Features Tour Diary: Canterbury (Part One)

When we heard the really rather great Canterbury were heading out on the road with The Blackout, DIY wanted in on the action. The band will be sending us snaps and reports from the road. This is part one, as penned by Luke Prebble (vocals/bass)…

Photography by Samuel Bradley

Having only played one show in 9 months since we were last on the road in January, we were more than ready to get back in the swing of van travel, heavy loading and breathing in the stench of stale alcohol, sweat infused walls, and feet.

Bristol was the first stop on this tour with The Blackout, We Are The Ocean and Page 44. Showing up to the Academy it was awesome to see loads of old friends and be reminded of the sheer energy that exists with live shows. The last time we were in this building was 3 years earlier and it was in the Academy 2 with We Are The Ocean so it was a particularly monumental show for us both to now be gracing the stage of a sold out main room.

It wasn’t AS awesome to be reminded of the fact these corporate venues like to not only employ an external company to sell your merchandise for you, but they also like to take (or steal, whichever spin you put on it) a quarter of everything you make. For a support band on a tour like this, merch profits are the only way to make it financially viable, so we most certainly did not hit the streets post show to hustle from the back of the van…

Perhaps I’m just bitter after being denied the use of a make shift hot-dog-vendor-style-display-tray which was painstakingly fashioned from an apple crate, and a guitar strap, designed to tempt people to our latest merchandise venture, sticks of strawberry flavour ‘Canterbury rock’. Stupid mobile phone company owned venues!

The show itself was a load of fun, we were shaking off inevitable lumps of 9 month old rust, but the energy from the crowd helped with that, and we had a great first night. Thank you people of Bristol, onwards to Leeds!