Northlane Tour Diary Part 2: "Farewell, Bloom"
Australia’s Northlane just wrapped their their North American tour with Bring Me The Horizon and Of Mice & Men. Guitarist Josh Smith takes you behind the scenes of their life on the road with this AP-exclusive tour diary.
If you’re in a band, at the end of every awesome tour, you will always look back on it with a feeling that it ended too quickly, and you miss your new friends already. Usually that’s mixed with the excitement of heading home to family, partners and friends for the first time in weeks, sometimes months. Unfortunately, I’m only feeling the rough end of post-tour crap, as we just arrived in the U.K. for the start of another five weeks on the road, this time with Architects UK and Stray From The Path. You can probably tell that I’m a hell of a lot more jaded than I was two weeks ago. It’s mostly jet lag, hunger and sleep deprivation, but it’s cool to see some old friends again.
It was awesome to play intimate clubs for the first two weeks we spent in the U.S.A but there’s nothing quite like stepping onto a big stage, with a roaring PA and a massive crowd. It’s an adrenaline rush that really can’t be matched. This was the reality of the second part of our time in the States. We started the Bring Me The Horizon dates with a huge show in freezing cold Detroit. This show was at a hockey stadium, which was just insane, and it was a mini-fest, so we got to see a heap more bands than usual. Good times, but they were short lived. Because we were crossing into Canada, we had to give away our tour pet fish, Bloom. From that moment on, the tour was never the same, and being on the wagon mostly sucked, but at least he went to a good home.
Straight from Detroit we jumped into the Bandwagon and headed north, for two nights in one of our favorite cities: Toronto. We had a great time in Toronto, partied hard and then headed to the coldest place on Earth: Montreal. We love Montreal too, but it doesn’t really have any special significance to us as a band. None of us really like poutine either, but people there just go crazy for music. It’s always fun to play to a rowdy crowd and it was one of the best shows we’ve ever had.
By this time of the tour, we were all really worn out. Most of us were walking around like our grandmothers because sleeping in the BandWagon had screwed up our backs, and the cold was just relentless. That was ok though, because a few days later we were in New York City. I don’t know how many of you have been to Times Square, but our venue was right in the middle of it. Imagine waking up kind of hungover and getting rushed out of bed right into the middle of a few thousand people with no idea where you are. It’s kind of weird but such an insane place to be.
We had two nights in New York and took some time to do a few things around the city and catch up with some friends and industry people. Adrian [Fitipaldes, frontman] woke up early the first morning and met his favorite artist, Alex Gray. Later that night, we all went to a bar called Smith’s with the other bands and drank these horrid concoctions called “Go fuck yourself.” I guess they helped us bond earlier in the night, but wow it wasn’t worth it the next day. I won’t hold that against the bar though; they do serve some insane nachos. Every time I leave New York City, I feel like it’s never been long enough, and this time was no different. We headed to Philadelphia next.
By now the BandWagon was getting a little worse for wear on the inside: cupboards weren’t closing properly anymore and a few people had cereal boxes fall on their heads. That wasn’t too bad though compared to our door opening at 4 a.m. on the freeway by itself. At least nobody fell out.
The show in Philly was awesome. Sadly, though, that was the last night of the tour for us. We were scheduled to play two more shows, but the roads were closed due to bad weather, and the shows were cancelled. This meant hanging out in freezing cold Philly for two days and then heading to Europe. To fight off the cabin fever, we visited the famous steps Sylvester Stallone ran up in Rocky. (They weren’t really that tall at all.) Then we walked down to Love Park, which is supposed to have a fountain but it was frozen. By this point we couldn’t feel our feet, so we caught a cab back to the wagon. That was the last cool thing I did in America.
Until next time!
