Saturday
4am (GMT +9) – Raven happily dozes in bed
4.01am – Dan, Stew, Hannah crawl out of bed, head to airport. Matt already in Melbourne, fast asleep
5am - Raven happily dozes in bed
5.07am – Dan, Stew, Hannah arrive bleary-eyed and grumpy at airport. Stew is extra grumpy because he hasn’t had his morning coffee yet
5.25am - Raven happily dozes in bed
5.27am - Dan, Stew and Hannah try to down a coffee and breakfast before rushing off to plane
6am - Raven happily dozes in bed
6am - Dan, Stew and Hannah fly to Melbourne
8am - Raven happily dozes in bed, Matt heads off with friends for an enjoyable winery tour in the beautiful Yarra Valley
9am - Raven wakes, yawns, scratches himself, puts on pants, walks down stairs to have a slow cruisey breakfast
10am – Raven munches down vegemite toast while reading the ABC News and enjoying a coffee
11.15am (GMT +10) - Dan, Stew and Hannah land in Melbourne, struggle for hours with luggage and hire car
11.15am – Raven, now bored of waiting, texts “HURRY UP!” message to Stew
11.25am - Raven texts “HURRY UP!” message to Stew
11.28am - Raven texts “HURRY UP!” message to Dan
12noon - Dan, Stew and Hannah drive from airport to Raven Manor in Collingwood
12.30 – We all arrive at Yellowbird Café, Raven gets his usual table. Stew, Dan, Raven (and maybe Hannah?) fall in love with smoking hot waitresses (waiter for Hannah?)
Saturday afternoon we caught up with our friends, Blackchords from Melbourne and family, enjoying a quiet drink on the Southside (Raven apologies to his Northside friends in Melbourne, assuring them he isn’t about to cross the river). Saturday night Dan and Raven headed up to Northcote to hit a house party with our good friend from Moheak Radio Los Angeles, Bruce Ravid.
Sunday – Festival Day
Sunday dawned on festival day and after much fussing about achieving naught we headed down to soak up some rays at the festival. We enjoyed a nice afternoon lunch then hit the stage to play at the New Music Stage at St Kilda Festival, no doubt the highlight of this tour thus far.
We were invited by Dave from Pure Pop Records, St Kilda to do an exclusive after-show party at his record store so we headed over there and played another gig straight after our festival set. We enjoyed a slightly loose but enjoyable set there and Matt our drummer introduced us to Tim Rogers, who needs no introduction.
We finished up our weekend by dragging our now extensive entourage of about 30 people out to dinner at an Italian Restaurant on St Kilda Beach.
Monday
2:30am – Raven gets home, happily dozes in bed
4am – Dan, stew, Hannah wake up bleary eyed, head to airport…
..
5am - Raven happily dozes in bed…..you get the picture! ;-)
Good weekend!
-RDJ
Friday
Our regular reader will be by now greatly surprised about the fact that the Drawn from Bees family arrived at Sydney airport in usual style – drunk on Friday night. So much so that when my band failed to carefully pack the hire van, all of our bags ended up scattered along Sydney airport’s vehicle circuit.
The question of responsibility was debated vigorously between two parties, Jones who argued had the back been packed well by his band then the door he left open never would have had so much pressure as to open whilst driving, and a much weaker argument from the ‘rest of the band’ who illogically suggested the event would not have occurred had I closed the back door to the car properly.
Friday was a late arrival so we decided to invade James Manor and subject Dan’s parents to hours of our joviality while they made attempts at sleep.
Saturday
We were supposed to rehearse…….instead we drove a zillion miles out to the aptly named Blacktown, to do a radio interview with Jackie & Maz on SWR 99.7FM. We performed a couple of hung-over renditions of our songs acoustically and had much fun. Saturday afternoon was spent being rejected from every pub in Sydney as we sought a place that would allow our supposedly ‘teenage’ keyboardist, Hannah to eat with us.
Saturday’s gig was at the Oxford Arts Factory, which is one of our favourite venues. We enjoyed a grand evening before being taken out to be shouted drink by Raven’s brother (but paid for by Raven Endless-Pockets Jones). As Sunday began peering over the horizon we intelligently called it a night.
Sunday
Coffee & Breakfast Burritos at Envy. Perfection!
Raven D Jones
To celebrate 2012’s first Drawn from Bees Tour, guitarist Raven Jones has created a comic strip about 4 outlaws - Raven Midnight, Mutt Dog Riddle, Pochito Dan & Matty-Boy Smoking Gun, wreaking havoc on the WIld West! The “characters” are based on the members of Drawn from Bees…well, at least what they might wish they were!
Friday - Croc. Free day
We arrived in Darwin at midday on Friday had to head straight over the ABC radio for a live-to-air performance. Assuming the station allows the same freedoms as other ABC affiliates such as Triple J, I enhanced the vibrancy of the on-air discussion with the use of a few colourful words. I am a rock star and as everyone knows - I don’t need to consider the ‘normal rules’ that burden most folk when conducting myself in day-to-day rock star business. An awkward silence on the radio and panic from the station operators and DJ suggested otherwise as did the humdrum complaining of my band for days afterwards. To put the record straight let me reiterate. I am a rock star. Rules do not apply to me! (I know this because it’s what Elton John’s shrink tells him). Anyway I far digress…..
In the afternoon we trotted down to Darwin’s Ski Club to enjoy a beautiful sunset over the water as we had a band meeting (where else but a waterfront pub) and caught up with friends we have living at the top end. We enjoyed eating & drinking well into the night and were quite successful in avoiding any of us being taken by a crocodile.
Saturday
Saturday morning arrived at a constant but sweltering 35 degrees and we shuffled out into the humidity to seek breakfast. Then we headed over to the Crocodile Farm to watch a fascinating live snake show (We discovered that Matt has an irrational fear of these cuddly, scaled creatures) from a professional Darwin snake handler. Dan & I took turns holding a baby crocodile as we are the action men of Drawn from Bees and live for danger (hence my middle name swooning ladies…) At the Crocodile Park we also had the pleasure (?) of coming face to face with a 7 metre, 90 year old Crocodile that has eaten 3 people in its life. Apparently the last victim was decapitated in front of his family whilst fishing. Not a good picnic…
Saturday afternoon was spent trying to figure out how we were to get home the following day now that Alan Joyce had so eloquently grounded his entire airline and broke his contracts with 78,000 QANTAS passengers. Turns out they supplied us with a 5 star holiday which I shall come to in due course.
Saturday evening approached and we headed over the Railway Club to sound check for our gig. The venue and our promoters very much looked after us all night, keeping the Coopers beer running. On that note – I haven’t received any beer or money specifically from Coopers for mentioning their corporate business in my blog but I do expect so now…hint hint… Also – you can see I have no problems ‘selling out’ just show me the money!
Focus Raven focus…
Saturday night’s gig was excellent; we were supported by the talented & engaging Green Stone Garden who not only warmed the room into a frenzy for us but thoroughly impressed us with great songs and pristine vocal harmonies.
We headed on stage (minus our tour keyboardist, Hannah who was no doubt embroiled in the latest scandal of her other profession - Tea sales) and played to a very impressive crowd of about 170 people – no mean feat for a small town. We probably had half of Darwin there with us. Our bass player Stew was in remarkable form at the gig, regaling the crowd with personal stories and frustrations that I have no doubt left the obviously at a loss-for-words audience mesmerised.
We had a great night after the show, meeting lots of Darwin locals who very much made us feel right at home .
Sunday
Sunday as I mentioned earlier was meant to be our departure, but thanks to the QANTAS grounding we took full advantage of the crisis – exploiting it to our own ends. Realising we were committed to an unplanned holiday in Darwin, we had QANTAS put us up in a 5 Star Hotel and supply us with a per diem for food.
We spent the afternoon lazing poolside and ordering daiquiris by the dozen.
Sunday evening we took our in-band meatheads Axe & Matt to a steak house so they’d stop complaining about the impositions they believe they suffer being a minority among a vegetarian dominated band. Axe took the challenge of trying to eat the 1 kilo Mega Steak Meal but folded when he was in sight of the finish line – meekly complaining about stomach pain.
Meanwhile Stew dropped his best pickup lines on the pretty waitress – apparently she wasn’t snared into his discussion about his latest Fantasy TV show obsession – who’d have thought Sci-Fi and Fantasy wouldn’t get a young lass all hot and bothered….you live, you learn.
Monday
Monday had the band driving down to Litchfield National Park where we had a swim in a beautiful water hole situated at the base of two converging waterfalls nestled in a quiet corner of the National Park. Getting in touch with nature is always a good thing and we very much enjoyed a few hours splashing around with freshwater fish and swimming under the waterfalls.
Monday night had us enjoying a fine Italian dinner courtesy of QANTAS and saying farewell to our friends up in Darwin.
All said and done it was the prefect end to a really enjoyable tour.
Raven.
And so begins the truly remarkable parts of our tour- day trips to ole Toowoomba town and the Gold Coast. Some of the best destinations Queensland’s got to offer. Thanks Queensland! I imagine were Raven actually present and able to officially recount any of these gigs he’d throw in how comparatively wonderful Melbourne is - (aka HIS town – [despite his knowledge of the place being geographically redundant and only living there for a few short months] call it as you see it). But as it stands the duty of blog writing has fallen to his slightly less convincing, slightly less charming protégée, and so Melbourne can go un-commended this once.
After what was a very civilised and fashionably late drive with Dan all the way to Toowoomba we arrived to greet the remaining members of our band (sans Raven) and having missed a proper sound check, got ourselves a drink and prepared for what was understood to be a complimentary dinner. Upon discovering the only complimentary meal for ‘the band’ was spaghetti, we then decided to pay for food we actually wanted, and proceeded to eat some kind of sweet and sour pizza that made a thousand Italians roll over in their graves in unison. Onwards and upwards to the music! We had the lovely Buick Six supporting us, who played a mesmerising set to a very receptive audience. Where my thoughts would usually wander to fluffy animals and the current economic predicament during lengthy instrumental breakdowns, I found myself truly intrigued by their music. This was my first proper introduction to Buick Six and I consider myself very fortunate for the exposure, I hear the guy that recorded them has a band, and that they’re not half bad either. Our set then followed in a great effort to mimic such professionalism, playing to what can only be euphemistically described as an intimate audience. We performed an undeniably characterful set, and Raven made the least amount of mistakes on record. Well done Raven, the band recognises your achievements.
The trip home was an interesting one- most of the band left fairly promptly as they were sober enough to drive meanwhile Dan and I had to stay on a little while longer, Dan reducing his alcohol intake, while I, (in an beautifully acute example of indirect proportion) significantly increased mine in the knowledge I had the responsible task of being the chatterbox the whole way home to avoid Driver Dan from falling asleep in a moving vehicle. The plan was seamless. We pulled over only on very infrequent occasions for a nap on the side of the highway (like in all those endearing children’s lullabies) only to be woken by the force of passing semi-trailers driving by at 100km/hr. I’m sure we’d’ve appreciated the violent rocking to and fro if we’d had a solid foundation of knowledge in the laws of physics, however it soon proved tedious, as did the entire drive home, whereby I abandoned my duties of ‘keep-awake-chatter-box’ and slept the rest of the trip.
Next in line was the Gold Coast where another delightful drive was to be had. Having had such a good rest the night before we were all up for the task and couldn’t curb our enthusiasm to get back on the road. We arrived at the Gold Coast (we know this not because of road signs or GPS – but because Dan’s wife Rose was immediately wolf-whistled and shouted at by the same members of one passing car) completely refreshed and ready for another brilliant night of musical enlightenment. The loft is a really unique venue with a pleasant deck out the back perfect for schmoozing and boozing…we mainly boozed. There was also a nice esoteric edge to this venue as there was prepared prose and poetry in between sets and live art being painted out the back. The gig was great, we were lucky enough to string Buick Six along again who scored some good fans that night- one particular new fan enjoying their music so much so that he started vehemently demanding an encore during their second last song.
We then took the stage to play another impressive rendition of our tour set to a very pleasant crowd – possibly a slightly humbled crowd due to the sobering poems that preceded our performance. Everybody seemed to really enjoy the music with many a hi-five and handshake to seal our success at the end of the night.
It is at this point I would like to return the torch of literary narcissism back to Lord Raven – whose benevolence in this matter shall not be forgotten.
Hannah
