Chumbawamba Uk Tour Diary - March 2008

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

Hebden Bridge Well if you're going to debut half a dozen tracks from your new album all at once, then Hebden Bridge Trades Club isn't a bad place to do it. The audience in the Totnes of the North were a) numerous b) in a good mood and c) on our side. Together we rode the emotional rollercoaster of the new songs, the (fewer than expected) lyrical cock-ups and the first night unintentional vibrato. So, to all of you who were there, thank you!

St Albans, Norwich...(Jude) Norwich - not the saucy acronym, the town. Arts Centre to be precise. Onstage in 45 minutes. Probably ought to be mentally preparing for tonight's onsluaght. St Albans was fabulous - a lovely gig. About as different from Hebden Bridge as it gets. Offstage before our onstage Hebden Bridge time. Stayed in a lovely ramashckle old pub with serious Real Ale people much in evidence. We had a jar or two for politeness' sake. A morning's pottering, managed to take in the cathedral and buy a pair of funky ankle boots, then onto Norwich where we were met by a brief flurry of snowfall. It's wiild out east, you know. Tonight we are

in

a

converted

church

with

beautiful

swooshy

acoustics to cover the words we still haven't learnt. Okay, time to apply eyeshadow now. Will try and persuade Boff

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

to write something later.

St Albans, Norwich...(Boff) St Albans... again, sort of. So anyway we get there and me and Phil spend twenty minutes looking for the Arts Centre. Phil insists on asking directions from every second person, bounding up to them like an over-enthusiastic kangaroo and licking their faces. It's in the second floor of the shopping centre, of course. Just past the TK Max. Cosy as your grandma's armchair, too, it is. Proper theatre set-up: backstage mirrors and ironing board (rock’n’roll venues don't have ironing boards), "just set up your merchandise stall on top of the grand piano love." And a very good gig it is too, though in these surroundings I should call it a show rather than a gig. "Two minutes Mr Smith!" There's some incredibly polite heckling from the lone scientist in the audience – he musters up a grunt when we roll into a version of the Charles Darwin singalong 'Charlie' – and a smattering of forgotten lyrics along the way, before we head to the Lower Red Lion, where the bar stays open long enough for it to resemble the scene in 'Withnail and I' where our heroes attempt to buy a dead fish from the poacher. We're not from London, indeed. St Albans is revealed next morning to be quainter than quaint, huge church full of stone martyrs and a

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

demonstration of original Roman under-floor heating in the park. Jude ignores this and runs off to buy some crazy weird shoes (yes, she's already told you about the crazy shoes) that clatter along corridors and announce her arrival. And so to Norwich!

Frome When in Frome… what at first appears quaint and picturesque turns out to be the setting for a low-budget village melodrama, with a cast of idiots running rings around the funny outsiders from the North. Cobbled streets, model shops and one café (shut), gangs of wellbrought-up

youths

wheeling

around

on

bmx

and

skateboards, filling up every corner of the big car park which acts as the town's centre. The show is in a barn of a place which somehow is warmed up and cosied by the time we play. People don't heckle, they just talk loudly and cackle at mobile phone games. Strange gig, really. We're getting the hang of all the new songs and most of us can now play without a paper pyramid of lyrics and notes at our feet, and Jude's new trumpet looks set to weather the storm, beautiful as it is. Myself, I'm enjoying singing 'I Wish That They'd Sack Me', it's better live than on the album and has more poignancy what with realizing that yes, this is what we do

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

for a living, and on a cold Tuesday in Frome you can't help acknowledging that everyone in the audience will be up at 7 or 8 on Wednesday to go to work. 'Charlie' is a bit of a rouser live, too; who imagined you could sing a little stomper about a scientist with a big beard. Strange pockets of audience aside, the battle is eventually won and it's great to think that sometimes we have to work hard to make this Chumbawamba thing work, it's not just going through the motions. So back to the Travelodge for the daily routine of orgy/drunkenness/room-trashing, before collapsing in a heap in a pool of my own vomit. Or, in fact, back to the Travelodge for a good night's sleep. Norwich (again) Did we miss out Norwich? Oh how rude. Proper arts centre, there seems to be a rule of thumb which says that Arts centres must be situated in converted churches. This is not a bad use of old churches that nobody goes to anymore, if you ask me. You get all the architectural beauty, the cascading light and lovely weathered stone, without the drafty old pews and a balding bloke at the front droning on about Psalms and Good Works. This particular arts centre ex-church has a gravestone slab making up part of the floor in the concert room. Let's hope we woke the bugger up. Great audience, great gig, we

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

have a good chat with everybody from the stage (and throw a few songs in too). I kick over Jude's new trumpet by mistake and dip my own tie in my drink by accident. Rock n Roll! Chat with some local music students before the gig, realising that we've been going as a band since before they were born. Eek. Since we're obviously old and wise they bring us a bottle of wine and some biscuits, fantastic, if everyone in the audience brought us wine and biscuits we'd be as drunk and fat as all those old gits in the House of Lords by the end of this tour. As I say, great audience and great gig. And an ensemble mass singsong of eBay which was almost entirely in tune; with harmony parts too... what else can I add other than Nickers Off Ready When I Come Home? Winchester An argument that pops up with increasing regularity in this band is about our contribution to global warming. There are different opinions about what we can or should do about it, flying around to play gigs and driving up and down motorways – Lou's pretty strict on when and where we should play concerts which involve taking planes, I'm of the opinion that what we do (especially since what we're trying to do contributes to an understanding of politics/war/inequality etc) warrants us gathering up our stuff

and

wherever.

jetting

off

to

Canada/Russia/Germany

or

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

I'm saying this because we were reading in the paper this morning about Prince Charles' current 11-day cruise which will apparently leave a carbon footprint equivalent to 260 Transatlantic flights. I reckon that in a sense we 're being duped, 'we' being this loose but massive community of people who want to do something about war, inequality, ecology etc. duped into thinking that the focus of the global

warming

problem

is

ourselves,

not

the

multinationals and governments and armies. I say duped because I reckon the Prince Charles cruise farce is replayed around the country (and the world) all the time without us recognising it – why do I make the effort to switch off the water tap while brushing my teeth when I know that the British Army is flying bombers, jets and helicopters around the world in order to continue the charade of a 'war against terrorism'? What's the point of Chumbawamba discussing the additional carbon footprint of using a separate vehicle for a gig when government ministers, rock stars and other assorted wealthy idiots live lifestyles of absolute waste? And why is the focus on working class people going on holiday to Spain as opposed to the American Air Force flying prisoners around the world to interrogate and torture them?…and this is what I'm thinking as we pull up in the quaint and bustling cathedral city of Winchester.

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

The main shopping centre is much the same as shopping centres across the country. On the look-out for blank CD's to make a compilation of music for the gigs (that's our selection you listen to when you get to the gig) I head to HMV and end up with DVD's of West Side Story and the Joe Strummer film, Series 2 of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads, Lindsay Anderson's 'If', and a pack of blank CD's which my laptop refuses to recognize. Ha! Serves me right. The gig is in a place called The Tower, which, despite a campaign to keep it open, is closing down soon. Pity. Because it's a lovely place where the workers are brilliant, the gig room is great and the audience friendly and warm. I don't mean warm to the touch; I don't touch them. That would be going too far. Well, Jude says it is anyway.* But after the strangeness of the Frome show this is just what we wanted. So we stick a couple more songs in, not least because the bloke with the Mohican and the New Model Army shirt was there at Frome and we don't want him getting bored, poor lad. See, if you get to more than one show we'll crank out all the songs we don't really know how to play so as not to appear repetitive. Finishing with 'Her Majesty' is apt right now, not only because of the Charles stuff mentioned above but also because of Prince Harry's sudden (yet so-well prepared and PR'd) deification. Harry For King! Screams the Mail. Hmmm. Instead of writing this I should be trying to write a new verse for the

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

song to give the tough, heroic and tousle-haired Harry a moment in the spotlight. As if 17 pages in one edition of The Sun wasn't enough. Another

Travelodge

tonight,

this

time

on

a

dual

carriageway. Shouldn't we be in Winchester partying the night away with fellow rock stars and a gang of people we've picked up along the way? That must have been a previous life. Instead I finish the book (I say 'the book' because it's a book we're all reading and passing on) and fall asleep listening to Rachel Unthank on an iPod. *After the show tonight, me and Jude are interviewed for Rock n Reel magazine. The interviewer politely adds at the end of our talk that "…well, that was a nice chat, and Jude – you're not as scary as I thought you might be after all." It's the new boots, obviously.

Swansea Pick me up and transport me back in time to a good oldfashioned rock venue, where everything is painted black and is covered in a thin patina of stickiness. We have to take care not to stand still for too long in one spot. Luckily, it's cold enough to see your breath so we're all doing a sort of weird hopping dance with our coats on. Touring is nothing if not diverse - one night you're in an Arts Centre

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

with an audience so well-behaved you can hear a pin drop, and the next you're in rock'n'roll land battling against the chat from the bar. Tonight's is a one-set affair so everything's in a different order, which keeps us on our toes. As does the temperature. Lou keeps trying to leave the heater on in the dressing room, but self-appointed Safety Officer Phil is having none of it. It's not the first dressing room of the tour with drawings of male genitalia on the walls (that was Frome) but it is an increasingly rare occurence on our travels these days. The people from the venue are all lovely and obligingly put tables and chairs out for us and remove the barriers at the front of the stage that keep the mosh pit at arm's length. The audience are all pretty friendly too - although you do start to wonder when someone says "Are you Alice?" and then tells you about spending 6 months up a tree in Romford. When we play Her Majesty at the end of the night, we're delighted to find out that Her Majesty is in fact coming to Swansea the very next day - to open a Leisure Centre. So very serendipitous! We're out of our B&B by nine as the van's on a meter and head off back across the border to Warwick, of which more later .... Warwick Arts Centre Warwick Arts Centre is the much-needed antidote to the Swansea show. It's a very plush theatre, everything

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

sounds

wonderful,

there's

free

internet

access

and

unlimited Fairtrade tea and coffee. And we're not afraid of sticking to any surfaces. It's also sunny, and we've been booked into the plushest hotel so far on the tour. So where's the catch ... maybe nobody will turn up and we'll be playing in a lovely plush theatre where everything sounds wonderful to an audience of twenty-five. This did happen to us not so long ago in Dublin, and it was excrutiating. Universities have changed a lot since my day, I can tell you - there are mere children driving posh cars as far as the eye can see and not a sit-down protest in sight. The Arts Centre is the part of Warwick University that is open to the public - and it is quite amazing: two theatres, a gallery, a restaurant, and a fantastic cd and dvd shop where we all spend a fortune on stuff that'll take up more precious space in the van. What with that and Alaric's Avengers Dolls, not to mention Phil's portable bar and my extra trumpet we've barely room to squeeze ourselves in. Anyway, the gig was great - plenty of people came, and clapped politely at all the right points and generally did what was expected of them in a civilised fashion. We were finished early enough to be back in our hotel in time for last orders at the bar before retiring to bed at a reasonable hour. It does get a bit bubble-like being on tour

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

despite our best efforts to keep abreast of world events. I listen to Radio 4 as much as possible (and not just for the Archers, although Friday's episode was a humdinger - Phi land I listened on his mobile phone in the dressing room. Alaric came in and thought we were excited about stuff that was happening to real people) and the quality dailies are not in short supply in the van. We even read bits out to each

other

sometimes.

But

even

so,

our

general

awareness of life outside the immediate concerns of ticket sales, hotels, distance to the next venue and the next motorway services stop just tends to shrink and that's why I've run out of stuff to say ... and it's teatime. Bury - the dilemma of the gig in striking distance of home It all goes swimmingly - lovely venue, lovely audience, including some friends to catch up with afterwards (and some people who think they’re our best mates but are actually just a little bit the worse for wear), and lovely giant-killing FA cup triumph by Barnsley before the show. What could possibly go wrong? We had discussed the issue of whether to stay in Bury or go home after the show before the tour started and opted to stay away. It’s tricky - the pull of your own bed (not to mention wives, girlfriends and children) is a strong one but sometimes is more disruptive than relaxing and breaks the

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

momentum of being on tour however rock’n’roll and clichéd that may sound. So we set off for our Travelodge secure in the knowledge we’d made a decision we were all happy with. It all started to unravel when we discovered that our rooms were actually booked for the following night at the Travelodge. Undaunted, and relieved to only be an hour away from home, we re-packed the van and set off for Leeds. Just after we’d negotiated the ridiculous slew of speed bumps that run through Tong village, the exhaust fell off. Cue Alaric heroically tying the whole thing back up with some string magically produced by Phil (he’s that sort of boy) and the van limping rather noisily home. Never a dull moment! Barnsley Playing in Barnsley the day after the football team's giantkilling exploits is like entering the Little Big Horn after Custer had been roundly thrashed. Well, sort of. All the local talk is of hangovers and sleep-ins... but not up at the gig, where the organisers make a real effort to make us welcome and Alaric can't understand a word they're saying. Thatcher is out of hospital and given the all-clear this morning, which dampens the party a little. We get letters you know when we say things like that.

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

There are some around who still refuse to listen to us on principle - the principle being that the bucket of water thrown over the Deputy Prime Minister was an act of violence. Which argument doesn't sit too well with Prescott's enthusiastic support of the murderous and bloody stupid war we're involved in right now. See, Thatcher doesn't exist as a person anymore, and to a certain extent she barely ever did since the mid-eighties. She became an icon and a symbol for ruthless dealings with

working

communities,

pig-headed

ignorance

of

poverty, a slavish support of the rich and a cruel warmonger. (Just a few of her qualities). And it's the icon that is ready to pop its clogs, not the person - the person is a frail old woman, sick and powerless. The icon however can be a very powerful thing - look at the iconic (and dead) Elvis, Jim Morrison, Princess Di etc. As Colonel Tom Parker said about Elvis after his death - "He's worth more to me now than he was when he was alive." Oh I know, we're heartless. But really, I can't stand this sanctimonious reverence for a woman who filled a decade of my life with images of war, violent coppers and unemployment. I mean, I could have spent my time listening to Wham! and Spandau Ballet! So yes, Barnsley. See, there wouldn't be any mourning going on around these parts. Lovely little theatre, great audience, Ray Hearne supported and was fantastic. Lovely bloke with

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

great songs and a real way with words. Check him out if you haven't already. Home to Leeds for a brief dip into reality before we set off again in a day or two...

Leeds, Two Days off On a tour there’s an effortless routine which sets in, a pattern of how things work, a humdrum regularity which you fill up with writing and reading and eating, but which always fits in with the prescribed daily system… breakfast, leave, drive, motorway, arrive, soundcheck, eat, gig. And inbetween, there’s all the books and laptops and dashes to the chemist and worrying about the guestlist and meeting friends and losing your scarf and re-setting the Sat Nav and dashes to the pub and watching the football and re-writing lyrics and changing the strings on your guitar and buying new boots and dashes to the fruit shop… So being at home in Leeds for a couple of days is strange and disorientating. Oh yes, back to the real world. Taking my daughter to school, watching CBBC in the morning. The real stuff of life. Not the wary, pensive theatre of showtime but the reality of queuing up at Whingate Stores with a two-litre bottle of milk and a pack of four toilet rolls. I don’t yearn for life on the road. I love it, but I don’t miss it when it’s not there. Ouch, I’m so lucky. Two days at

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

home, and then – to Wolverhampton. Hey! Wolverhampton We’ve played in Wolverhampton a million times. We love it here. The people are lovely and the gigs are always great. What can I say? My team Burnley FC had an ongoing duel with Wolverhampton Wanderers about fifteen years ago. We seemed to play each other every other week. And we met in a Wembley final, which was famously attended by about 35,000 people from Burnley and 45,000 from Wolverhampton – Wembley’s biggest attendance for some time,

including

international

matches.

And

on

the

motorway on the way down to London, stuck in traffic, the Wolves fans and the Burnley fans mingled and laughed and joked and hugged and cemented my belief that football could be about love and peace and harmony and lots of other words not normally associated with football. So tonight in Wolverhampton it’s great to play to an audience that sings along and laughs and understands what we’re on about. And being the home of Noddy Holder and Roy Wood it’s only fitting that Jude is required to show off her new (very retro-seventies) boots on stage. Phil is a little perplexed ("as it were" - that’s an in-joke) but perfectly able to adapt. Lou is happy that Azzy and Pete turned up from Wales (darlings), and Neil feels ecstatic that his new (smooth) transition from ’Unpindownable’

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

into ’On eBay’ works perfectly. OK, time for bed. Whatever time it is. See, we’re not on proper people’s time, we’re on Tour Time now. And Tour Time says – night night xPs for any British TV watchers - I forgot to mention – has anyone been watching the ’white working class’ series on BBC? We’ve been talking about it in the van. Well I heard that the Bradford Working Men’s Club documentary was grim, overly-grim, and made by an American outsider. But we were on tour, so we don’t know. The drama on Tuesday about the white family living in the Asian street I thought was absolute crap, the most clichéd version of working class stereotypes you could find on telly. (You’re welcome to disagree). But the documentary ’The Poles Are Coming’ - we all loved that one. Brilliant. Must go to bed now. I’d have been fast asleep by now if it wasn’t for having to write this thing. Is that good, or bad? Let’s call it good and hope there are free gifts to all subscribers. Cardiff A turn-up for the books. Lovely venue and a brilliant audience undampened by the grotty weather. The first major talking point of the day is The Daily Sport’s coverage of Prince Charles’ visit to one of Bob Marley’s old homes. The report is discovered in some faceless, nameless service station and its guts unraveled in the

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

back of the van. Basically the report consists of changing the words to some of Bob’s songs to fit Prince Charles’ visit. "I shot the grouse… but I didn’t shoot Diana," begins one. Someone gets paid good money for writing this stuff. And for photoshopping a picture of Charles wearing a rasta hat, accompanied by a smiling Camilla with huge bifter in her gob. This keeps us amused for practically the rest of the day. Really, we can be that shallow. The venue is an old converted church (we’ve played two or three already on this tour. Someone is trying to tell us something), huge wooden-beamed ceiling and cavernous acoustics. Tracey Curtis is the support tonight and she charms the audience with a mixture of lovely songs and loveable dizziness. Look, poor girl, sings like an angel but can’t stop apologizing for forgetting the words. Aah. Tracey just recorded an album with me and Neil, a collection of songs from her first two albums. I’ve no idea if it’ll be released properly, but I hope so - so simple and beautiful. Even if I do say so myself. Actually Tracey was in the recording booth singing away for two weeks while Neil and me bobbed around the control room playing bows and arrows. The lively audience tonight in Cardiff are parts hush-quiet and parts rowdy, and the whole room feels like it gets swept up during the 85 minutes of our set – swept up into

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

some sort of very Welsh communal celebration. Very enjoyable. The people we talk to afterwards are just lovely. I can’t think of a more fitting word. Like in that series, ’Gavin & Stacey’ – aren’t they all just so lovely? (I’m writing the word ’lovely’ in a Welsh accent there, in case you didn’t spot it). Even ’Timebomb’ is dusted down for the encore. Given a few more minutes we may have mustered ’I shot the grouse’, but time ran out. Pity. I think it could be big. Aldershot Not really knowing what to expect here – sadly, the only thing we think we know about Aldershot is that it’s a squaddie town – we arrive to find a sold out venue staffed by an enthusiastic woman who seems to do everything from fixing up the PA to making the tea. Thus heartened we have a look around town. It’s now almost exactly five years since the huge anti-war march in London against the Iraq war (remember at the time it was all about the WMD’s… funny how ’regime change’ has become the uppermost argument of the warmongers since then). Five years later and what we have is an unholy mess, over a hundred thousand deaths, soldiers coming home either in pieces or suffering from trauma, a sectarian puppet government backed by the US big businesses which are creaming the profit from Iraq’s oil and a legacy of hatred, destruction and instability.

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

I’ve been reading about the reaction of John Lennon and Mick Jagger to the even more distant events of 1968 – again, the anniversary is this weekend – when an antiVietnam demonstration in Grosvenor square ended in a huge riot. In reaction to how Jagger and Lennon constantly refuted the idea of playing real political roles at the time, I can’t find any excuse for any artist in Britain not to be singing/painting/writing about the culture of war and fear we live in. It’s our dominant culture. It’s the driving narrative of our time. To be not talking about this stuff is tantamount to the most snobbish form of ignorance – that where you know what’s going on but choose not to do anything about it. Lennon went on to become a full-time activist, returning his MBE, singing explicitly about politics, war and injustice. Jagger went on to create a billion-dollar juggernaut trading on nostalgia and mediocre riffing and strutting. Either way, they both had their moment in 1968 and it’s a painful reminder that today, in the middle of this constant background buzz of war/terror/fear, there are still too few public figures making peace and justice their raison d’etre. And so here we are in Aldershot, five years on, singing ’On eBay’ and ’Jacob’s Ladder’ and remembering how, when we re-wrote ’Jacob’s’ to make it an explicitly anti-Iraq war song, we did so thinking that by the time we’d worked it

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

out and rehearsed it the war may well have been over. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. Not that tonight’s show (or any of our shows come to that) are full of the doom and gloom

of

warfare.

It’s

more

de-construction

than

destruction, more making the whole show something personal and funny and poignant, more trying to change things every night. It all depends so much now on how the audience reacts to us. And I love that it’s like that – do people want to sing along? Are they warm and friendly? Curious? Stern and unwelcoming? Off to the bar for another pint? It’s always, always an interesting encounter for us. Walking on stage at Aldershot and not having the faintest idea who these people are, what they know about us… and that’s great because it’s not easy and it’s about creating some hitherto-undecided middle ground between us. Fantastic audience tonight. All ages from ten to seventy, we reckoned. Some rowdy, some polite, some laughing, some just wondering. Everyone accepting of the bumbling words-forgetting shambles of a couple of the songs! As soon as there’s an empathy there, the performance really changes. It makes it easier to relax on stage and feel like you can just chat with people, sing your stuff in tune without fixedly following the melodic structures in your head. Does that make sense? When you’re talking with your friends you don’t think "what am I going to say

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

next?", you just talk. So there you go, Aldershot, war, and chatting with your mates. Tomorrow, Leeds. The annual City Varieties show. Lou’s nervous. Stay tuned. Leeds Thing is, it’s really not fair on everywhere else we’ve played on this tour to say that Leeds was the best gig so far. Because that’s just about us being at home and knowing people and realising what we can say and how things work. Knowing the venue, the promoter, the town and a smattering of the audience. But really, it was good. There, I understated it on purpose. We had such a good time. Mik Artistik (from Armley, our West Leeds home) was as funny and strange as expected. Ian Clayton ("from off the telly," as a young lass in the pub beforehand said) was a great compère, funny and poignant and surely someone we’ll have to do something with in the future (I reckon he can sing better than he lets on…). And the incredible Roy Bailey, softly-spoken and gentle-voiced, but so powerful and huge in sentiment and effect. An amazing performer. Roy sang ’Word Bomber’ (from the new album) with us, as fragile and beautiful as it should be. As I was singing along I couldn’t help thinking how proud I was that this man with the voice we’ve admired for so long was singing one of our songs. As is often the case at the City Varieties shows (they’re an

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

annual fixture now) we did tend to talk a bit. But hey, these were all my friends (mostly ones I’d never met) so that was OK. Everyone got a free CD, a song we’d written and recorded specially for the night – Harry joined us on a few songs playing his box to great effect, and the beautiful City Varieties theatre didn’t let us down with its red velvet curtains and gold-painted archways. They reckon it’ll be closed for over a year now for refurbishments – we’ll have to plan next year’s Chumbas local special for somewhere else, then. Two days off and then back to the tour. I need a good sleep... Days Off and Derby After the usual two days that are supposed to be relaxing but aren’t because a) you’ve got a hangover b) there’s no food in the house c) all your clothes are dirty and d) there’s loads of work to catch up with, it’s a relief to get back in the van and set of for Derby. Boff is justifiably appalled that Neil and I haven’t even managed to clear the old banana skins out of the van in the two days at home. Tonight’s gig is organised by a very nervous first-time promoter (and fan) called Graham, who inevitably, does everything as it should be and then some. We feel thoroughly looked after (see the thread on mudcat.org for discussion of the band’s rider requirements) - there are

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

even flowers in the dressing room! The gig is good - one of the more subdued affairs, as befits a Tuesday night. A surprising number of people in the audience are quietly singing along to stuff from the new album, which is heartening. Boff forgets the words to the last verse of Buy Nothing Day and gets Phil to bail him out by doing a rousing song in Spanish - this may become a feature I suspect. Afterwards a man accosts me at the stall. His friend was at the Bury gig and read the blog where I made mention of some audience members acting like they were our best mates, and has apparently been worrying ever since that we were referring to her. We weren’t. She was the lovely woman who I talked about shoes with - I thought we bonded. Anyway I reassured him she was not the culprit and then felt horribly guilty. Back to our very lovely hotel where we watch Newsnight and hear

many tributes

to

the wonderful

Anthony

Mighella. Weirdly, we are playing in the Anthony Minghella theatre on the Isle of Wight in a few days. It was last time we played there that we found out he was from an ice cream family from there. So that’ll be strange. The sun is shining and we’re off to the seaside.

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

Brighton Oh yes, a shop on the same street as the venue selling mod suits. This is what Phil wants right now. He’s just not spivvy enough, and needs something a little tighter (sir). The Komedia has grown bigger since we last came here – still, it’s packed and friendly and full of sea-swept redcheeked faces – like Robb Johnson, straight from a school parents’ evening (he’s a teacher) "Oh yes, your darling son Donald is a perfect pupil, now I’m going to do a song called ’Anarchy in Hackney’." Robb joins us onstage for a version of the song ’Fine Career’ from the new album. Perfect, corblimey guv’nor. I’ve been listening to Robb for what seems like a hundred years now. I first heard about him when he wrote a song about the Herald of Free Enterprise, a ship that went down off Zeebrugge harbour with big loss of life. Since then our paths have crossed countless times as both him and us have done different things, working with different musical styles and retaining a healthy and solid disrespect for all things

authoritarian.

He’s

an

incredible

songwriter,

managing to be committed and radical without falling into the trap of sounding like ’a protest singer’. Well, at times he does fall into this trap, actually, but it’s knowingly and always counterbalanced by clever and subtle melodies. It stems from a love of chanson, I reckon. Stops him sounding like this generation’s Phil Ochs. Thing is though

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

(forgive me for going on about Robb Johnson), he’s one of those people who’s songs are sometimes delivered better by other singers – like Leon Rosselson, for instance. Anyway, tonight in Brighton he’s funny and warm and the perfect support. He tells us the 100 Club tomorrow night might be a strange venue for us to play. We’ll see. London The 100 Club, a place rich in history and spilt beer. Wasn’t looking forward to this one particularly, but on descending like Duchamp’s nude down dark stairs and into the grey oblong cellar that is the club I immediately fell in love. The pictures and posters on the walls – who hasn’t played there? The old bluesmen over from America, two or three generations of jazzers, a wave of punks and some of the best old rock’n’rollers. Chuck Berry plays there three days after us. The gig was great and reminded us how good it is to be able to swing between all-seated arts centres and sweaty cellar clubs. Robb Johnson is with us again tonight followed by the inimitable Swill (ex-Men They Couldn’t Hang). Playing in front of posters for the club advertising everyone from George Melly to Jeff Beck and the Sex Pistols is a good reminder of our place in British pop culture. Recent reviews in both the Guardian and the Independent newspaper have mentioned some kind of

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

place for Chumbawamba as proto-’national treasures’. That strange part of our culture which allows the mavericks who bumble along long enough without falling over and dying (or just quitting like Syd and Peter Green) to gain admittance to the loony bin inhabited by people like Robert Wyatt. And who wouldn’t want to hang about with Robert Wyatt? Or maybe we’re just grand old dames, troopers treading the boards. Or maybe we’re just benefiting from the cyclical nature of our country’s political

roundabout,

where

anti-war

and

anti-state

sentiments come vaguely into fashion every six or seven years. When it’s not supposed to be embarrassing to think that New Labour and the Tories are practically the same thing and that as artists we ought to be shouting about this. And shouting about war and immigration policies and racism and all the rest, while we’re at it. Yes, that’s it. Anyway. Great club, the 100 Club. Phil with his new suit revels in the chance to play the bouncer, gently ejecting a bloke from the stage as we’re playing. Presumably the bloke (I think he just wanted to join in) won’t remember any of this. Phil did, it was his finest hour. Hello London! Colchester, Newport, Fareham and home We didn’t so much run out of steam or enthusiasm for the blog - there were simply fewer wi-fi opportunities, and none of us is sufficiently technologically advanced to go

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

down the Blackberry route (yet). So, with no disrespect to anyone who either put on or attended the last three shows, I’m going to simply summarise and draw overall conclusions as befits the end of a tour. Three towns - three very different shows. A microcosm of the diversity of gigs we find ourselves playing currently. Colchester - fairly noisy, majority of the audience standing up. A Timebomb night; Newport (IOW) - very quiet, two sets, definitely not a Timebomb night, in the B&B in time for most of MOTD; Fareham - a Folk Festival - midafternoon set, following on the heel of such luminaries as Roy Bailey and Spiers and Boden, playing to an audience who were probably largely unfamiliar with what we do. And that’s us nowadays - constantly tweaking the set and adjusting the between-songs banter to fit the situation we’re in. Up and down like a wrestler’s jock strap as Lou would put it. But it keeps us on our toes and there’s a certain thrill to thinking on our feet and working out just how to pitch it all. Goodness me, in the ADAT-driven days of the electric band, we were stuck with the same set for months on end. But the whole set was dictated by costume changes then. Lou and I have considered different outfits for different songs but frankly, the boys in their suits are more dandyish than us currently. Having been performing acoustically for a few years now,

Chumbawamba UK tour diary - March 2008

we decided to take the bold step of dropping the ’acoustic’ from our name and just go out as Chumbawamba. Hard to tell whether the (very) few people who shouted out for Tubthumping or Mouthful Of Shit would have still done so had the ’acoustic’ suffix still been there. But we are what we are, and change has always been our watchword. To sum up then - a successful tour - on every level. The people carrier held its own, team spirit was in evidence throughout and the audiences were lovely. What more could we ask?