Dear ones
How are ya? We just finished The UK leg of the tour. You people who came to the shows are wonderful! You were dancing, singing and loving like bedlamites! It was such an incredible tour. Every night was great for different reasons. We loved playing in Wales: Wrexham and Cardiff rocked. We loved playing in the east: Cambridge, Norwich and Nottingham were wonderful nights. The North!: Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, go well you crazy bad girls and bois. Scotland: Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh radio, thank you. And the south: Portsmouth, oxford, Brighton and London. We had a great reception everywhere we went, such hospitality! It was definitely the most tiring tour of our lives. I had moved house at the beginning of the tour. My voice was going by the fourth gig in. When not on stage, not moving/sound checking/working/on the phone to lawyers and estate agents about my new home, I was snatching sleep in every place I could. There were some great moments of improvising: John was giving a lot, Bradley was playing drums on 'Feel Inside', people were requesting all the songs from ExtraOrdinary, Drew got up with us and played Mandolin on 'Yesterday' at 3 venues, Joe Driscoll and Pete Box incinerated the gig in Nottingham when they got up with us and free styled/scratched/beat boxed like angels. Union Chapel was great, and very challenging, apologies to any of you who suffered with bad sound early in the gig. We had never played a venue of that type and our instrumentation and our team were pushed to the limits by the space, beat box and double bass present a unique challenge for a sound man, and so does a huge echoey church. Apologies to anyone whose enjoyment was impaired at all during the show. We were all giving you everything we had. The 3-part harmony was great.
I did a fair bit of preaching on this tour. In Cambridge the energy at the gig felt a little slow, people didn't seem to be having a wild time. During Feel Inside my intuition said I should preach! I asked the question 'What can we do about how dark the future currently seems'? How can we deal with how much suffering is happening, and is about to happen, and how do we serve the needs of others and not just collapse in to apathy and numbness? You are so powerful, so mighty, and you have a huge responsibility, we can't let the world go to hell in a hand basket. We have to act now. NOW! YOU! Direct action to stop them digging up fossil fuels, direct action to stop them sending more arms to the Gulf, go to the camp for climate action. That kind of ranting. And if your heart's engaged and you're saying what you really feel, people hear it, and in Cambridge people seemed to go 'Wo' and open up and start having a good time as if there was some meaning here now. It's not just musicians making nice music, there's some honesty here.
But equally I'm very aware that this sort of thing can just be really annoying, that you can be another self-important f%^ing singer. But I feel it's immensely important that we start to talk, that we say what we really feel regardless of cynicism or close mindedness. We all need to be talking about these issues and organising and addressing them now. It doesn't make you popular with the media, it's not very marketable, my girlfriend thinks it's embarrassing, but f*%k it. Speak about what you love! Speak about your love for the world. Don't let it all go under cos you're scared of being called a hippy!
PREACH!
We are in Ireland getting ready for our last three shows of this tour. Come down! IRELAND UP RISE!
May will be quiet. In the Summer;: festivals and maybe recording a few new songs. In the Autumn; another big ole tour of the UK and Ireland, start telling your friends, look out for updates, sign up to the mailing list on nizlopi.com, and get hitting the demand button on our my space if you want us to come somewhere off the beaten track.
LOVE Luke x