Gold Fields Tour Diary: Part One

Week 1: Perth

We flew into Perth a day before the show at Metropolis Fremantle. We had a whole day of pre-production with our lighting guy Matt and our sound guy Chad. We've added on quite a few things to show for this tour, so we're loving that it's getting started.

Seeing as New Zealand is actually closer to where we live than Perth, we had to hire the majority of our gear in Perth. For those who haven't seen us live, we have a lot of shit on stage, including two drum kits. When we arrived to pick up the hire gear, we realised that the gear was about the capacity of our whole entire van, and we didn't have a trailer. We made two trips to get all the gear to the pre-production rehearsal.

After rehearsal, we realised making two round trips everywhere we needed to go was going to be a right fuck around, so we put our Tetris skills to the test and jam packed every last piece of gear and crew member into the van. Gear was to the ceiling, no one could even see the person sitting next to each other. It was actually ridiculous.

A simple game of Tetris.

The next day we made the trip to Fremantle. We arrived at the Metropolis and seeing as we've never played this area before, the size of the venue made us a little nervous. It was massive, and was probably one of the coolest productions we've ever played.

Night came and after about 1 hour of horrible dub step by the resident disc spinner, Sun City DJ's saved the day with some smooth electronic jams and people started to come into the venue. Phebe Starr hit the stage afterward with the "stripped back" version of her set. It was really cool, and her keyboardist dude Michael looks like Toro Y Moi, except he's the shyest dude ever and shreds on keys like a mad man. I think I really like him. And her.

We nearly flooded the whole entire band room because of dodgy shower drainage. A guy came and tried to mop everything up and told us this isn't the worst thing he has done, he once had to, "walk through a packed club with a shit in a glass of spirits". That's nice.

Soundcheck before showtime.

We played pretty close to midnight and the crowd was really great. It was our first time playing some of the tracks (Closest I Could Get and Thunder). It's finally cool to see people reacting to songs now that we have an album out. The show was fun but we still felt we we're dusting off some 'first show cobwebs'. Our singer Mark's best friend lives in Perth and came to the show, so we all woke up in the morning with pretty sore heads.

The next night was Perth city. The Superjesus were playing next door in the venue connected to Capitol (Amplifier Bar). I used to love the Superjesus and thought Sarah McLeod was a babe. I think she still is. As soon as it got late at the venue, it was like I'd gone back in time five years to my Schoolies week on the Gold Coast. Scantily clad teens flooded the whole entry to the venue. And really muscly dudes that made me feel like I was going to get beaten up. I'm not sure how to feel about you, Perth nightlife. But the show was good, and we got our full rider, which apparently now includes sultana and walnut sandwiches?

Next week: Canberra, Sydney and the River Sessions Music Festival.

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Written by Ryan D'Sylva.