Alas the April tour is coming to a close and will culminate with a much anticipated show at the Bull & Gate in London this Saturday. Its been a thrilling ride, rushing up and down the country rocking hard, sometimes with the band, sometimes just the two of us but always giving it 110%. It’s getting better and better and it’s amazing meeting so many people after each gig. At the beginning of the Month we popped into Bristol’s Mr.Wolf’s (brilliant music/noodle bar combo, £1 to get in and you get a free shot!) to play at an open mic night. We rattled the audience with a three-song set, they really weren’t expecting our brand of music-making there and we were a refreshing surprise, so much so most of the audience, as promised came to see us the next day at our headline gig at The Fleece.

Our gig at The Fleece was exciting, the main support act pulled out and were replaced by Bristol freshly signed act, The Medalists. And I mean freshly signed, Gut records had signed the deal the day before and this gig became a showcase for the guys to play to their Record company. So we got the opportunity to meet their record company and smooze. We then played a blinder to a fantastic crowd and had a great night. We filmed it so one of these days I’m going to put a song or two on youtube. I’m putting the Ransom video on youtube this week in fact, but I’ll mail you all about that when it’s there, I can’t wait to hear what you’ll all think of it!

I played my home town – this was such a blast! The audience was mainly made up the guys I used to play in bands with when I first started out. It was a wonderful trip down memory lane, really nostalgic. Most of them are still rocking hard themselves which is great. Don’t know if it’s true but it seems like there are more people in bands per capita in Wales than anywhere else in the world. It’s as though everyone is in a band and because of this everyone is pretty bloody tasty. You have to be really quite accomplished to sign in this goldfish bowl, the standards are so high. Take the whole Welsh singing legend, it’s true about everyone having great voices you just need to look at the Welsh-speaking version of the X-factor – even in the very first preliminary stages all the contestants are amazing, there are no laughs to be had, no amazingly bad voices, just sheer, unadulterated talent! We’re playing with a fantastic band this Friday actually, Circle of One, their singer, Julian is one such typical example, his voice is incredible. I’ve wanted to play with these guys for ages so I’m sooooooooo excited. We are going to rock Ystard Mynach so hard! There’s this music venue there called The Whammy Bar, I’m sure it’s been done before but I think the name is just great.

We got to play the Hard Rock Café in Cardiff too. The stage is precariously constructed above and jutting over the bar (good job I had my Brigit Jones pants on!). Catching the eye of some dishy bargirl throwing liquor around and making cocktails during our performance was slightly distracting but I was more concerned with not toppling off the tiny precipice upon which I shook my stuff. I like to toss my head around a little and sometimes the temporary dizziness can come close to disastrous consequences, need to reign it in sometimes! Had another great night in this Welsh village absolutely bloody miles from anywhere, it was packed full of the craziest rugby type guys all out to have a fantastic time and the end of the night they were all shouting out offers for me to go home with anyone of them and it was hilarious. Instead of offering things such as how fit they were, the enormous size of their manhood, their fantastic wealth and prospects, their reputations of being brilliant in bed they started to compete with each other by how great their Mams (mothers) were!!! “Come home with me my Mam makes the best breakfasts in bed!”, “No come with me, my Mam makes the best Lasagne in South Wales!”, “No me, my Mam will play the piano for you, she’s brilliant!”!!!!!! Only in Wales eh? Or maybe Italy too! I thought this was just fantastic!

We got to go back to Rhyl and play the fabulous Bar Blu again. Always a great night and if you follow the links on Black Valve’s comment on our myspace page you can see some pics. You’ll notice a bit of a line-up change, our regular boys weren’t able to make it up North so we drafted in the help of the fantastic Deian Elfyn on drums and the amazing Matt Sage on guitar. These guys had less than 5 days to learn the tunes and we’d never rehearsed, hell we’d never even met and we just played the bloody gig, it was awesome. I was blown away by the level of their musicianship, utterly stunned. Seb had to get back on bass guitar, but I must say after initial resistance to him moving to guitar I am sold and I was a bit gutted not to see the Surf Green fender out of its case and being wielded by the Elsenburg! Mr. Wolf’s let us come back to play and we should be headlining there shortly, hooray. I really like it there. We also played in two of our favourite venues, The Farmer’s arms in Porthcawl and The Black Lion in Cardigan. We get to play there loads because there’s such a mutual love fest going on! Actually The Black Lion will be the scene of the new Dylan Thomas movie and will be graced with the presence of Keira Knightly and Lindsay Lohan. I’m hoping they’ll get bored one night and Michael and Petra at the Lion will call us in to entertain the crew…here’s hoping!

So peeps join us on Friday if you’re in Wales and don’t forget all you London fans to come and see us in the Bull & gate on Saturday, no lame work-next-day excuses now! We can all have a great night.