Still going

There is a certain feeling that you get when on tour that I have yet to experience in any other situation; a gentle and gradual loosening of your awareness of the real world. When on holiday, or perhaps a job away from home, you are always aware of the work / bills / worries of life that will await you when you return home. Not on tour, though...
on tour the real world becomes an abstract concept, a memory that fades with each day and is almost too easy to pass off as a dream you can only half remember.

I like it... it's one of the rare few occasions when I feel genuinely relaxed. We have been granted the right to indulge ourselves as the artists we are / believe ourselves to be and have had the pressures of normal, everyday life taken away from us. It says a lot about the complexities of the modern existence if you can get a better nights sleep in a coffin sized bunk on a moving bus than in your own bed. That tax issue is forgotten, the overdue gas bill a hazy notion... even friends become fleeting thoughts.

Waking up in a new city is a strange sensation, especially as because we travel over night we rarely experience any of the traveling. When I was the driver I felt every bump in the road and saw every speck of the environment - now I wake in a pitch black bunk and only know where I am when I open the door to leave. I can't accurately explain the shock I felt when I left the dark and quiet cocoon of the bus and stepped onto a busy main road in Glasgow. It was like being in Quantum Leap, I even uttered "oh boy" and quickly pulled the door shut as a bus roared inches past me.

The gigs are going very well. Most audiences are extremely responsive and the visuals are going down very well, I even signed my first autograph last night... the work is great, and while I'm loving playing live and being on stage and all that, my memories of this tour will always be the moments; being caught in a blizzard in Aberdeen, listening to Tom Waits and drinking JD as dawn comes up, Joe's Bob Dylan impression, ad infinitum.

There's talk of a 6 week European tour next month. I'm torn... it would be the most fun I could ever imagine (just say that sentence again: "A 6 week European tour" - who could not be tempted by that?) but it would be a long time to be away from home and this life does take it out of you. Then again - that's a hell of a lot of experiences you could have in a short space of time, and it would stay with me forever. I've always wanted my job to take me around the world, this could be the beginning of all that...

Stoke tonight. Leeds tomorrow. The homecoming gig and half way point on Friday. You can never go home, even when the tour is over, you can never go home.

---

currently listening to: Tom Waits - Heart Attack and Vine

---