still didn't stop these guitars from being nicked and I sincerly hope the bands get their stuff back.

The venue also had plasma's at all the bars, hooked up to a video source in the venue sending vision of the stage which was really really cool

One of the annoying things about some of the venues we've been doing is having to mix the support bands.  In Sydney I didn't mind doing it because the support bands included Dave Bean's Casino Rumblers and I definatly wanted to mix them, and the Wild Turkey's in Melbourne were really cool too.  Here in Brisbane, I was able to sit back and complete all the production management stuff I had to do.  Their green room & dressing room setup in the venue was really cool, and they included a production office with internet and telephone....the way things should be.

Alas, the time I was able to rest was crucial, as after the gig we headed straight to the airport for a 5am flight to Wellington via Sydney....Touring's fun!

Adelaide was nothing special, my recollection of the Enigma Bar being a bit of a slum was correct and I was looking forward to leaving and travelling to Brisbane the next day. 

I'm definatly certain the best thing about "Day 9 - Adelaide" was visiting the famous "Crazy Horse" and parting with a few hundred dollars; stumbling back to the hotel in the wee hours of the morning.  I only wish I could post photos of the experience here but 1. I couldn't take them and 2. Myspace wouldn't be happy about them being displayed.

Boy did I have fun tonight.  Both musicians and crew always enjoy and place extra effort into 'home' gigs for various reasons, whether it be the fact that friends and family tend to turn up to these shows, aswell as you're more likely to know radio & newspaper reporters that'll turn up to the gig too. 

Tonight's gig was at the Corner Hotel, the production run by a friend of mine and setup really well.  Old school gear in a few places but it sounds good in there.  It also helped immensely that Jim & Darrel came down to soundcheck today, which meant that it'd sound great straight off the bat for the actual gig.
For the last few gigs the level of low end on stage has been an issue for Jim, but today it didn't seem to be a problem, and the guys on stage were having a great time.  For the first time on this tour, they did 2 encores (however still the same number of songs), which was additional proof for me that they were very happy.

(Notice that there wasn't an entry for Day 5 (Ruby's Lounge, Melbourne)?  Well I hate that venue, terrible PA, it doesn't deserve an entry.  Plus I hadn't slept for 3 days, it was pretty much a write-off)

I made another desk tape of the gig, and this one worked out well, no chipmunks!  The soundcard interface though sounds a bit distorted though, so I'll have to find something better quality.

Well, 2 days off here in Melbourne before we jump on a plane again, heaps of time to return all the phone calls I have to, and tie up any loose ends for the tour before we're away again.

(Bought a new bag today so I can carry my digital camera around with me, hence the better photos.  Still a few came out blurry, gotta sort that out!)

Just noticed that people have actually been reading this blog.....leave a comment, who the hell is reading this?

The flight from Sydney to Perth was tough.  Sitting in a cramped plane with no leg room, with the guy infront of you with his seat all the way back for hours on end makes you wish the plane would crash.  Plus I failed to get any sleep on the flight, thus causing me to become even further frustrated.

This is my first time in Perth and I guess I'm somewhat disappointed.  I was expecting it to be a bit more like Brisbane, even though the two cities are so far apart.  And it rained.  The land out here is so arrid and baron, it's quite obvious that the entire country is suffering from drought.

Slim Jim's gig went well, it sounded pretty good in the room (one of the best sounding gigs apparently, said by the experienced house sound guy), and the venue's PA was pretty good; I've been on much worse (Ruby's Lounge...tomorrow)

All in all, the tour's kicking along nicely now.

What an awesome gig Sydney was.  Navigating our way around the tough town of Sydney did seem to be a problem, even though everyone had been there before.  The hired people mover ran into several problems, at times it felt flat, had conflicts with other cars, and would scrape the corner of the doors on the solid ground below.  But all that in hindsight, that didn't bother me cos the gig sounded awesome!

After my first attempt of recording a gig in Melbourne before I left for this tour, I decided I'd do it again, and it turned out sounding like a studio recording.....with only one problem.  1.5hr gig and only 45 minutes show on the MP3. Problem?  Well, it seems that from about 1/5 through the recording my laptop decided to speed everything up and from 10 minute onwards it sounds like chipmunks.  Work to be done to rectify this problem, especially as we had Jimmy Barnes jump up on stage with Jim and belt out a few numbers; definatly a recording I'd love to hear again.

I'm really missing not having my digital camera with me, especially are you can tell that the quality of photos produced by my phone is somewhat dismal.  Neverfear, Melbourne's home shows aren't too long away.

We have a 5 hour flight tomorrow, doubled with the fact of the time zone difference we'll all be up an extra 3 hours tomorrow.  Flying to Melbourne will be worse though, the 6am flight and time zone change will wipe 6 HOURS out of our day (3 hours + 3hr time difference).  All part of the fun of touring though, I just hope that the band can handle the pressure and don't get frazzled.

Glad to leave Sydney though

Hey guys.

Thought I'd try my hand at blogging, and when's a better time to start than when I'm on tour.
Today was the rehearsal day of the Slim Jim Phantom - Australia & New Zealand tour.  Currently I'm sitting in Glebe, an inner suburb city of Sydney, gazing out on the beautiful skyline which is helping to remind me why I got into this caper in the first place.  Definatly one of the upsides of touring is travelling and having days off or spare time on your hands.

Darrel Higham, the guitarist flew into Sydney last night, and Slim Jim arrived today.  We all met up for the first time for lunch today, before we headed off for a rehearsal with the tours' Australian bassist, Dave from the Casino Rumblers.
At some stage Slim Jim was talking to the tour manager about Aussie musicians that he knew, and I overheard him say Jimmy Barnes.  Well, it's been a while since they've met up, but I gave Jimmy's tour manager a call and organised for Jimmy and Slim Jim to meet up for a catch up, and hopefully for Jimmy to come down to our gig tomorrow.

The rehearsal went very well, Slim Jim & Darrel's setup is nice and easy and things sounded very nicely so its looking like I'm gonna have a fun, relaxing and great-sounding tour on my hands.  Tomorrow's gig is at the Gaelic Club which is cool; venue I know and have worked before, big PA and lotsa room on stage.  Great start!

Unfortunately I didn't have space to pack my 5 megapixel camera that I purchased for this tour....so I'm stuck having to take photos with my phone, at least until we do the Melbourne shows and I can try to repack my bag!

This tour I've also started using a software program designed for tour and production management called TouringTools.  It's still in its development stage and has hence been a bit buggy, but it's otherwise working beautifully and over time will make things easier and easier.

Lior's Live Album which was recorded last year at the Northcote Social Club has been nominated for 2 ARIA awards: Best Blues and Roots Album and Best Independent Release.

Lior was nominated for a bunch of awards last year too, without success, lets hope this year brings better luck.