I don't know how I managed it after staying up way too late the previous night but I arose to greet the early morning and scooted around to mum's for a quick bite and head out to pick up Drew. It was a beautiful day and drew and I pulled into Sorell and picked up some supplies and a curried scallop pie which Drew terminated with alacrity. Mission accomplished and I dropped Drew at mum's before popping around the corner to gather the rest of the crew for a big nosh up. Operations were in full swing upon our return and soon there befell a ominous silence broken only by sound of the band feeding.

We had a big day in front of us so the first thing we did was lounge about after breakfast and talk loads of regulation bullshit. It was a relaxing morning and fortuitously so given our new timeslot. Had the ABC slot gone ahead as usual we would have been standing outside the ABC wondering what to do with ourselves for the next 5 hours. Instead we would even get the luxury of a relaxed build up to the day's affairs and a rehearsal to boot. Someone was smiling upon us. As we left mum's for Jane's rehearsal space, she reckoned the five crows passing was a good sign. It was looking pretty good so far.
We were rehearsing acoustically, through laziness more than necessity. Ever since Dave's place in Burnie upon the first night when we had to run through things acoustically and it worked wonderfully, it seemed natural not to plug in. Having the mics there simulates the stage sound one gets at a show but is a lot more work to set up, and mix, and that's on top of playing. Somehow we'd managed to get away without a mixer on tour so far. It had been a relatively simple job to mix from onstage at Rosebery and Wynyard but I hadn't seen Brookfield before. I had, sort of, planned to get my sister Jane to rustle up a friend of hers but as it turned out I never got around to it and so here we were, our key gig only hours away and no mixer. It hadn't even crossed my mind. No one else said anything so I didn't bring the subject up.

I did need to look for ways to cut back on my extracurricular band activity, though, and so preserve some of my remaining energies. The tour had had it's stressful moments, nothing overwhelming, but enough to keep the senses tingling for too long every day. I still managed to look like a mess only every other day. This tour was a learning curve, in that respect. Whereas every other tour had been pretty much by the numbers once it was arranged, this tour seemed, alarmingly at times, spontaneous. Arrangements were adjusted and readjusted, sometimes hourly.
Getting in the local paper's top five gigs for the weekend, with a little blurb, took the edge off any anxiety. We were travelling well and catching all those grumpy commuters in drive time sounded like a touch of serendipity to me. We loaded up and shipped out to the ABC Hobart.

Everything went like clockwork once we arrived and we were ushered in, we set up the gear, and blew through Transmission. Its a good song to warm up vocally and dynamically and isn't taxing from a playing perspective. The engineers seemed to be very complimentary of our covers, we did Kung Fu Fighting as well, and soon we were giving the thumbs up. Too easy.
We left our gear and were ushered toward the cafeteria, where we set up camp and introduced ourselves to a genuine ABC coffee. We had a bit of time to kill before we went on so we took a few photos and waited patiently.

The it was all on and over in no time. It felt good though. I couldn't wait to hear the CD. We could pick one up on Monday. We left the ABC studios feeling pretty pleased. It was quite pleasant hanging out at the front of the ABC in the afternoon light, goofing off and looking at the mountain. We finished our ciggies and hit the trail.
Into town we went and through towards the southern distributor. Up the mountain and over the saddle and once again ploughing down toward the fork in the road and beyond, Margate and Brookfield.
It was a duly impressive structure and old, and had seen a few different careers. Currently it was serving as an up and coming venue in the channel country south of Hobart. Surrounded by vineyards on the creek flats as you come into town, it has a atmosphere of tranquil rurality that Tassie is renown for. The perfect venue for us. On this both Glendi and I were certain.

While the place itself fulfilled its promise both inside and out in terms of a venue, the PA system left a little to be desired.
Phono plugs, Uh oh. They had three mics I had four but more importantly, I had two canon to phono connectors. I don't know why I through them in but they were very handy now. Mics, a DI and I could go through the amp we brought. There was no foldback so we tuned the PA as best we could and ran through a few songs to get our bearings. It all seemed pretty sweet in the end so we retired for a meal and waited for show time.

The food was delicious. We certainly were eating well since we'd arrived even if we'd accomplished nothing else.
There were a good portion of Glendi's family in the audience and my sister Jane and her friends, and, as it happened, Roger, the rep from Cygnet 2008 committee. Before we started Roger made an announcement to the audience about us being officially on the 2008 bill. Finally we can talk about it. Not that we haven't, quietly, but now we can shout it. It gave us a bit of tonic as we took the stage.
Not too bad. Hard work but not too bad. That was the analysis from the first set. It was a long one and I was glad to finish up. Queen of the Castle, and Submission certainly picked it up towards the end. There were a few minor technical hitches but we were pretty sure we'd ironed them out.

The second set was a little troublesome and, like the first set, we had to work hard to keep the momentum. Everything was there but the sound was a bit, full, or something. We picked up again with Wave of Mutilation, an old Pixies song and always good to get an audiences attention back on the main deal. Still, it was a good feeling when the end of the set arrived. We had set ourselves a daunting 30 songs for the night and given the length of some of our tunes, each set was to be a little over an hour. That's a lot of songs. Well, we only had Drew for the one night as he was to fly back to Melbourne tomorrow so make use of him while we've got the opportunity. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves and we noticed quite a few people singing along to the album songs. That was very gratifying.

The final fling and we'd saved all of our biggies till last. It worked the best of all but boy was I stuffed when we finished. Literally. It is about as high energy as grumpy neighbour and while we don't jump around and head bang, there is a lot of wind moved through vocal chords. Land Grab, Night Flight, Shivers and Simple Truth all call for a fair bit of wind. But it went well. There were some obvious things that needed to be worked on a bit more but by and large the band had risen to the challenge and got us through. We all felt pretty chuffed as we packed up the gear and proceeded to organise lifts and destinations. Even after we'd lingered over the loading of the equipment, we hung around in the car park soaking up the atmosphere. We weren't getting too excited but we were reasonably pleased with our efforts.
Spike was getting a lift back to Macquarie St, an absent sister's house, with Jane, and Glendi and I would meet them back there, have a quick tour, and then continue on to Jane's while Jane continued house sitting duties. We would meet Drew and Jen back at Carlton Beach. Drew had a late flight the following day so he was unlikely to be retired upon our return. Jen might be a bit bushed though. She had held up well under the strain of a grumpy neighbour, and in fact would become only the third person to complete an entire grumpy tour. The full grumpy as it were. None of the many musicians we have played with on our tours have played all the gigs in any tour until this one. So far so good.

Macquarie St was to have been our headquarters but as circumstances worked it proved to be untenable. Maybe in January. Jane duly gave us a bit of a tour, particularly of the basement, presumably servants quarters when the building was still young. It is old and big and is perfect grumpy territory. We thanked Jane, a true grumpy, and set off for Carlton Beach.

The car was a chatfest of bullshit, ripe and ready, and flowed as easily as did the miles as we cruised back to Carlton Beach. The core message of our post mortem on the show was that we can do better. We just dressed it up a little for a dfew miles and then for a few hours more, back at Camp Grumpy.
We're not known as the bullshit brothers without reason.