This week we’re off to Portugal for a couple of shows… old style, fly-in, fly-out… gonna be great… a Lisbon gig at Music Box and a Porto festie… have a look at the gig page for details… but first…

Aaah, the UK… it is totally weird to be watching the Channel 4 News before going onstage in Bath… scraping off the Christmas rust, and getting the gang back together for a brief UK runaround before the big euro run in April… no giant touring bus for us on this run – shame – back to basics with splitters… kinda enjoyed it actually… Bath was really magical – and a really decent gig considering we were all pretty rusty… it was one of those where we all played individually, y’know, it takes a few gigs to gel back to together – which I reckon we had done, ironically enough, by the final gig in Birmingham, after a fine nosh up at Café Soy (one of our Tour Haunts – Birmingham’s version of Ericka’s Eck in Hamburg… giant portions of real Vietnamese food literally underneath the venue – such a find!)… we were kinda all eyes on the London play on this run – KOKO – beautiful sold out venue – I mean – I think the promoter may have sold a few more hundred than capacity – it was crammed in there… oh yeah – and it was being filmed, recorded and scrutinised and judged at every angle… so we burrowed down and tried to forget all that and just play our hearts out for the 1400 people who had graced us with their presence on a Friday night in Camden…

Fingers crossed that we sounded good and filmed good… to be honest we’ve never really been big on visual assets… too busy dealing with musical assets, I mean, we are the band after all… so it was pretty hard to ignore all the wheels turning all around us… with these big gigs, when we come off, I can remember virtually nothing but kinda brushstrokes, or big memories kinda burned in… but not details – I remember thinking Blueberry was killer, and Pretty Little Thing sounded killer (by then I’m kinda chillin’ so I can kinda soak it up a little) and peeps have told me that Perfect Darkness was moody and Warm Shadow was cool – but – until we hear it we’ll never know – and in a way, I kinda prefer not knowing… the only people that will truly remember the gig for what it is, is the audience… and there is something special about that… something that is never captured in a recording… the air, the vibe, the moments…

So, thanks UK – for reminding us how hard, and so awesome, touring our home country can be….

Sorry we had to pull down the In Bloom cover from the Soundcloud – apparently it was Copyright Infringement (how nineties!)… we’ll post something else in it’s place asap… and I guess you can already (cough! ahem!) find it on YouTube… after Portugal I’m off to the USA for a while producing, writing, lounging and kinda doing the rock star thing – I say kinda – I’ll be locked in an airtight windowless room for most of it working my ass off, and the only lounging I will be doing is in the lobby of the recording studio unless I can find a 24 hour bar within walking distance of my hotel (one of the finest things about staying in NYC!)… but then – Europe again in April – including this monster royal orchestra gig in Amsterdam on Queens Night – we’ve never finished a Fink gig with a 120-piece orchestra by playing the Dutch national anthem… it’s crossed our mind a few times – but this will definitely be a first…

Fin