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The Dudley Corporation - tour diary 12/09/02 Schubas, Chicago with Ancient Greeks and Judah Johnson. So it begins. Poor Pip had to spend a night in Stansted airport before continuing on the heroic Ireland to London to Iceland to New York to Chicago trip, and Dudley and Joss spent 2 days shopping like whores for their country in New York with the magnificent Jon Pack. We were such tiredy men, and having to learn to drive in a country with wrong roads added to the stress, but we still had a pretty great opening gig. Nerves and exhaustion conspired to make things a little ropey, but we couldn't have asked for a better start. What's already been great so far has been the hospitality of our American friends. In some way I think we've been a nice distraction to them from all the September 11th brouhaha. Odd time to be here. 13/09/02 Ryan's Ballroom, Combined Locks, WI with Sounds Like Braille. 5 hours after setting off from Chicago we finally arrived in the bizarrely named town of Combined Locks, and initially we were enveloped with the fear. The place has a population of 3000 and we reckoned most of them have probably been guests on the Jerry Springer show. As there was no one at the venue when we got there, we took a little walk around only for the local sheriff to start following us. We doubled back to the venue after a while to see him examine the grass we'd been stood on to see what kind of miscreanting we'd been up to. Thankfully, the gig side of things was great. Admittedly not the best turnout the world has ever seen, but they seemed really appreciative that someone had come off the beaten track to play their town, and the guy who owned the venue was amazing, an auld fella called Bill. He was intrigued by Joss's name. "Jush?" "No, Joss." "I love it! I wish my name was Joss!" Also have to mention Sounds Like Braille, who were one of that rare breed of people who are insanely nice and helpful. They made the night especially great. 6 hour drive tomorrow! 15/09/02 Macalester College, St Paul, MN with Faux Jean and Mike Brady. Ooof, lots of blood as Dudley sliced his fingers to bits for the 3rd night in a row. Good rocking, Zak from Low came out and we met some especially lovely people. We ended up going back to a chap called Chris's house, who introduced us to the joys of a keg party. Well, sort of. Pip did initiate some soul dancing 'til the wee hours as a gaggle of American ladies demanded to see his swan dives. And who is he to disappoint a lady, eh? 16/09/02 Big V's, St Paul, MN with Mike Merz, Tracelement and Tekulzi. I'm writing this diary entry after today's disaster, but I reckon I'll get to that in a minute. Big V's, on first impression, gave us the fear again. It was a regular small bar in a not so nice neighbourhood more suited to pub bands. How and ever the fear was soon eroded as yet again we met a thoroughly amazing bunch of people, in particular Maleek, Becky and Mike who were graceful enough to let us sleep in their house. We rocked reasonably, Dudley's hands yet again were shredded and Pip found himself pansied by the local ale... but on to today's event. We set off back for Chicago only for the van to break down on us. The cost of repair is said to be $1600 so it's out of action. We crawled back to Chicago, relaxed and ate some Indian food, and are going to deal with it all tomorrow. 17/09/02 The Iron Post, Urbana, IL with Lorenzo Goetz and The Invisible. Phew, after much panic we made it back to Chicago late last night and took our friend Cherie out for a much-deserved meal. Sadly, we've had to hand over a lot of money to rent a van to see us through the rest of the tour and it's not even half as nice as the old one. Thankfully we'll get going though. This show in Urbana has proven the best yet, the difference in our playing between 5 days ago and tonight is astonishing - everything was so effortless. The method here as well, of simply setting up your gear when you're due to play (no soundchecks) has forced us up a gear. After the gig and the countless free pitchers we decided to drive on to Bloomington to stay with Jason Molina. We got here at 3am and stayed up 'til 5am on his porch drinking some fine fine bourbon. If these are the hardships of touring I think I can handle a couple more weeks! 18/09/02 Bears, Bloomington IN with Songs:Ohia and Justin Vollmar. God bless the Knob. In an incredibly gracious move, Jason:Ohia allowed us to headline tonight's gig. Bloomington is an amazing wee town, in the heartland of the American south. I kept expecting the Dukes of Hazard to roll around a bend at anytime. Gig was ok, maybe tiredness is setting in. Pip imbibed a hellalot of the Knob and was quite the spectacle. Then again I'm sure we all were. The Songs:Ohia set was spectacular and afterwards we ended up listening to Mettalica 'til the wee small hours making sure we intook of every last drip the sweet Knob had to offer. 19/09/02 Beachland Ballroom, Cleveland, OH with Centr-O-Matic, The Bigger Lovers and Dakota Floyd. After last nights not so great show we were back on fiery form tonight, though it's a miracle we played at all what with poor Pips failing health at the hands of the previous nights Knob. It was all good though and we managed to catch up with out pal Sorcha from the lovely Dakota Floyd who threatened to slit the throats of anyone in the venue who declined to purchase our CD's. I'll not say what the take-up/slaughter rate was. Starting to get misty eyed that we're past the halfway point of the tour. Cry. 20/09/02 State Control Records, Ann Arbor MI with Judah Johnson and The Red and The Black. Yet another night of hijinks and ribaldry. Tonight's show was in this ace tiny little record shop in Ann Arbor, which by far has been the nicest city we've been to so far, an exceptional amount of good looking humans wandering the streets. The people from the shop were lovely, and bought a ton of stock from us, and the gig was great fun. Afterwards Pip drank some strange cocktail and ended up climbing some fragile 60ft high tree that tottered dangerously in the wind. What a monkey. I have to include here the diary listing from the Red and the Blacks website: "The real action began when we went to Rodrigo's. Upon our escape back there, we knocked a few back with 2 of the boys from the Dudley Corporation. They're from Ireland, doing a short tour of the US. They're a kick ass band (a hyped up math rock wedding present with John Entwistle on bass) and as one might expect of the Irish, great lovers of the drink. Mike grabbed a choose your own adventure book (Travis, one of the housemates, collects them) from the house and we had a group reading of "Rock and Roll Adventure" with Mike and I doing lots of funny voices. Speaking of funny voices, the longer Travis talked to the two Irishmen, the thicker a brogue he developed. He was quite a character and very androgynous. Then (and I think this happens often) Pip from Dudley Corp. climbed a nearby tree! He got about 30 feet up, taller than the nearby houses with limbs snapping and the whole tree swaying. Dialogue snippet: "Monkey, what can you see from up there?" "I see...the moon!" -Rob" 21/09/02 Cedars, Youngstown OH with Dakota Floyd. An odd one this. We had been meant to play DC tonight but thanks to some spectacular incompetence the show fell through. With amazing swiftness and generosity Dakota Floyd got us on a bill with them back in Ohio. Youngstown is an odd place, an industrial town which was pretty much deserted on a Saturday night. We still had fun though and hanging out with the Floyd was a boon. The foolish decision to drive to DC straight after was possibly not a good one and entailed sleeping overnight in the van in some truck stop. We all feel pretty unwell today. 22/09/02 Galaxy Hut, Arlington, VA with Firedean and Lying In States. Firedean was unusual to say the least. And I will say the least. The gig was great fun, tiny but lovely little bar just over the road from DC. The other band, Lying In States, were in pretty high spirits and lot of imbibing took place. We went back to where we were staying and enjoyed some more philandering and boozing. So much so that Pip dressed up in a Tigger suit, did some northern soul dancing and had a naked man sit on top of him. Then Pip and the naked man ran down the road to the zoo and tried to break into the monkeys at 3am. Why must this tour ever end? 23/09/02 Pete's Candy Store, NY. Pete's is a very small and lovingly appointed venue that looks like it's been built inside a tram. It's not a place suited to loud rocking due to a dispute they have with a neighbour, so we had to turn down the volume tonight and with it the pace. We got to play a lot of older pinker songs, which, despite some ropey memory, was a nice break. In Pete's there's no door charge and to make money a tip bucket is passed around the crowd. Pip and Claire the monkey made the rounds with Pip claiming the funds were for Claire who had run out of banana beer. She did surprisingly well by the end of the night. Only 2 more US gigs left. 8( 24/09/02 Arlene's Grocery, NY. Another odd one this. There appeared to be a metal showcase in the venue before we played and the place was a little overwhelmed with big hair and tight leather pants. We acquitted ourselves reasonably well though, and oddly enough the pink tunes seemed to go down best. We were a little lethargic on stage as minutes prior to playing we ate what must have been the largest Chinese meal of all time. No, really, of *all* time. 25/09/02. The Druid, Boston with Tigersaw. Fuckin' hell. We got to Boston in fairly low spirits. The New York gigs weren't so great and we were worried our first trip to America would finish on a low ebb, but this was incredible. By far and away the most fun we've *ever* had playing music. The place was packed and going nuts, Pip was jumping up and down between songs! Dudley ran about throughout the crowd and we sold a *lot* of CD's. I wish we'd not bothered with New York and spent the time in Boston. T.O.P.F.U*.K.I.N.G.J.U.M.S 28/09/02 Grand Rokk and Hljomalind Instore, Reykjavik, Iceland with 200% and Desibia. Best story 'til last. We arrive in Iceland at around 5.40 am. The very first thing that happens is that as our taxi saunters along, another one full of young Icelandic ladies pull alongside. They start screaming obscenities at our driver who admonishes them to go home, at which one of the girls leans out the window and drolly says, "You are an old man, you have old balls!" Brilliant! So we slept all day and got to the record store at 3, played a brief but fun show and slept some more. Bjorks son's band was the support for the evening show, and while not terribly good, they were fun to watch. He apologised after that he couldn't stay around for us because he was so tired and needed to go home to masturbate feverishly! The gig itself was amazing and pretty much equalled Boston for fun and people whooping and screaming. We were also very drunk due to a never ending supply of free booze. "Here are 18 free drink tokens, you will take these for starters." Joss *loved* 'for starters' and it became his catchphrase for the night. I hazily remember him walking through central Reykjavik at 5am with a bin liner full of free drink. We got to some party where this couple wouldn't let anyone into the bathroom. Dudley finally got in and the couple refused to leave until he said he was catholic and couldn't pee in front of them. So as they were walking out the door he told them he lied only for the girl to start screaming at him 'WHAT A FUCKING ASSHOLE!' Magical. We all got to bed in broad daylight, and Pip slept through to 6pm. The next day we called back to Grand Rokk to collect gear and the owner ushered us in and gave us more free beer. He'd gotten to bed at 9am, gotten up shortly after, been swimming and was already on to his 4th pint of the day upon our arrival. He took great pride in giving us each posters of the movie that had been made about Grand Rokk and showing us people from the poster who were currently sat at the bar. He then told us how half the folks have since died. No wonder with that kind of lifestyle! Our last treat for the whole tour was a trip to the Blue Lagoon, which was spectacular and an amazing way to finish up. Apparently we're back to Iceland and the Faeroe Islands next July. Superb! Dudley The Dudley Corporation