Guinness, Gas and The Giants Causeway

Didn’t get much sleep last night! Me and Chris Tavener were sharing a double and kept touching feet and waking up sharply all night. We started our day with a little lie in and helped ourselves to the AirBnb host’s kind offer of free reign on any of the cereal downstairs. Poor guy, we raided the place. Doubt that will be on the agenda for guests much longer, if you’re staying in a huge triple room in Belfast in the future and wonder why breakfast wasn’t a thing there anymore, sorry; we ruined the fun for everyone.

We had half a day to do whatever we wanted to do around Belfast before the gig tonight and it would seem what we wanted to do most of all was hit the North coast and check out The Giants Causeway. Chris drove us up and I was on the back (sleeper) seat for the journey that took a little over an hour. The weather got progressively wetter while we were at the Causeway but it was a truly spectacular place. The rocks were crazy. When I was a kid I used to love running across rocks at the beach and navigating my way through the best route. Therefore, I bloody loved Giants Causeway, I was like a kid in a candy shop. 10/10. Unfortunately I was stricken by hiccups on the walk back which reduced me to relative silence with the guys apart from the occasional hiccup!

I then drove us south to a place called The Dark Hedges, which is a famous film location used in Game Of Thrones. It’s basically a road lined by really impressive trees. We had a laugh and a good look round but to be honest; I was a little bit underwhelmed! It actually looks cooler on the pics Brendan snapped of it than I think it actually looked. We headed back and went to the accompanying restaurant. We stumbled across an Iron Throne by the entrance that seemed to have been set up for a wedding that they were setting the venue up for. We couldn’t miss this opportunity and ran in quickly to grab a couple of snaps before having a great lunch meal upstairs having a Ciabatta each and Scones with coffee. I drove us back to Belfast where we showered and got ready for the night’s show. By this point we were itching to go, we were done being tourists. It was now time to do what we came here to do!

 

Our gig was at The Sunflower Club in Belfast. It’s a reasonably well renowned venue for live music. We were playing as featured artists at an open mic night which is always a bit of an interesting gig as you have no idea what you’re going to get. We had a quick rest and recoup before hitting the road with what must be Belfast’s friendliest taxi driver. He talked our heads off once he realised we were musicians about all the famous people he’d encountered over the years of driving and acting. He asked about our music so we gave him a tour flyer at the end of our journey and went to check out the venue.

I’ve always struggled with the curse of the hiccups, and it hit pretty hard when before we went to a gig, I tweeted asking for remedies and my girlfriend texted me telling me to drink water upside down; it took me a couple of gos to work out how to do this, my initial thought was to lie on my back and try and drink water like that; yep. Long day. It basically resulted in me getting very very wet very quickly. Finally with her help I found the solution and incase anyone out there is wondering how to cure hiccups, have a swig of water, hold it in your mouth, lean forward so you’re upside down and your head is between your knees, then swallow; Sorts you right out. Been doing it periodically throughout the day since after having nightmares of hiccuping mid song on stage.

The Sunflower Club was a small little venue with a dedicated music space upstairs and a large seated area out back for drinks and smokers. We rocked up and said hi to our host for the evening Paddy and got our recording gear set up. We’re attempting to record as many of the gigs off this tour as possible so needed a bit of set up time. The open mic was a good laugh with a couple of stand out acts. Nicholas Johnson was an American singer who now lives in Milan who was also over in Ireland touring and his high energy, harmonica and guitar driven tunes were great to get the blood pumping. Chris played a strong set and I played pretty well. On this tour I’ve only taken one guitar out with me and therefore tailor my sets to minimise tuning changes, so therefore I played all the tunes in my  repertoire in my Celtic power chord tuning – (CGDDGD), It went down well and everyone that stayed loved it; unfortunately as I was headlining the night it was basically 11.30pm by the time I was on stage on a Monday so most people had left. Those who stayed enjoyed it though; It was a pretty quiet affair . We had a nice time and got some signatures on our tour poster from members of the audience and Paddy and Lee (another bar owner who was in attendance) said they’d love to have us play again if we’re ever in Belfast.

Lee and Nicholas were heading to Lee’s bar down the road for a quiet pint before calling it a night, and having just come off stage we weren’t in the mood to go back home just yet. We wandered through the streets to the bar and Lee pointed out to us where the nearest McDonalds was (we hadn’t eaten since lunch and it was now 12.30am) saying that “that’s the place to go if you want to get murdered.” We had a laugh at the bar and shared tour stories with Nicholas who told us how he’d ended up on a bender the week before with members of Jet and The Dandy Warhols a couple of weeks ago. He told us about his hometown of Ohio and how he now lives in Milan. This was also our first taste of proper Irish Guinness and Lee had promised us that this was the place to go for Belfast’s finest Guinness. This has obviously been a major talking point on tour. I don’t drink Guinness back home, I drink pretty regularly but rarely very much and drinks of choice are Sol, Big Wave and Southern Comfort, but by god, the Irish Guinness is lush. I mean it’s still Guinness but it’s a bloody massive step up. We parted ways after having a good laugh with the guys saying we’d hit up Lee next time we’re in Belfast as he’d offered us a place to crash and a potential gig on the horizon and said farewell to Nicolas with him saying that if we were ever interested in playing in Milan to hit him up, in his words “They would love your shit out there.” – I’m very tempted to take him up on it!

We then went to McDonalds, evaded murder and instead settled for the slow death of two plain double cheeseburgers. It was 2am on a Monday meaning the only people in McDonalds were (and excuse the prejudice here) students and smack heads. We joked around with a couple of students who were asking about the guitars and Brendan forced some flyers on them, then grabbed an Uber. Headed home and hit the hay.

All in all, the first gig was… ok. Nothing special. It was a nice night and we met some lovely people who I’ll hopefully see next time I’m around. The sound in the venue was good and it was a nice show for practice. To quote the wise words of Nicholas Johnson mulling over a pint of ‘Belfasts finest Guinness’ after we’d shared stories for 40 minutes; “I live for this shit, it’s the experiences and the people rather than the shows that makes me love touring. It’s amazing.”