Ainslie Wills Tour Diary: Part Three

TOUR STOP #6 - HOBART

Given we were two thirds of the way into the tour, the band and I had now become adept at: a) Getting to the airport on time with all our gear . b)Sourcing the nearest food outlet at the airport that did ham, cheese and tomato croissants. c) Packing the mountain of gear into a kia carnival, tetris style. d) Knowing where the handbrake for said kia carnival, was, and e) sourcing the best coffee/eats at our destination. We arrived in Hobart with several hours to kill which prompted Linden to take us to a place that did the 'best B.L.T's EVER', they were pretty good too, the place that served us these delicious provisions however were not too keen at my request to play this beautiful old upright piano that was standing lonely in the corner of the cafe, I was told that “the other customers might not like it, come back when we are closing” and with that I replied “you obviously don't know how great my version of Andrew Loyd Webber's Cat's, is”. With nostrils flaring we headed to the glorious botanical gardens to cool off and spent most time looking at the purdy flowers and Japanese maples through the lenses of our smart phone cameras.....I never thought I'd be that person.

The purdy gardens.

That afternoon, Lawrence and myself had an interview at a local radio station, for some reason I had forgotten that it was to be not just an interview but also an acoustic performance of two songs which is fine when you are travelling with an acoustic guitar. Alas we were not, so with about twenty minutes until interview time remaining I ducked in to the local music shop, McCanns , where I asked to borrow one of their guitars in stock in exchange for a plug on radio. The very friendly Tim granted us the use of his own Maton and with that we were away, making it to the radio station with minutes to spare.

Climbing the stairs up to the main room of the Grand Poobah for our soundcheck later that evening, we were greeted with an unlikely scenario - a whole bunch of teenage boys with caps and skateboards. They had cleared the room of all paraphernalia and said teenagers were taking turns doing Ollie's up onto a very deliberately placed table in the centre of the room. It was quite the spectacle and we would have kept watching them had we not had a show to play.

The new Soundcheck. Where kids 'Ollie' and shit...

TOUR STOP #7 - M'ADELAIDE

I was born and bred in country NSW and after graduating high school, moved to Ballarat for two years and then moved to the big smoke of Melbourne. Adelaide is a morph of both city and country I feel and has a very chilled vibe about it, which I appreciate.

Checking into the Metro hotel at around midday, the place we were to play and sleep, team Ainslie Wills headed to the market across the street for some deli treats. We then retreated back to our room for a pseudo picnic whilst we tried to figure out the plot of some B grade midday movie starring Jude Law, the channel then got changed to another B grade movie featuring magic carpets then eventually an episode of Family Ties came on which was the clear winner of the channel battle.

That night we played the cosy room at the Metro to a merry group of people including one guy who, upon my asking where the best place in Adelaide to get breakfast was, replied, “my place”, to which I responded “how well can you poach eggs?” to which he said “err, um, my wife does 'em pretty nice'.....”

Adelaide, you lil' beauty...