Up early 6 hour drive to Maitland. Itching to play The Junkyard again. Always an absolute pleasure and a privilege …….

Well. We came, we play, we slayed, drank beer and ate a celebratory meat pie. Oh YEAHHH Sick gig. Everyone dug it. Biggest Junkyard turn out we’ve had so far. Lots of people from last time coming back and bringing their friends. Lots of yelling and screaming – just the why we like it. ‘Why don’t you need it’ ‘What I need’ and ‘In Violence’ are getting progressively more and more epic every night. Upstairs for staffies after. We sure are spoiled here.

Massive drive to Melbourne tomorrow – Franz has a departing at 7am.

Cat

Little acoustic performance at Roots Records in Bello this morning before we set off to Urunga. Tiny little store and some how we managed to fit in amongst the kids, parents and passers by who filed into watch.

Off to Urunga after- a massive 15 min drive to the next venue – Ocean View Hotel.

A lot of crew from The Federal and Root Records came down to watch us again. More familiar faces from our last gig here too. Everyone was up and shakin’ it by the second set. People of all ages to – I love these kind of country and coastal gigs. Everyone is up for a good time, young and old. Went to bed straight after the gig and couldn’t get to sleep, mind buzzing about the tour coming up in January. Cat

Love you Bellingen – you dance to all of our songs – fast, slow or frantic. You make us groove harder and wider. We had totally rad night! From Ballroom to Boot scooting to moshing you brains out., you did it all. LOVE YA! In our breaks we chilled out upstairs (where we were sleeping) – we had two groupies follow us up to drink beer and eat corn chip with us. Nice to see lots of familiar faces every time we come back to this town.

Cat

Tonight it's the beach hotel in Byron Bay. The first time any of us have played this venue. There will be wailing guitar, blistering steel, banging' drums and thundering bass....Benji

After The Beach show we briskly made our way to The Great Northern to catch the tail end of The Panics set! Was killer! Also big thanks to all the big group of girls who boot scooted to JIMMY'S TREEHOUSE......Catty

Wednesday, and it's onto the Rails in Byron Bay. Playing under the non de plume of The Stooping Parlour, for reasons we won't go into here, we look forward to cranking it up a little after two virtually acoustic gigs. Alas, sound restrictions force us to play a fairly subdued set, but still the crowd dug it, so who are we to argue. The night ends on the porch of The Great Northern Hotel drinking beer with The Panics who happen to be in town on tour.

Benji

After a day of mooching around the house of our dear friends, Greg and Audra (Bless them), we hit the Palmy cafe on the Gold Coast. We again find ourselves becoming specialists at playing extremely cramped stages. Not that I have to worry. Playing pedal steel guitar comes with a guarantee of you getting all the real estate on stage you need. Ed, an avowed palm tree hater (in fact, a hater of all things tropical...) played the gig wedged in a corner surrounded by a palm tree, fronds hanging over and around him like a scene from Day Of The Triffids.

Benji

Well Jb and I were up at 6am this morning for an interview with Tim Cox on ABC Gold Coast. Tim's been featuring EARNEST on his breakfast show as album of the week! Thanks TIM! I was crashed out and slept for most of the day. We  played The Cave in Nobby Beach tonight, on way back to bed now. Thanks to Julia Rose for supporting us!

Tomorrow we hit the beach I recon! Catty

 I awoke this morning a very happy and well rested lady. The two beautiful Cat’s from The Good Ship had kindly offered us their place (fondly known by The Shippers as “THE FOX HOLE”) to bed down on last night. It allowed us some much needed sleep after 7am start with a 7 hours drive, and drinking from 2pm to yesterday.

Today we play The Powerhouse (Brisbane) but first we rolled into 4ZZZ radio for an interview with Vanessa on ‘Artifact’.

Rocked into The Powerhouse – massive stage, full production which pretty much guarantees that I’ll be able to hear my voice nice clear over my drumming. Our Ithica Creek did a great opening set and I got some sweet photographs of them. Our set went down without a hitch and we seemed to have the audience transfixed for the whole time.

The Good Ship crew came down to watch us too, dirty lot.

Upon Vanessa’s recommendation we all went to chow down on some killer Tai food after the show. By the time we got there I’d gone nuts from hunger so I decided to go and drink some Jamesons in the van before my meal came out – which left Justin being designated driver again J Once we were all stuffed with chilli we hit the road back down the coast to The Gold Coast as we have a 6.30am interview on The ABC.

Big thanks to Vanessa from Artifact for the moral support and Tai food!

CC

Up at the sparrows crack, it’s seven hour drive from Valla to Goodna, Ispwich in Qld, and we had to start at 3.30pm.

We had heard from various peeps that The Royal Mail had a rep. We couldn’t wait. Quite a few people in the group, grew up listening to heavy metal - and now we’re playing contemporary folk – we thought this gig would be a good opportunity to ‘man up’ the music and get back to some teenage stuff.

Arriving at The Royal Mail, it’s perfect, and we were so hoping not to be let down. Old Australiana, bare walls, loud blues blearing out. Rough looking, but gentle hearted characters at the bar. Feels like we’re out in the outback in the 50s’. We felt more safe and at home here, than in the Valley.

No ‘fuck off’ in the place, you’d only find ‘fuck yes’ says Edmondo. We can’t wait to play! Probably only second to The Junkyard in Maitland, a rock n roll joint that hasn’t been messed around with!

We meet Andrew, who seems very warmed hearted publican who immediately offers us a toasted sandwiches and beer.

Rather than playing 3 X 45 min sets, we play 2 extra long ones, to keep the vibe going. The place seems like it’s closing and it’s only 8pm!

Three bands on a Sat, wow. Locals must be over saturated on a Satz arvo. More under the surfice of course, this great pub was flooded not so long ago, up to the first floor. Quite a few locals chipped in to help out their ‘local’, but the locals have had it hard too with a lot of their homes being swamped in mud.

We tried not to enjoy doing a band signing on two young buxom lady’s breasts on the way out on The Mail.

Back to Kat Cookes – The Good Ship - lovely house to crash! More on The Good Ship tomorrow at The Powerhouse…

JB