Flip Grater 'Be All And End All' Tour Diary 2008

25th August 2008 - c/o www.nzmusician.co.nz

Flip Grater has finished her New Zealand Tour, 'The be All And End All' album release tour. Read the full review/tour diary:

Tour Diary - Vol 1
Does it count as being on tour when you're playing in your own town? Anyway, I guess we kicked off the tour this weekend at the Harbour Light theatre in Lyttelton (Christchurch's Port town).

The Harbour Light is a fantastic old movie theatre with a cabaret style interior of tables and chairs with images of retro movie stars painted on the walls. The owners are helpful, charming and look after you well but they don't have a PA, so the band and I met with Rob Mayes, our sound guy for the night and spent some time hauling gear out of vans into the venue.

Christchurch was doing it's winter thing - drizzling icicles and blowing a wind that felt like 1000 freezers opening into your face so we moved the gear as fast as we possibly could. An hour later, all was set up and ready for checking. My band started line-checking without me and after waiting for another 20 minutes, started yelling for me to stop 'trying to get pretty' and join them for a sound check. I would like to point out that getting my make up done before gigs is not something I usually do, but when my friend from Style Council offered, I couldn't resist the temptation of feeling like a princess/rockstar/tv host/model/whoever else gets their make up done for them regularly.

The early show was advertised in several places as starting at different times so our first audience members arrived at 7.30pm! I'd never seen anything like that before and was shocked to the point of annoyance since I had intended to chill out and have some dinner at this point. However, they patiently waiting while people trickled in and by 8.40pm we had a full house so decided to begin.

Tim Chesney (pictured), my bass player and touring support act broke out his fantastic solo wailing while I stood at the back of the seated crowd whooping and singing along like a crazed fan. Then it was time for us to go on. After a few solo numbers, I invited the band on stage to excited applause from the crowd. We played a fun set, helped along by Ballantyne 12 year old scotch (for the nerves).

I know it's not classy to be drinking on stage and even less classy to ask the audience to fetch you another whiskey when you've run out but I've never been one to let class get in the way of my drinking when I'm nervous. When asked, two men quickly approached the bar and after a short debate, decided to go halves on the drink for me, much to the amusement of the rest of the audience and myself.

A great start to the album release tour all and all. Can't wait to get on the road this week. It's going to be quite a different challenge being in a van with a bunch of smelly boys rather than alone in my Lada like my previous tours.. I'm sure it'll be a lot of fun though. I'll let you know... :)

South Island... Tour Diary - Vol 2 

Whose idea was it to do a tour during a massive storm??! Leaving Christchurch towards the south, we were buffeted by wind and rain from all directions. Parked flashing signs pointed us on various detours to avoid flooding and slips and driving into Dunedin City, it only got worse. We raced into town with just enough time for me to run up 3 flights of stairs (wearing gumboots) and race into a live interview on Dunedin's local tv news. Then we headed for Radio One for a fun chat and performance with Tim on the drive show.

Circadian Rhythm is a small vegetarian cafe on St Andrews St. The owner, Sue is a super-nice woman with a big smile and generous heart. She immediately sat us down with some hot curries and wine upon our arrival at the venue. On Friday nights they have live jazz until 8pm so we were able to sit down and warm up to a jazz soundtrack. The weather kept some punters away from the show - obviously wrapped up in front of fireplaces (where I would have been had I not been playing!), but the intimate crowd were lovely and we had a fun show and made friends with a few audience members afterwards.

The next morning we got up early and traveled south. None of us had ever driven the route from Dunedin to Wanaka so we were all pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be STUNNING. One minute the scenery was lush green with several storm-created fields-of-wet-dreams, the next, rugged southern man terrain.
We were stopped by large groups of sheep, glared at by farmers in leather hats and refused service in Alexander when I foolishly ordered something that wasn't on the menu. Ahh the south!

Wanaka welcomed us with blue sky - something none of the band had seen in over a week. We were so excited we decided to have lunch outdoors in a courtyard to soak up some Vitamin D.

Cinema Paradiso is the most fantastic venue. If someone asked me what my perfect room would look like, I'd probably describe it as having tiered couches. I didn't know this room actually existed until I walked into our venue for the night - an old cinema with rows of couches, cushions and an old VW for front-seat movie watching!
After initial confusion over the sound check time, all went well and we were able to have a couple of hours off while movies screened. The band went separate ways while I met up with Emma Rankin - the 2nd place getter at this year's Wanaka finals of Smokefree Rockquest. As part of the Rockquest band partnering scheme, Emma and I were to meet up for a chat about music and then she was to open the show at Paradiso.

She played 3 fantastic songs to huge applause and then we had one other local support act play a short set - Benjamin Eastwood. Benjamin plays slow, moody and at times slightly funky ballads. After Ben finished, my touring support act, Tim Chesney took the stage for another short set. Well warmed up, the audience then tucked into some freshly baked cookies and beer, prepared by Paradiso's owner, Calum, while we played our set.

After a great night, we spent longer than we should have trying desperately to win a game that consisted of balancing a coin on a floating lemon (a crafty way of getting tips for Paradiso staff) and wandered off into the night to avoid raucous post-Kora-show drunks and find a nice empty bar to wind down in. We found the perfect one - complete with board games. We spent the remainder of the night having vicious games of connect four.

12 hours to Wellington... Tour Diary Vol 3

The collective groans of my band rang out as we headed out of Christchurch at 4.30am on Friday morning. It was fair enough - no-one should be awake at that time unless they are arriving home from a good night out. We drove through the dark and were in Kaikoura too early to find coffee. Catching the ferry is always a rush and we weren't sure whether there would be detours and delays due to the storms that had raged through the previous week so we rushed all the way to the terminal in Picton. When we got to the ticket office, however, we discovered that we were booked on the wrong ferry sailing and a full boat meant that we couldn't sail earlier. Picton is a cute town but 4 hours later, we were all losing our minds having exhausted all possible rainy-day Picton activities - including perusing the local music shop, Music World, only to find nothing but a handful of discounted gems such as A Reggae Christmas.

Finally aboard the ferry to Wellington, Tim and I downed as many sea-sickness pills as we could and hunkered in a corner waiting for the other side of the Cook Strait. As all poor musicians do, we had arranged to perform on the ferry in exchange for our fare, so we set up our gear sheepishly and sang a few tunes to an apathetic audience. Our competition for attention was Oprah and a sports channel with men in speedos on the 2 TVs in the bar.
Luckily, the crossing was reasonably smooth and we got to Wellington in one piece - albeit 12 hours after leaving Christchurch!

Because we were late into our destination, we then had a crazy couple of hours racing from interview to interview before meeting at the venue for sound check. When we arrived at Happy we were told that we were double-booked with a book launch for a South-American sex manual so we only had 20 minutes to load in and sound check. After which, I decided I needed some time out and took to a bar stool at Hawthorne Lounge for recovery. Two whiskeys later and a little quiet time, and I was ready to go back and play the show.
Wellington has always shown me a lot of support and this tour was no exception. A warm and interactive crowd made for a super fun gig - enough to make up for our day from hell.

Nice-Leigh Does It...

The next day, after 2 hours sleep, we returned to Winston the van for our Northward journey. I am happy to report that traveling 10 1/2 hours in a van with this particular bunch of boys isn't too awful. I must admit to having some concerns after a couple of short journeys in Blink's famous feet-smelling tour van but I've been pleasantly surprised by their hygeine levels throughout the tour.
We reached Leigh Sawmill Cafe by late afternoon and received a warm and generous welcome from the staff that included coffee, more pizza than we could handle and some of Leigh's famous beer. Just the medicine for a long drive!

A couple of games of pool and a bunk-room jam later, and we were ready to go on stage. Tim played a great opening set and by the time the rest of us ventured onto the stage, the large work party had finished their dinners and were starting on their sixth cocktail. We folked as loudly as we could but the more attentive crowd members had to patiently wait for the boozey group to leave before hearing any of our songs. Luckily, they did leave half way through the set. This just made room for the hen's party to take over the bar. Clucking loudly, they swilled champagne and started dancing on tables. This was a first for me! Then the no.1 hen herself jumped up on stage and demanded we play something for her to sing to. After an awkwardly long discussion about the fact that we are not a covers band, Kris started playing Not Given Lightly on his guitar and was quickly joined by the rest of the band guessing their way through the song until the bridge - when everyone stopped abruptly, not knowing any more chords.
Satisfied, mother hen left the stage returned to the dance floor to join her group in super-slow disco dancing to our alt-country numbers.
After the gig, the evening deteriorated further with piano sing-a-longs and tequila liquor shots into the wee hours.

The Land Of Aucks.. Tour Diary Final Installment:

While my band members spent their week drinking beer and catching up with their Auckland-based friends, I spent the week following around my wonderful publicist, Lauren Clough to interview after interview. 5 days of talking about yourself is enough to drive anyone to drink - which is exactly what I did half way through the week. With the help of whiskey, tequila and vodka combinations and the company of the 'gentlemen' from Sportscafe, I managed to completely poison my body and force a day off from the promo schedule. "I'll never drink again" was the motto from there on in.

The Auckland show was at Whammy Bar, A cleverly titled basement venue in St Kevins Arcade. Soundcheck went well although seeing the venue with daytime light deterred any of us from wanting to hang around before the show, let alone use the bathrooms or in fact touch anything or sit anywhere.

The staff were lovely though. I'd met the sound guy Rohan at The Wine Cellar a couple of times and was pleased to find out that not only is he a nice guy, he is also a great soundperson and gave us possibly the best sound of the tour - which must be difficult in a concrete box like Whammy.
As a result, we had a great gig and really enjoyed ourselves - dispite the classic Auckland audience of crossed-armed, scowling people that clap lightly and rarely 'whoop' but then give generous compliments when you come off stage sheepishly expecting people to abuse you for ruining their night.
It turned out the crowd were lovely - we just couldn't tell while playing.

The next day had us rising early to travel south. We had heard reports of Desert Road being closed and decided to just hope for the best. We stopped in Hamilton, which caused loud objections and jokes from all Van passengers. There, we met a lovely Radio Host called Greg and then after my final tour interview, continued on our journey towards Greytown.

Luckily, Desert Road turned out to be open. Unfortunately, the beauty of the place forced the band to stop and exit the van for photos, resulting in Tim dropping and losing his mobile phone.
It was starting to get dark when we made a turn off from the main highway to follow the detailed directions printed out from Wises.co.nz. As we continued down smaller and smaller roads, weaving through nowhere and struggling more and more with reading road signs, the band started to question the wisdom of blinding following my plan of 'stick to the wises directions because it says it's the shortest route.'
An hour later, we were lost.

At this point, we were running late for setting up in our Greytown venue, Cuckoo and it had started to pour with rain. When the lightening strikes started, we began making jokes about how this all seemed like the start of a horror movie in which someone loses their phone, everyone else's run our of battery power, we get lost in a storm and end up on a road then only leads to a house at the top of a hill that happens to house a psycho-killer that wears a hat and bloodstained gumboots. These jokes got more and more detailed until we were half-laughing, half-quietly-terrified. Eventually we found our way back to Highway 2 and drove on to Greytown.
We arrived in the dark but the rain had eased to a drizzle while we loaded into Cuckoo.
Cuckoo is a fantastic restaurant with the best pizza in NZ and wonderful hosts, Chelsea and Tim.

I had tried to explain to the band that the space inside is tiny and there wouldn't be room to set up the entire band but they were still surprised to see that there was only room for a mic stand, a amp and me, as long as I didn't want to move around or step backwards! Chelsea had designed a stage for me by hanging beautiful fabrics in the corner of the room. The gig was the perfect way to wrap up the tour. We had a wonderful time playing to a generous audience who were interactive, cheeky and appreciative. We even tried a few band numbers by squeezing the boys into spaces around the room and having them play guitar, mandolin and banjo play acoustically.

All and all a fantastic tour. The band were great to play and travel with and we had a great time playing great shows in great spots. Thanks to everyone who supported the tour in any way.

Next stop - Europe. Will let you know how I go over there.

c /o www.nzmusician.co.nz