Put Your Slippers On Tour Blog

Hello,

We're back from our first ever headline tour!

Our 2000 mile journey started with a trip to Bush Hall in London. The venue was amazing:



They also had the biggest kettle in the world:



We then drove to Luton to stay at a friend's house for the night. The next day we went to Leeds to play at Royal Park Cellars.



After the show we went to stay at the Rosie Taylor Project's house. The following morning I went to a park for a walk and met a guy called G-Dawg with a gold tooth. I was a bit scared. Once I got back from my walk we got back on the M1 and drove up to Edinburgh to play at Cabaret Voltaire.

We ended up playing at one of their club nights, going on stage at 12. We were rather apprehensive about it, but it turned out to be really great. People were dancing to our music! Not something we thought we'd ever see...



Long story, but we ended up having to drive back to North Wales after we played. I drove through the night, and we got back at 6.30 in the morning. Hardcore! We then had a couple of days in the studio before heading down to Bristol to play at Start the Bus.



Two people were dancing at the front again! Maybe we've gone dancier since our last tour...

The following day we drove back to London to record an XFM session for John Kennedy. We were wrongly directed down to the basement to park and ended up getting stuck!



We were locked in, but thankfully I had the number for XFM in my phone so I could get someone to move the car that was blocking the exit. After the kerfuffle we got to work:





Tea!



We were done by around 5, so we had the rest of the evening to have fun in Luton at our friend's house. We played Frustration, Top Trumps and cards.





The next day we went to another park in Luton. It was fun.







Then we decided to have a business meeting:



After the fun we headed back down to London to play at a small intimate venue called Monkey Chews.



We then went to stay with Inigo, who is the drummer in Klaus Says Buy the Record. He has a lovely house and studio near Tunbridge Wells. He has sheep!



And a parrot! He told me he loved me. Aww.



Next up was a show in Brighton at Talking Heads. A definite highlight of the the tour.



We spent another night in Tunbridge before going to Southampton to play at Talking Heads.



After soundcheck we met up with our good friend Luke Leighfield to go for dinner. It was Ad's birthday so we decided to go for a proper meal. By complete chance we ended up going to place where you could eat for free if it was your birthday! A full three courses, too.



We stayed over at Luke's, and then made our way home for a couple of days. Becca and I went over to Spain to visit my brother during our time off. It was amazing I did my best to promote T&S while I was there...



When I got back we had our last two gigs of the tour. The first one was back down in London to play a Local night at The King's Head in Crouch End. We played with Dan Michaelson and the Coastguards, who are a super group made up of members of Absentee, Ed Harcourt, Magic Numbers, Rumblestrips and Fields. It was ace. Really busy, too.



After yet another night sleeping in Luton we made our way up to Birmigham to play at St Paul's. It was the launch night for the new EP by Mr Bones and the Dreamers, and we played at this lovely venue:



We like churches. It was another busy one, and proved to be a nice ending to our tour.

Thank you to everyone who came to see us, we had a great time. Hopefully we'll be out on tour again at the end of June, so hopefully we'll see you again then!

In other news, yesterday I finished off a remix for The Answering Machine's next single Obviously Cold. Hopefully I'll be able to show it to you soon.

Tim and Sam x

Tim and Sam's new HQ

Hello,

We've been busy beavering away behind the scenes so we thought it'd be nice to let you know what's been going on. Here's a bit of background info:

We've been rehearsing and recording demos in the spare room of my house since we formed. You can see what it looks like here:



As you can see it's a bit of a squeeze!

We recently decided to try and get a bit more room. The plan is to move to the upstairs of my house. This involves converting two bedrooms and a hallway into one big room! Pretty exciting.

As we're on a pretty tight budget, I've done most of the work myself. This first thing I had to do was remove all the doors, and then we made a start on demolishing the stud walls.

Here's some pictures of the progress:

Look how manly I am!





You wouldn't mess.



It took three days to remove all of the doors, walls and carpet. This is what remains:







Despite my obvious man skills, we've got to wait for the builders to come in now. They're going to remove the supporting wall and replace it with wooden post. They're also going to sort out the electrics and do some plastering.

Once that's done I'll update the blog with more developments. Hopefully by the end of it the room will be big enough to start filming some of our rehearsals and things like that.

UPDATE:

Builders are still working, but progress has been made:





UPDATE 2!

We're done! Once the builders finished we spent a few days painting, carpet laying and putting up hooks. Check it out:







Thanks for reading,

Tim and Sam x

Tim and Sam's Mini-Adventure

Hello,

This week we've been away on our travels to London, Brighton and Canterbury.

On Tuesday we set off to London for the first night of our residency. For those of you who don't know, we've organised four shows at The Big Chill House, near Kings Cross station in London. The purpose behind these shows was to test out some of our new material, whilst at the same time asking some of our favourite bands to play with us. The original plan was to start them on February 3rd, but the snow came down so we had to cancel the first one.

So, we left the T&S North Wales HQ at around 11. Highlights of the journey included passing the 133333 mile mark on my car, and some drink driving:



The night started with Wise Children, who we've been myspace friends with for quite a while. They were a few members down tonight, but it was great to finally see them play. They make lovely acoustic music.

Then came Babel, who are a Bristol based folk rock band. They were amazing. Make sure you go and get their new album.

Some pictures of our set:









There are more pictures on our myspace if you'd like to have a look.

We were really pleased with our first night. We got two encores! Totally unexpected but really very appreciated. There's a lovely review of the night here:

http://tinyurl.com/cohf5j



After a healthy bout of merch selling we packed up our car and headed to Luton to stay with a friend.



The following day we set off nice and early to Brighton. The first thing we did was went for a round of mini-golf. This is becoming a bit of a tradition. Fordy won, with Adam and I just a single point behind.





Golf is thirsty work. We decided that now would be a good time to go a drink. We found a lovely tea shop.







After our tea we went to the Hope for our gig. We didn't get two encores this time, but it was a good gig nonetheless. We like Brighton.

On to the final date of our mini-tour. We decided to make another early start to explore Canterbury. People there are tiny.



And they must have one leg shorter than the other:



We started to get thirsty again. We found this aptly named shop:



The tea room is also the most haunted place in Canterbury. Scary.



We did a bit more exploring and then went to the venue. We were pleasantly surprised to find a baby grand on stage! We decided that we'd like to take one on tour with us someday. Practical.

The gig went well again. We got a 45 minute set! We're so used to play for half an hour, it felt good to play an extra few songs.

I think that's everything. Thank you very much to everyone who came to see us.

We've got some very exciting news on the horizon :). More on that soon.

Tim and Sam x