All Night Benders, Sleeping On Sidewalks & Taco Beer: On Tour With Peter Bibby - Part One

Peter Bibby kicked off his national Medicine tour just last weekend and its safe to say it has already well and truly been a blur… and the good news for us is, it's far from over. 

Here's part one of Bibby's tour diary.

We kicked off the tour at the Crown and Anchor in Adelaide. We were already buggered due to spending eight of the previous ten days recording an album for every waking hour of those days. Despite our exhaustion, our friend Lily (pictured) was very happy to see us.

We arrived in Brisbane with our new friend/nemesis ‘Merch Box’. Merch Box threw everything out of whack and, despite Strawberry Pete's trolley pushing skills, the whole load toppled down onto the concrete. Each day we grow stronger and gain enlightenment.

We played a ripper show at The Bearded Lady in Brisbane's West End and, in typical form, drank the night away until the sun came up to fuck us up. We went out for food and beverages and after filling our bellies, Petey decided to catch some sleep on the road side. Just gorgeous.

While Petey napped on the street, Dave and I enjoyed espresso martini's and bowls of tasty chicken rice of the oriental persuasion. Both were deeply satisfying. Our friend Glenzy bought us ‘Taco Beer’ which apparently has coriander and all this other business in it but it just tasted like beer to me. Beer is exhausting, espresso martinis are invigorating.

After learning our Toowoomba show had been cancelled by the venue, we went back to our hotel and slept for hours before waking up with deadly hunger. We cruised the streets of West End before settling on a great little place called Jackpot Dining. I bought a massive braised beef hot pot and basically dove straight into it. Good stuff.

Our final day in Brisbane, we decided to get out of the city for a while. We decided on a relatively nearby park called Riverside Rocks. We shared some beers, looked and listened to the river and Petey played some songs to it on his mandolin. I recommend finding nature in the midst of a tour schedule to all travelling musicians, cleanses the soul and all that.

I was curious to know the Turrbal name for the Brisbane River. Google offered me no insight into the traditional name of this big bendy body of water so we decided to listen closer and see if it would tell us it’s name. Pretty sure it told us it’s name is Big Noisey Bug River.

We were drinking ‘The Lucky Irishman’, a dreamy combination of Jameson and Bailey’s. The idea might make your guts churn but it’s seriously amazing. We got merrier and merrier, louder and louder and donned our heads with silly hats. Bloody good times for sure.

Dave started shredding drum solos around 1am and surprise surprise a policeman turned up and told us to keep it down. We happily obliged and he even stayed for a cup of tea and asked if we could play him some of our songs. We politely declined his request as we didn’t want anymore of his colleagues coming over, party time was over.