SHOW LOBES begins

⚫️🥁⚫️🎸⚫️

Hi, here we are in our dressing room at Manchester Gorilla, the soundcheck behind us, the first beer sunk at our local underground tap-cave, and the SHOW LOBES Tour is about to begin.

Normally when we tour, our off-stage productivity takes a nosedive. “You spend all your might on-stage!” one could reasonably speculate. And yes, that two hours saps a person, but almost equally it invigorates. Indeed, playing a show every day — divorced from the surrounding rigors of touring — would be a great way to stay fresh of lung and keen of mind. Vegas residencies must be incredible sources of vivification for the likes of Adele, Britney, and Celine Dion. But for we who bring the show to the fans rather than vice versa, touring is stuffed with stuff that sucks. The drives. The motorway meals. The 9am ferry two hours from your hotel that closes its gates 45 minutes before departure (😪tomorrow morning). It’s the long stretches of white noise that dull the mind, that file down the edges.

Let’s not go into it now: we need to conserve material. We’re aiming to write to you every day on this tour. Maybe that will keep us sane. Maybe it will ward away the phantoms, quiet the demons, fix the climate, and set Sydney’s mind at ease. These may be unrealistic goals, but no newsletter was ever brought down by a surfeit of optimism.

Bye till tomorrow (or see you in a few minutes in Manchester),

Chris & Keith (and Keith C. & Johnny)