Going on a real tour.

The “tour” story about Bandanna apparently gave some people, including my beloved Mrs Gibbo, the idea that touring was some sort of wonderful, bohemian lifestyle chock full of naked women, intoxicating substances and midnight law breaking!. In an effort to correct this very misguided idea, I would like to present a tale from the other end of the scale. A real tour!

Update. After a phone call from brother of Gibbo ,who dug up the original tour schedule, I have slightly ammended the list of gigs. Thanks mate.

It was 1992 and we were working for a great bloke by the name of James Blundell.


He was red hot property at the time and we worked hard. 6 shows per week, every week for 6-10 weeks at a time. If we could fit a matinee show in we would as well. Monday was classed as a “day off”. It’s funny how driving up to 12 hours can be considered a day off. We literally were on the job 7 days a week for weeks on end but it was great. I can honestly say that some of the best times I ever had professionally were with this band. There were a lot of factors that contributed. James himself was a thorough professional and a real gentleman. The band were absolutely red hot, all top class musicians and all top blokes. They were an absolute joy to watch. The crew all got on well and all did a great job. The standard of venues was usually good. Clubs, theatres etc and the hours were very civilized for people in our line of work. It was usually an 8pm to 10:30 show which is much earlier than a rock gig.

A day usually went something like this.

• Wake up in a hotel/motel room somewhere at around 8am
• Have coffee, shower, get dressed all while watching the tele.
• Drive to the next town on the list. Stop for breakfast/lunch on the way.
• Arrive for load in at venue at 1pm.
• The first road case off the truck was known as VIC. Very Important Case. In it was an urn, tea, coffee, biscuits etc. This got set up first so the water was boiled for a hot cuppa after the load in.
• Load in and setup 8 tonnes of PA, lights, staging, instruments etc. It usually took 3 hours as long as the room had easy access. Sometimes you carry that gear up as many as 4 floors, up the back fire escape quite often.
• Be ready for the band to arrive about 4:30pm for a sound check. This usually took an hour.
  Brother of Gibbo at his post side stage during a soundcheck. His job was to keep the whole band happy on stage by providing 8 seperate monitor mixes to an array of speakers on stage. Do you know what the difference between a Monitor Guy and a Toilet is? The toilet only has to deal with one arsehole at a time.
  
  
• You do a quick tidy up of any last minute crap like setting up the merchandise stand or such, followed by a search for something good for dinner. You try to have one “decent” meal a day if you can swing it.
• Get ready for “Doors open” at about 7pm.
• Support act on at 8pm for 30 minutes.
• Main Act at 8:30pm for nearly 2 hours.
• Pack up. With six crew we could pack up and load 8 tonne of gear into the truck in 1½ to 2 hours which usually got you back to you room not too far past midnight.
  
  The never ending stream of black boxes. Note the downing of a well earned, refreshing ale.
  
  
• A few late night beers and a little tele and off to sleep.
• Do it all over again, and again, and again…

As I said, they were pretty good hours really but shit we did some driving.

This is, to the best of my recollection, just one leg of a tour that we did, covering about 4 weeks.

Day 1, drive for about 1000k’s to meet up with the band and half the crew in Brisbane who have been doing record company promo shit.

Leaving NSW. Note the rainbow.

Arrive in Brisbane to find that the record company is still paying for room service. Yeehah!
The next day we are on in earnest. It starts with a drive to Gold Coast to pick up extra lights then off to Toowoomba for the first gig. Up 1 flight of steps!
then(roughly) Kingaroy, Caloundra, Gympie, and Bundaberg.


Some of the boys doing common after gig activities. One is passed out drunk. The other is dribbling shit to his Mrs on the phone just before passing out drunk.

We get a day off at some resort at Bundaberg before the show. The weather is shit so we just bum around all day but appreciate the rest already. We actually sit down to a real meal in a good restaurant. Wow.
Update. I was reminded that I had my first Cane Toad kicking experience in Bundaberg. Happy days indeed!

Then Gladstone, Rockhampton, Emerald, Dysart, Mackay, Townsville and Ayr. I get to catch up with my Auntie Margie and a few of the cousins in Townsville. We even get devon sango's with Uncle Ray the next day on our way out of town. Bleedin' luxury.
Enough of the socialising though, it's off to Cairns.
Even though the gig is at Innisfail, we drive a couple of hours past it as we are staying in Cairns and for some forgotten reason, we need to go there first. We then turn around and drive a couple of hours back to the gig at Innisfail. On the way back to Cairns after the gig that night, I fell asleep driving the truck. Luckily, the guy in the passenger seat was awake and managed to wake me up. He only realised I was asleep when we crossed the road rounding a bend and ended up sideways. Something that is not recommended in a truck! I was wide awake for the rest of the trip.
We got back to our room in the early hours of the morning to find that two of our rooms, mine included, had been robbed. In all the years I travelled, this was the only time it ever happened. They got away with mostly clothes and a bit of cash. I think a few other things went missing that weren't reported to the Police! Bastards.
We had the next day off in Cairns which was spent mostly sleeping. That night we walked into town to find a Blues Festival going on. It turns out that one of the acts are friends of mine and I am drafted into doing sound for them. So much for the day off. We end the night at Johnos Blues Bar, pissed as nits, watching Phil Emanuel go off. What a great night.
The next day we do our gig and as soon as the truck is loaded, we start the trek to Mt Isa. The first stop is Townsville for a few hours sleep in a bed. Then head about 1500k's inland. Fuck it's a long way. This is the last gig of the run and after this we are heading back to Sydney for a few days off before doing Southern NSW, Victoria and South Australia.

Shutting the truck in Mt Isa, ready for the 3 day drive home. That pan is 26foot long and is chockablock full. Top to bottom, front to back. My Uncle Ray who is a "real truckie" said it was a "poofy town truck that had no right to be driven so far."
The truck becomes a central part of life on the road. You drive it, sleep in it, eat in it and it carries your entire life for months at a time.

Nearing the end of the first day driving home, we came across the famous Blue Heeler Hotel at Kynuna which was the subject of James' first(I think) Golden Guitar winning song. We decided it would be a great idea to stop for a pie and a few beers. The publican was really friendly regailed us with stories of when the film clip was being shot. It was a real big deal for them and they treated us well.

Leaving The Blue Heeler.

Crossing the desert that night we were treated to the beautiful sight of a desert sunset.


"Only two more days of driving boys, and we're home!"

Goin' on tour.

I had a conversation with Gibbo Junior the other day that brought back a few memories. He is "getting a band together" with a few mates as teenagers do and we were talking about things rock & roll. The word "tour" came up as it does. It is a funny word in the rock & roll world and can mean all sorts of things to all sorts of people. When I was first kicking off, the definition of "On Tour" was driving more than 3 hours from home and not sleeping in your own bed! Later on it came to mean months away from home and many thousands of kilometers travelled, literally! It brought to mind though, my first "interstate tour". It was a trip to Queensland consisting of a gig in a wonderful place called Strathpine, Qld, followed by a midnight trip to a national park in S.E. Qld for a biker’s party. The band was called Bandanna.

They were the first band that employed me as a sound engineer. It was 1985 from memory. I had played in another band with the guitarist Larry. This guy could play really well as well as being a more than capable singer. The other guitarist was a Kiwi guy called Graeme who immigrated to Holland, which was sort of appropriate... if you knew Graeme! The drummer was the amazing Rick Doolan who you will eventually hear much about. The bass player was Terry who was known as "Dr Gofast". Another legend whom you will hear more about in future.
Basically they were a "bikers band". They played blues, boogie, rock etc. and were really, really good. As a lot of bands were then, we were working about 3-5 gigs per week and all had "day jobs". I had taken a few rostered days off to go on this jaunt.


This is us leaving the Strathpine Hotel. This photo includes myself, my pal Brian ™ , my brother, the band and a couple of extra crew known as "The Muckhole Brothers" who were "chemically enhanced" most of the time though they worked very well.


After an event free trip to Qld. and a great gig, we packed up and headed out the door.



Here are my pal Brian ™ and my brother Brett in their devastating youth.


Off to Aratula we go. The fun started early. We hadn't got 10 minutes out of Strathpine when we realised we were heading the wrong way which called for a quick U-turn across the median strip. This was something which seemed to annoy the local Police. I was driving my Lite-Ace "party bus" with the band, a couple of crew, a stray girl that the bass player had found, lots of grog, and a few other things that I won't admit to here. Constable Plod was thrown by a NSW license and a van full of rough heads so he let us continue on our merry way with a stern talking to about "the way we do things up here".
The rest of the trip was uneventful until the stray girl decided she needed to vomit. Now!
We pulled over to let her chuck. Awesome. The bass player was still interested at this point.
Off we go a few miles down the road when the stray girl decided she needed to pee. Now!
We pulled over but she was concerned that we might "perve on her" so she went around to the other side of the van. The side where the road was. The side where the traffic was. She quite happily piddled while cars drove past watching. I think we still perved.

Arriving at the party was an eye opener for me. If you have never been to a serious bikers party, then you have missed out on one of lifes great adventures. It was quite late(or early),in the middle of the bush and there were people everywhere drinking, smoking and... well, bloody everything. Come sun up, we were treated to the site of our stage.

What a beauty eh? That’s our truck at the back acting as a dressing room.

After setting up for most of the morning, there wasn't much to do so we went and watched a "bash the Japanese bike competition. You paid a few dollars to have a couple of swings with a sledge hammer and the first one to get the crankshaft out, won. Classic stuff.

The afternoon rolled around finally to everyone’s favourite event. The tit show.


This is where female members of the audience are asked to remove some of their clothing on stage for all to enjoy and a winner is democratically selected.
All was going well until some girl grabbed the mic and started rabbiting on about how sexist the whole thing was and that she "wanted to see some dicks".



Well, she didn't have to ask twice.

The stage and was swamped by blokes with their slugs out.



This bloke was the obvious winner.


Fairly soon it all settled back down to the girls and a winner was duly selected.

Her prize seemed to involve going back stage with a couple of the bikers! I wonder what second prize was. Later on we had to let the strippers use the back of our truck for a dressing room. While we were in there "getting stuff ready". It is quite bizarre watching a strip show in reverse. They would appear from the stage nude and get dressed again for their next bit. Wow.

Anyways, time was approaching when the band would actually have to take the stage and play. Trouble was that the singer was suffering from a bad cold and no sleep and 57 beers and......and was rapidly losing his voice. Finally the band started. The music was pumping and the crowd was going off. Until Larry tried to sing. Absolutely nothing came out. The band struggled on for a few songs doing "instrumental versions". This was not going down as well as we would have liked. Let me put it this way. Bikers are not the best people to disappoint.

It was decided that one of the support acts would loan us their singer. Great... he knew two of the songs. It was then decided to let this bloke have a go who could "blow the harp(harmonica) like a bastard!" He knew two songs as well. He played them twice I think. It was then decided to give it away and beat a hasty retreat before anyone got more angry at us. We packed up in record time and scurried back to Sydney. At this point, we hadn't been to bed for a while and some of us were a little bit "emotional". A small altercation was had between myself and my pal Brian ™ over who should get the sleeping spot in the van. Although this involved pulling over, much swearing, some pushing, much more swearing and a little bit more pushing, it was sorted and we had an uneventful and quiet trip home.

I crawled into bed at home finally, after three days with basically no sleep. Around two hours later the phone rings and wakes me. It is Rick, the drummer. He owned the truck with the bands gear in it. He says words to the effect of "If the cops call you, tell them you were driving the truck".
Half asleep to fully awake in .5 of a second!
"What the..." I say.
“Well, you’ve got a class 3 (truck) license haven’t you?” He says.
“Why?” I ask.
Rick says sheepishly: "I sort of overtook these Army blokes going along Putty road. Across double yellow lines, on the wrong side of the road, around a series of blind corners, going down the mountain, in the truck, and, my license isn’t sort of valid at this point. Can you cover it when they ring? Apparently some fuckwit officer has taken the number of the truck and has made a complaint.”

Oh how I miss those days.