Battleships Tour Diary: Part One

In our brief experience with 'the music industry' one of the most notable, and perhaps surprising things about our observations has been how nice people have been. Battleships could never consider itself to be a 'part of the industry', but in an overwhelming majority of our encounters with it, we have found people to be really friendly and encouraging. Sure you get the odd person you'd prefer not to work with who might be a bit difficult or lack tact. You've also got to remember we've mostly only seen the fringe; in our neck of the woods, a lot of passionate people are working pretty hard with little reward, and their work ranges from very inspiring to very ordinary and everything in-between.

There's something about being the support band and securing a gem of a slot on a big tour. I remember being in grade five and being called up to the grade 6 soccer team, I can't help a little bit of that feeling returning in some form now. It's a bigger opportunity and higher stakes, and we're that little kid, with my K-mart boots and my brothers shin pads on.

Meeting Boy & Bear was true to plenty of our experience as a band so far; they are just really great guys.

Boy & Bear, doing their thing.

Boy & Bear are managed by the same group who manage former touring partners-turn-friends The Paper Kites. These bands are also all part of our Select Music (Booking agent) family, and they are all really great people, probably much more friendly than I was expecting the industry to be, shouldn't there be posturing egos? Anyway, this blog was supposed to be about our tour so far, so I digress.

Our first show of the tour found us in Canberra on Thursday the 24th of October. We've had some interesting characters at our Canberra shows previously; one even lectured us - post set, and at length - about our chord progressions being boring, thanks for coming mate. On the end of the drive from Sydney to the ANU bar was a warm and responsive crowd. The set was sprinkled with the odd punter cheering out something nice like 'your drummer is awesome'. All good stuff.

Our trip to Canberra was punctuated by one band member driving our hired car into a pole whilst reversing. His father happens to be a driving instructor; the irony was not lost on the other members I promise you.

The pole didn't deserve this.

On Friday the 25th we ticked off a big goal as a band, playing at the Enmore in Sydney, it was a great night and we had a lot of fun. It's great to get a chance to play a bigger venue, it's so different to hear your music in a big room. Our green room was bigger than some of the places we've played before.

Saturday saw us driving to Newcastle for 'Fat As Butter' festival and the best part of playing at a festival is probably hanging out in the artist area. Boy and Bear had their own table tennis set-up, now there's a good idea for a rider! We played on a smaller stage, but although we didn't have a huge crowd there were some dedicated fans there. One listener we talked to afterwards, openly made the comment; 'Guys, love your music, it has been getting us through some really tough times at the moment'. If you ever want to pay a songwriter a compliment, say that to them, it was very rewarding. Other highlights from Fat As Butter included Matt Corby, his band was fantastic, really great dynamics! I can confirm Matt himself is looking more homeless than ever, I hope they had some soup in his tent for him. Also, if you have a spare pair of shoes, he looks to me like about a size ten.

Our fourth and last show of a very packed weekend was back at the Enmore, where we had a very warm reception from a great crowd. The first support Dustin Tebbutt was really great, and Boy & Bear were fantastic again, we walked out overhearing their proud parents who enjoyed the set too...

We're looking forward to this weekend, playing at Geelong for the first time and three shows in Melbourne at the Forum.

See you in Melbourne!

Written by Jordan Kane Sturdee.