CKY Tour: Leeds - Home

First off, thank you to everyone who came to the Leeds show the other night - it was so good! As you may have gathered from this reading this blog or speaking to us at the shows, the tour wasn't an easy one for us and we really needed the headline show to go well, and you guys definitely delivered on that.

The less said about our day off in Birmingham, the better... Not because it was bad, but I don't want to embarrass anyone too much... We were staying at my friend Dinh's house, and as luck would have it, it was his 20th birthday the night we were in town. Let's just say good times were had by all - snorting piss off tables, getting head butted by girls, some drink called a Heidi (?) I don't even know what was in it... I'll leave it at that.

The next day we drove down to Portsmouth for the last show of the tour. We've only played in Portsmouth a couple of time before, but the show was definitely the best of the tour for us, so another big thank you to all you guys at the show. We loaded out early after our set and headed home.

Mitch has been taking photos all tour, here are some to check out:

We've got some really good shows coming up over the next month or so, all the details are on our Myspace page.

We have also just announced a headline London show on January 14th. Tickets are only £5 in advance, and it promises to be a really good night. Should have more details soon...

Nick

CKY Tour: Glasgow - Leeds

Glasgow was another tough show last night, but we got on with things as usual. The sound on stage was the best we've had in a long time, and I'm told that the front of house was really good as well - so thanks to everyone who works at the Garage. We found out Emtombed had played a few nights previously, pretty gutted we missed that… Next time.

Some drives tend to grate after about an hour, but if we're ever going to or from Scotland then time seems to go quite fast despite the distance. There is always something awesome looking back from the other side of the window, especially the forest shaped like a dick... Regretfully, I missed taking a photo of this wonder, but respect to whoever planted those trees.

We're currently hanging out in Rio's waiting to soundcheck. Our tour manager Mitch is playing Jimi Hendrix riffs on Andreas' guitar, it sounds so good. He has his own band called Spy Catcher, that you should definitely check out: www.myspace.com/spycatchers. We're playing together in Watford later this year, for the Gallows homecoming show, definitely a date to add to your diary.

This is the only headline show we have in this run of dates, so we're looking forward to playing to people who will hopefully know some of our songs!

Day off in Birmingham tomorrow, going to be fun.

Nick

CKY Tour: Swansea - Glasgow

A couple of nights ago we started a short run of dates with CKY.

The first show was in Swansea, which was a first for us as we've only ever played Newport and Cardiff in South Wales before. As luck would have it, the rain started to pour as soon as we pulled up behind the venue, which isn't cool at the best of times, but even worse when you have to carry an 8x10 bass cab up two flights of metal stairs in threadbare vans... But we made it. The show was a great start to the tour for us, considering we were probably new to most of the audience's ears, so thanks to everyone there for making us feel welcome in your town.

Thanks to Helen for putting us up for the night, and for the numerous cups of tea and coffee that we devoured. We woke up and grabbed breakfast at a jokes café, props to anyone who has completed The Beast meal.

Andreas and his favourite drink.

Alex.

Barney.

Tea; first of many.

Wake up.

Beast.

We left wishing that one of us was brave enough to try The Beast, and hit the long road to Sheffield. The show was a tough one for us, but I think that we won a few people over by the end. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that our band appeals to the CKY audience, so we appreciate anyone who gave us a chance. We crashed in Sheffield after the show and were up early for another long drive to Glasgow. Watching Snatch in the van definitely made the drive go quicker, what a film.

Rick - Sheffield.

Sheffield.

Mitch on the way to Glasgow.

This is why I like Scotland.

We're sitting the Glasgow dressing room at the moment, and we're all excited about the show. We're playing some bigger venues than we're used to on this tour, which is cool. Considering that we've only ever playing King Tut's in Glasgow before (and The Barfly once), it's a nice change of scene, although it does mean that we'll miss out on an awesome dinner!

Headline show in Leeds tomorrow, should be a good one!

Time to go play.

Nick

XFM Live Session

Hi everyone,

As some of you may know, we recorded a Live Session for XFM a few weeks back. We've only done two live sessions in the past, so we're not exactly veterans when it comes to nailing it live in the studio, but I think everything turned out well.

We recorded 4 tracks: Don't Cry, Witches, Scared To Change, and I'm Failing To See How This Is A Good Idea.

The Session will air tonight on the XFM Rock Show, which is on between 22:00 - 02:00, available on 104.9FM or online at: www.xfm.co.uk

As far as I know, it'll be available to stream online all week as well via the XFM website.

Aside from all that, we are keeping ourselves busy and quietly getting on with writing some new songs. Bit early to be thinking about that perhaps, but hopefully we'll have plenty of material to choose from when the time comes to hit the studio for the second album, at least that's the plan. Will keep you posted on how the new songs are coming along...

Nick

Blackhole - Live & In Session... Tides

'Blackhole - Live & In Session... Tides'

Filmed by Crashburn Productions, at Broadfields Recording Studios, Watford.

Above is the final video of the 'Live & In Session...' series, hope that you liked them! The idea behind the videos wasn't to give the you guys a view of us playing the songs in a live setting, but rather a more unique angle of rehearsing the songs live in the studio.

A final word of thanks to Ryan and Tom @ Crashburn Productions for all the visual footage, and to Mitch @ Broadfields for all the audio - make sure you check them both out should you need any similar work doing, they are very highly recommended!

That's all from me, new blog about the XFM Live Session tomorrow.

Nick

Tour Update No. 3

Our September headline tour is now over! We had a great time, thank you so much to everyone who came out to a show!

Some photos of the last few days of the tour:

Birmingham. Gary Numan was DJing in the big room, went to have a look after our set, was weird.

Alex and Stoz.

Urinals in Birmingham Academy have flashing lights in them, which begs the question... Why can't all urinals be this way?

Dre - Birmingham.

Load in.

Lame photo No. 1.

Nottingham - Nando's search.

Nando's discovery!

Lame photo No. 2.

Blackhole / The Plight / Throats - September 2009.

All that's left to do is say thank you to The Plight, Throats, Danny, Chris, Neil, everyone who let us stay / shower / eat / make a mess at your house, and most importantly all you guys who came to see all of us play our songs.

We recorded an XFM live session last week, so expect a new blog post about that soon...

Nick

Blackhole - Live & In Session... Forever

'Blackhole - Live & In Session... Forever'

Filmed by Crashburn Productions, at Broadfields Recording Studios, Watford.

Our first headline tour of the UK ended last night in London, and we couldn't have hoped for a better way to finish the tour off. Thank you again to everyone who came to the show. I've got one more tour blog to upload, so that'll be coming very soon!

Nick