Ok, sorry its been a bit of a while since we last posted a tour report, but things have been a bit busy both band wise and personally for all of us, but at last I have found ten minutesor so, so here's a little round up of the summer highlights....

Stash Tin NOT Lost On Dartmoor Shock

Yup, we kicked off our summer gig schedule with another trip to the far side... of Devon, when we traveled down to the Tavistock Inn in Tavistock for the first of two visits this year. Once more Bruce suggested we take the back roads down and enjoy a cruise across the moors on the way. Well the rest of us were not sure, last years trip with Bruce's Scenic Route idea resulted in three hours touring the farm tracks of South Devon whilst dodging tractors and coach loads of tourists in an attempt find the road we should have been on (an incident which resulted in the writing of the track 'Hay Tor'). But Bruce assured us that this time he had learnt from our collective navigational errors and knew the right road. So leaving good old Brizzle early afternoon the Stash Tin convoy took a slow Harry down the M5 as far as Exeter, then set out cross country. and blow me we DIDN'T get lost!! Instead we took a slow cruise across that areas wonderfully bleak and dramatic landscape, with a couple of smoke and beer breaks and we pulled into Tavistock bang on schedule.

As always the staff and the regulars at The Tavistock Inn made us feel most welcome and greeted us with a cold beer and a hot meal which set us up for a good show in the evening. The evening came and by the time we hit the stage for our second set the place was half full despite competition from Rod Stewart, The Hamsters From Hell  and a local festival near by which took many of the venues regular punters away and by the time we finished we had a full dance floor and a crowd in fine voice for the 'fuck you, fuck you' section of Soldiers Song.

So after the show, we packed up, said our goodbyes and took a slow wander home, even stopping for a while on the moors to to enjoy a spot of star gazing away from the light pollution that spoils the night sky in towns and cities. (No aliens were spotted, but we did see a few shooting stars.)

We will be returning to the Tavistock Inn on September the 5th.

The Gig Of The Year?

Our next live performance, at the Reckless Engineer In Brizzle a week later would prove to be something rather special. Recently we have received a number of reviews where the Stash tin sound has been described variously as 'Proto-punk', 'classic 70's style pub rock' and even 'the best bits of 1977 rolled into one'; all of which may explain how we ended up on a punk bill in the first place. We were set to share the stage that night with Hacksaw (Local legends and mates of ours who we have played with several times in the past), The Surfin Turnips (Bristols finest performers of 'Cider Punk' - a form of hi energy folky punk unique to the West Country Of England) and Canadian band The Dreadnoughts, a nice bunch of lads from Vancouver who are on a massive world tour (this gig was their UK debut show) and sound like The Pogues meets The Clash. We arrived at the Reckless to find Hacksaw there and to learn that the Turnips had grabbed The Dreadnoughts, taken them on a pub crawl around Bristol in order to introduce them to the liquid gold that is English cider. So we set up, soundchecked and joined Hacksaw in getting the ciders in ourselves. Needless to say by the time the Turnips and the Dreadnoughts joined us an hour or so later the cider was working it magic on all four bands as well as the rapidly growing crowd.

Hacksaw opened the evening up in their usual style and really got the crowd going and it was cool to see our old mate Dick from The Crafty Beggers joining them on stage to blow Kazoo in 'Go Bath City Go'. Then it was our turn. We played a short 30 minute set, mainly of our faster more punky numbers and a faster than normal blast through our Ska type track 'Think For Yourself' really got the crowd moving, we even had a bit of a pit form by the time we came off stage.

The rest of the evening was a bit of a blur, cider flowed freely, there is photographic evidence of all the Stash Tin guys in the moshpit at various points in the Dreadnoughts excellent set and I have only the very vaguest recollection of The Surfin Turnips set at all, although I can recall it being a lot of fun.

I'm not the only one who considered the evening to be fun, that night is being talked about around here as one of the highlights of the year, and all four bands, even The Canadian boys are keen to get the same line up back for a re run next year sometime.

Happy Birthday Alien Stash Tin

So it was that time of year again, August is when we choose to clebrate the Birth of Alien Stash Tin. After all it was August 2002 when the band came together for its first jam session and August 2003 when we made our live debut playing with Bad Manners and RSVP at the Respect in The West festival, so what were we going to do this year? Well for various reason the band are taking August off this year while we visit family and friends and go on holiday and do the general everyday stuff that doesn't stop even when you are in a small time rock band. But on the 18th of July there arose an interesting possibility....

Over the last few months we have been involved in the 2009 surface Unsigned festival, which is essentially a  nationwide battle of the band competiton. And much to our great suprise we had reached the Bristol semi finals, this meant on that day we would be playing at the legendry Fiddlers Club in Bristol with six other great south west bands including Crimson Sky, POT, MortDelamer and Fallen Child; some the best unsigned acts in the South West, a chance not to be missed. Not only that but we already had a booking that day to play at a small community street festival in Lawerence Hill here in our home town. Celebrate the bands birthday with two gigs in one day, well we did it back in 2004. festival in the afternoon and big showcase gig in the evening... yeah why not!!

So at 2pm Stash Tin Lite (Daves wife was in hospital so we excused him from the afternoon show) arrived in the quiet urban street of Brenty Avenue and prepared to entratain the locals. It was a very mixed crowd, there were elderly folks, families, young kiddies and representatives of nearly every ethnic community you care to mention, and it was great to see such diversity all together having a good time together. We played for about 45 minutes and whilst we made a few lyrical changes as not to offend the family audience (we didn't play Soldier, and the 'fucks' in America and Downturn Blues were substituted for less offensive expressions) we didn't turn down and still gave it 100% on stage, even throwing in an off the cuff version of Motorhead (the Hawkwind arrangement)  because we felt like it. But the people liked it (with the exception of one small chld who was really freaked out by the dayglo alien on Bruces Drum skin) ans we had dancing in the street as well as a load of people sitting in the sun watching with cold beer. We got dragged back on stage for an encore and we blasted through the old Robert Calvert track 'Aerospaceage Inferno', much to the delight of a passing hippy on a Bike who was by the stage singing every word.

We came off and got paid, with a crate of beer and the local children of the street made us a really nice drawing of us playing and Svenya (aged 7) presented it to us which was a really nice, sweet and touching moment. Then we all piled back to Ajs to drink our fee, have a smoke and set ourselves up for the evenings event.

Now we were under no illusion that this would be our last performance in the 2009 Surface unsigned thingy. We were suprised to get passed the first two rounds, and knew from the strength of the bill, that competition would be hard. Besides we also knew that we were not the sort of band the organisers and sponsors were after. they want a nice friendly indie type rock outfit they can turn into superstars not a bunch of old lefty hippy punks who insist on doing things their way, but we were determined to make our exit a memorable one. We only had a twenty minute set so decided to play just four songs; America, Doesn't Have To Be That Way, Think For Yourself and Freeman. So we just went on stage and hit it as hard as we could. Playing a perfect set with no soundcheck and borrowed backline isn't very easy, but we didn't do too badly and went down well enough with the punters to get a floor full of dancers and headbangers, even if we didn't impress the judges enough to reach the final (still to make the top 20 bands in the West country is nothing to be sniffed at). Set over we wandered home tired, a bit 'intoxicated' but happy at the end of a very memorable day

So thats it for the summer, we are taking August off from gigging to allow us to spend some Q.T. with family and loved ones, before picking up again on September the 5th when we return to Tavistock. So thanks to everyone who came to see us this summer or voted for us in the Surface unsigned gigs. We really do mean it when we say we loves every single last one of you

Til Next Time...

Jon (on behalf of the band)