News Tour Diary: Savoir Adore (Part One)

Savoir Adore have been busy scaling the shores of Europe. We asked them to pop us together a tour diary of their trip, with lots of photos, just because we’re nosey, basically.

After three crazy weeks in Europe, we returned to Brooklyn to hibernate, eat tacos and stave off any post-tour sicknesses. Here’s a little account of our wonderful trip. We hope to come back very, very soon!

Day One

Bon Voyage! - On May 4th we departed the port of New York City for London, England. A few many drinks at the airport were followed by 45 Minutes of Angry Sleep on Delta flight #1. All in all though, a wonderful flight. The following movies were watched by Savoir Adore: Toy Stories One and Two, Lord of the Rings, Drive and Casablanca.

Day Two

We arrived in London on the morning of May 5th. We were staying at a small apartment by Russell Square so we hopped on the tube and in an hour or so we were all under one roof and quite jet-lagged/confused/hungry/thirsty/whiney. After a brief snack + sandwich party, Gary and I fell asleep and Deidre, Tim and Alex braved the sleep-clock and forged on into the sunset. During our brief nap, I thought I had a dream in which there was a loud popping sound followed by Deidre exclaiming ‘Shit!’ I thought it was a dream though, so I went back to sleep… I awoke to an interesting email…

‘Dear dump,

It’s been a wild afternoon. The good news is…

The bad news is - I plugged in my synth with only an adaptor and I completely fried it. I also knocked out the power in half the apartment, but we found the fuse box with the help of the doorman and got that back on. It wasn’t just the power source that got burned, there was smoke coming out of the knobs on the synth. I tried AA batteries to make sure it wasn’t the power supply, but the synth still smoked when it got powered. You may still smell some lingering burnt electronics. I’ve been in contact with a synth repair shop in London - but this kind of serious damage will take a few days to repair. So I’m out with Alex & Timmy now, and we are getting me a little midi-controller, and I’m going to set up sounds on my macbook AIRRRRR. We are also going to H&M.

I’m an idiot! See you later!’

Luckily we had insurance on the synth, and a little bulb exploded in my head that reminded me we had some synth friendly friends in the London area. We ended up calling our friend Sarah and her boyfriend Howie from the band Plant Plants, and luckily enough he had an extra Micro Korg AND he was willing to lend it to us for the three weeks of shows! Crisis averted. (THANKS AGAIN HOWIE!) We then popped over to their apartment by Victoria Park, drank many beers and then stopped in for ‘Karaoke With Gary’ at ‘The Tiger’ (pictures below).

Day Three

On Sunday May 6th, after a hefty, late afternoon full english breakfast, we had our first show of the tour, at Notting Hill Arts Club for the Communion series. We were all a little dazed still from the trip and the first day drama, but the show was great. Lots of terrific bands, an amazing packed crowd and we were able to catch up with a bunch of our British friends who made it out to the show. We also met a lovely couple of France who played one of our songs, The Garden, at their wedding! That was amazing. On the way home we took requests from our cab driver, including ‘This Land Is Your Land’ and ‘Please Sing Something That You Know’. We have a video of us covering Prince a cappela, but that one we’re going to keep to ourselves.

Day Four

On Monday we had another show at the Queen of Hoxton with two incredible bands - Good Dangers and Cut Ribbons. They were nice enough to let us borrow their great gear including an AC30 stack that makes me go buh buh buh. This was also our reunion with our British BFF and all around amazing person, Jen Long. We met Jen three years ago at SXSW and since then she’s been amazingly supportive and helpful, setting up multiple shows and sessions for us. The show was terrific and our manager even did lights (aka filled the stage with fog until we couldn’t see anything). After the show we had a great hang with Jen and the ladies and gents from Cut Ribbons and Good Dangers and then we called it a night.

Day Five

On Tuesday we decided, ‘Why don’t we rent a car and drive on the other side of the road to Cardiff, eh?’ So we did. No trouble, just a lovely drive west to the land of dragons, Wales! In Cardiff we played another great show at Undertone with Cut Ribbons and a young band called Dancing Years. They blew our butts off, so good. We also got a chance to see Ed Truckell, perhaps our favorite sound engineer of all time. When we raise enough money to hire a tour manager, he’s the one. After the show we had a great hang with the bands again and drove back the three or so hours to London…

Day Six

After three or four hours of sleep, I dropped off the rental car in rush hour traffic (no fun) at Euston station and then went back to sleep… luckily it was our day off. At this point we were all pretty pooped so we basically ate sandwiches and watched the news Spinal Tap all day. I also looked at a bunch of guitars on Denmark St that I couldn’t afford and Deidre went to Primark!

Day Seven

After a little recharge day in London, we were off to Brighton for Great Escape! Wooooo! Brighton is a beautiful city, one of the best parts of our first tour in the UK in 2010, and this was even more exciting as there were a ton of bands and friends in town for the festival. On Thursday we played our first show, the Record of the Day showcase. They’ve been really supportive of us in the past few months so it was a great to meet everyone who ran the website and the show went really well. That evening we had a little bit of a bummer though as Alex realized he couldn’t find his passport! Just a little background on Alex Foote here… he’s by far the most responsible member of the band, he’s toured the world multiple times and packed a backpack full of pedals and clothes that could be featured in Wired Magazine. So that’s why we were extra surprised, but accidents happen and we were flying around for days… Unfortunately he’d have to stay behind that weekend to get an emergency passport in London, so we missed him for a couple days in Amsterdam. But first…

Day Eight

Great Escape continued on Friday with a fun morning session with Gin in Teacups and an afternoon beach performance for Amazing Radio (Thanks guys!) We also learned the phrase ‘chuffed’. One of many special British words we learned on this trip. That night was the Neon Gold showcase, which was our grand reunion with the Neon Gold family and our band besties St. Lucia. Every band on the bill was great that night too with HAIM and Foxes amongst others rounding out the acts. It was a party to say the least.

After the show, the snack attack hit and I wandered the streets of Brighton looking for fish and chips. I finally found some, brought it back to our hotel and Deidre dropped an entire fillet o’ fish on the floor. It was tragic. And with that, we knew it was sleep time.