Features Tour Diary: Canterbury (Part Seven)

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 seven, as penned by Luke Prebble (vocals/bass)…

Photography by Samuel Bradley

Last time we were lucky enough to play the main room at Birmingham Academy was with Billy Talent a few years ago, back then I remember it being one of my favourite venues we had ever played. The same thought still applies.

Before arriving at the venue, we had an appointment with Kerrang! Radio to have a chat with Matt Stocks, and record a couple of acoustic songs. Some miscommunication somewhere down the line meant that the acoustic session didn’t take place when we first arrived, so after heading back to the Academy for a brief sound check and merch count, Nick drove me and Mike back to the radio station.

We got done with not much time to spare before the show, and headed back to the venue. Then we hit the beautiful Birmingham, unexplainable, standstill traffic. After sitting stationary for about 15 minutes we started warming up our voices to save time once we got back. Nick doesn’t like listening to our warm up, it’s a series of very strange noises and sounds (usually performed in private between the two of us), so he was forced to put his earplugs in.

After another 10 minutes of creeping forward, the decision was made to bail out of the van and walk/run to the venue, whilst Nick remained in the traffic attempting to use the upper hand of a white van to his advantage.

Fortunately Mike and I made it back in time for Page 44’s last song, and fortunately WATO’s tour manager Bryony and their tech Jason were on hand to be Nicks substitutes for our changeover, and our set. A big thank you goes out to them for that. Unfortunately though, Nick missed all but the last minute of the set. It was an amazing show too, another awesome crowd with a whole heap of people singing along and generally going mental.

I did however find it a bit hard to play the bass for some reason. The only reason I can think is that I had the wrong shoes on. My ‘show shoes’ were trapped on the duel carriageway in the van, so never graced the stage of the Birmingham Academy.

After the show, there was a sense of party in the air. The Academy turned into Propaganda nightclub, and we all made the most of the largely empty dance-floor and the cheap dirty vodka.

Meanwhile, back in the dressing rooms, a very strange activity was taking place to show off some of the muscle capacity built up by the relentless fitness regimes that took place on this tour. There were £5 notes flying about being bet on who could bench-press Bryony 6 times. It might be one of the strangest things I witnessed on the whole tour. Definitely in fact.