David Liebe Hart Band Tour Diary: Part Two

It's been an insane week and a half since my first tour diary, and as I write this, David Liebe Hart and Adam Papagan are sitting at Perth domestic airport waiting to board a flight connecting them to LA. It's sad to see them go, but looking back over the past couple of weeks, it's been awesome, and I can take solace in the fact that when David gets home he'll be working on season 3 of Check It Out! with John C Reilly. I've no doubt forgotten a million things, but below is a pretty decent attempt to piece together all of the chaos.

My last update was written from the depths of Wollongong before our show there, and shortly after I submitted it, the gig got cancelled. The small beach town was deserted due to the NRL Grand Final, and when no one was there at 8.30pm, we decided to pack up and head back to Sydney with The Stiffys and Ten Thousand Free Men & Their Families (aka Tom Gilmore).

Life lessons in a carpark.

We packed the car, grabbed a carton for the ride home and then a small pack of fans wandered into the carpark. David spent a solid hour selling merch from the back of the van, taking photos (for a small donation – he kept complaining about the cost of living), and signing CDs. He has a dedicated following – as proven by the Kickstarter pledge he ran last year which raised $10,000 towards recording his debut punk record.

The carpark fans stood in awe as David handed out life lessons in the carpark that, despite the occasional mention of alien races, made a surprising amount of sense. Maybe David Liebe Hart is more switched on than he lets on?

We thought that until the next day, after spending almost all day riding trains, he fell asleep on a Sydney train only to wake up three hours out of the city in the Blue Mountains. He had to catch a bus home and got back to their Kings Cross hotel around 3am. He told us they sat a fat woman and her three kids next to him on the bus. They started calling him daddy and one bit him. So Monday was spent riding trains, can you guess what he did on Tuesday? He rode trains and then went to a train museum.

We also went to a food court in China Town where our tour manager and all-round awesome dude, Ben Neilson, purchased him dinner. David had a small ration of leftovers on his plate which he held up to Adam and said, “How much you gonna hook me up?” He sold his uneaten rice to Adam for $2, and then made Drew from Totally Unicorn buy him an ice-cream.

It wasn't until Thursday did we actually do anything noteworthy when we flew to Melbourne. When we checked David and Adam out of the Kings Cross hotel, reception presented a phone bill worth $160. I guess calling interstate hobby shops and churches is what he spent most of his time doing.

Our flight was rescheduled to late afternoon and got delayed a bunch of times, so we headed over to Bondi Beach to kill sometime, where David had a nap on a bench and then conversed with a woman breastfeeding. It was awkward.

The Bondi adventure.

It was in Melbourne that we really felt like rockstars - we received free Lord Of The Fries for lunch and a free dinner at Northcote Social Club the day of the sold-out Melbourne show. The Stiffys discussed everything they'd learnt about aliens onstage and mispronounced the name of the Korindians, to which David shock his head in disgust from behind the merch desk.

Lambadog serenades Melbourne.

I asked him about it the next day and he said he didn't like the guy from The Stiffys who kept singing, “Fuck you, David Liebe Hart”. At the end of their set The Stiffys sung, “Thank you, David Liebe Hart” over and over again, which he misheard. At least he knows who they are, I'm pretty sure he doesn't even know Tom Gilmore exists.

See you soon, Adelaide.

So Tom plays chiptune, which involves him plugging a Gameboy into the PA and screaming over music he has programmed into it – it's great, and he's the best guy ever. At the Adelaide show the following night, he had one song left in his set and accidently deleted all of the content off his Gameboy, going out in style.

Adelaide was great, but at the end of the show, some 50-year-old guy with a mullet and Iron Maiden tee came up to me and said he loved the band, but our frontman was a “turkey”. He'd obviously never seen or heard of David before.

Because Ben had somewhat of a cough on tour, David forced him to buy hand sanitizer, which was distributed around the van. In Melbourne, every time one of us coughed at night – it didn't matter what time, sometimes he even ventured there at 4am – he'd go to the bathroom to wash his hands. Adam told us that David rubs hand sanitizer into his baldhead from time to time. I guess you can never be too careful.

When you wake up and have to put on dirty socks, you know the tour's almost over. We packed our bags in Adelaide, said goodbye to Ben and Drew and boarded a plane to Perth for the final show of the tour. David swapped seats with Adam so he had the window and could keep an eye out for unidentified flying objects. He didn't see any.

On all flights, he loads up his Discman with his own music and listens to it the whole time. When he was asked to turn it off for landing, he unintentionally yelled with headphones on, “I'LL TURN IT OFF IN A MINUTE, I NEED TO PRAY!”

Kings Park selfies.

I didn't think I would be saying this, but Perth was the best show of the tour. There was a huge line to meet David at the merch desk, and after the show, The Stiffys went up to David and asked if he could draw them to commemorate the tour. He drew them in their sailor outfits... and then charged them $10. He drives a hard bargain.

A hard bargain.

After the last show of the tour, David and Adam had a few days to chill in Perth. On Monday, we showed Adam around town, while David rode the trains and spent some of his tour earnings on model trains. He actually got a sweet deal - $600 worth of trains for only $200. You can't argue with that. Tuesday we spent all day with them, driving around town, showing them around, and when we dropped them back to hotel, because I wouldn't go to his comedy show that night in Fremantle, David said, “I'm very disappointed in you, Daniel.” And he meant it. David Liebe Hart is always tired, hungry and disappointed, but that's why we love him.

The crew.

Written by Daniel Cribb.