Ainslie Wills Tour Diary: Part Two

TOUR STOP #4 - NEWCASTLE

After playing Bendigo, Canberra and Sydney, the band (Lawrence, Natalie, Linden, Arron, Jono) and I had a day off in Newcastle before playing the launch show at the Great Northern Hotel the following night. We were greeted with what almost felt like torrential rain when we arrived and therefore spent most of the day in doors with the exception of Linden 'Bass Hound' Lester who decided it was a good day to go surfing. By this stage Lawrence's voice, having got a dreaded throat lurgy, was completely gone and he resorted to communicating via a drawing app on his phone.

This is how bandmates should communicate...

The last show we had  played in Newcastle was held at an adorable clothing store/art gallery called Emma Soup so the jump from that to the Great Northern was sizeable and so was the line-up for the Newcastle launch which included the infamous Kira Puru & The Bruise, Post Paint and Grace Turner. Posters of a very young Silverchair affixed to the wall, a worn circular carpet on stage and a whole bunch of Novacastrians who certainly knew how to drink and talk - this show had a very different vibe to the rest of the tour shows and the set the band and I performed reflected this. It was probably the loudest we had played in some time, the band  I were definitely in the spirit to take a few more risks on stage and punters were swaggering/swaying/dancing along to most of the set - overall it was a great show.

The next morning we decided to have breakfast on the esplanade before heading back to Sydney to fly home. We were all ravenous and had kick started the meal with our coffees/teas of choice. One by one our respective brunch meals started to appear, mine being some scrambled eggs with pesto and some such, I was so keen to sample the first bite that I hadn't realised that my plate was half on half off the table and with the first pressurised 'saw' of my crunchy sourdough toast, my plate flipped out from in front of me and landed mostly on Linden's sneaker, the rest – splattered to the floor. It happened so quickly there was no possible way my reflexes were going to save it. To say I was embarrassed would be a significant understatement. Onwards and upwards we went from there.

TOUR STOP #5 - MELBOURNE

The home town show of the tour, no pressure, just don't fuck it up. This really was the 'hump' of all nine dates. The first two singles we launched from the album in 2012 were done in relatively small venues and we had played the Northcote Social Club before but only as support, so this show was to be the biggest Melbourne venue we'd headlined ever.

Soundcheck before the big Melbourne gig.

We decided to step it up a notch with the addition of a lighting pro: Tom 'Lightning' Rogers. We were excited to present a solid show as we had done previously, but with a little extra somethin' somethin'. Sydney's Oscar Lush and Melbourne genius producer/artist Spender were the special guests of the night. I was uber excited to have these guys on the line up as I feel they are two of Australia's musical gems and if you are reading this and were at the show, I am sure you will agree with me - if you haven't yet heard of them, check them out will you?

After loading in our gear and setting up the stage on a rainy Melbourne afternoon we were pretty stoked to find out that the show had sold out, a little flutter of excitement hit my belly but from that point I remained relatively calm, which was unusual for me. Curtains closed, we stepped on to the NSC stage ready to roll out the set and it took until the point where Andy the stage manager started to scroll back the curtains for me to feel the wave of nerves hit. I don't necessarily equate having nerves with a negative experience, on the contrary it gives you the adrenaline you need to perform. Once the curtain was open I could see a sea of heads that filled the NSC room - it was then time to deliver. We hadn't planned an encore but thought we could finish the set off with an acoustic version of a song called This Is What I Write that was recorded by an audience member, you can hear it here. We walked off stage to what I felt were the cheers of a happy and satisfied audience. The band and I were side of stage waiting for Jono to fade the FOH music up but the cheers kept going and so with that cue we responded with a cover of Radiohead's Nude...Tune in for the next part of the diary.