Hi all, this is Sime from the band Loon Lake – The following is a compelling piece of literature from our tour with Bluejuice and the Cairos.
N.S.W.
Ok so the first leg of the tour was N.S.W., which is nestled between Queensland and the mighty Victoria. A lot of good shit goes down in N.S.W. and in particular in the town of Wollongong. This was the first show of the tour – We had never been to Woolly, so I did what I do in every new town and that is to go and try a local hot dog, didn’t find any, settled for a souvi instead. After this I went and had a little geez through the town, and it was a little pissa from what I could see. I went down the beach and had a quick look at the waves – they were rolling in like they do and a few blokes were scoring some nice little rides, which made me jealous. The rest of the boys were asleep in the same bed whilst I did this.
That night we played the show – it was good fun. Sam our singer made a bush league mistake that night, he went on stage without enough beers. Fool. He elected to ask the crowd to buy him beers and in return he would buy them back when he gets off stage. The woolly champions complied with his request, in turn leaving Sam in an all time ‘shout’. Speaking of Bluejuice, we witnessed their fluro extravaganza for the 1st time, quite the spectacle. I went home after that, the other lads pushed on and apparently met some skater dudes and got ollied over.
The next day we pushed up to the epicenter of N.S.W., Tathra, Na Sydney. We love Sydney so much so that we spent the previous week there recording. Rippa of a town. The date of this particular show was Friday the 13th; we elected to purchase some really raucous masks to don for the gig. Heaps of good shit happened during that day. Notably, Nick our drummer had his 3rd feed of Mexican for the day, he loves that shit.
We rocked up to the Metro for the gig and as we were familiarizing ourselves with the venue, we heard this thunderous roar coming towards us. I turned around and noticed a herd of ‘youngins’ scampering towards the front rail to catch a glimpse of the mighty Cairos. Little to my knowledge that this was an underage gig as well. The kids were awesome they created an electrifying vibe. We wore our masks on stage – they turned out to be a real disaster – couldn’t see a thing which meant I missed about 400 notes in the first song.
That night we went out and partied like sick pricks, and then we went home and slept like even sicker pricks. I woke at 6:15am knowing that we had to get to the airport in about half an hr. to fly back to Melbourne for one of our best mates wedding. Incredibly Nick drove the rental car real ‘awesome to the max’ and we got to ‘check in’ with about a minute to spare. There was only one thing missing – Timmy our bass player. He is a dirty stop out; he missed the plane and is stuck in Sydney. Still. Suck shit.
W.A./S.A.
The next jaunt in the tour was W.A. We had to miss the Qld leg as Nick was all backed up on Mexican food. As a person and a band, I had never been to W.A. and I was incredibly excited about the hot dog situation and maybe running into a member of the West Coast Eagles premiership team circa ’92. Preferably Craig Turley.
The first stop we had was Margaret River. Before that though we had a 4 hr. hike down there with a plethora of music gear. You would not believe how we fitted in all the gear and ourselves in this car. Pointless and boring reading that last sentence would have been. We had an hr. to spare before the show so we decided to zip down to a town called ‘Gracetown’ which is great little surf town. The landscape down there blew me away, it really was the place where the desert meets the sea, and the waves were absolutely pumping. We were all pretty pissed off we didn’t have our boards.
The show was super fun at Margi River, we only got 20 mins on stage, so we decided to play as fast and hard as we could. We sounded like early Metallica that night.
The next day we zoomed back on up to Perth – via Yallingup-, which is the home of Taj Burrow and other residents that live there. I also purchased a real cloggy piece of chocy hedgehog down there – clogged the shit out of my mouth. Dan and Timmy continued to annoy the shit out of us by talking about coffee. Boring.
When we arrived at the accomo where our manager had booked us in for the night our eyeballs nearly popped out. The state of this joint was not unlike a public ‘shitter’. We sacked him the next day.
The show that night was pretty good fun, although drenched in technical problems. We lost our disheveled bass players bass for a fair proportion of the set – I made up for it by playing in ‘Drop D’ for the remainder of the night. Didn’t sleep that night – decided to drink through rather than habitat that shit hole we were booked in at.
The next day we flew to Adelaide. If that flight had gone down it would have been a bit of a blow to the young Aussie music scene. On that plane were Big Scary, Bluejuice, The Cairos, The Salvador’s and us.
Adelaide was a hoot again – The Cairos have some killer tunes in their set and every night I feel they get better. Nick and I went home early that night, we got pulled up by the ‘five 0’ on the way home, Nick had decided to not put the lights on. Top move. Don’t know what the rest of them did that night in Radelaide – couldn’t be bothered writing about it anyway.
VIC
The last leg of the tour was our home state Victoria. The first stop was Geelong. I haven’t got a great deal to say about the Geelong show, other than the lighting set up at the venue we played was out of control, I felt like I was in Daft Punk for a while. The Geelong crowd was really raucous for a school night. Thanks Geelong. Although we are sick of you guys winning the flag.
The next night we headed to Frankston for the first time. This is Dan’s stomping ground, so just before we went on he ran through a banner that said ‘Go Dan – You are the 2nd best lead guitarist in Loon Lake’. One thing we have been noticing on this tour is that the Cairos have been getting way more beers in their rider than us. We ended up stealing most of them in the end.
The next day we had the last shows of the tour. We played two shows that day, an underage one and an over the age of under one. They were both a real blast, I love playing the HiFi bar in Melbourne, the sound is great and it’s a great place to look out over the crowd. That night was pretty wild, I don’t really remember much other than dancing to Prince’s ‘Diamonds and Pearls’ and leaving my phone in a taxi.
Alright that’s about that from me. We had a real good time on this tour, we got to see some great new places and meet a heap of good faces. Thank you to everyone who came out and supported the show, we hope to see you all again very soon.
As you were.
Sime – Loon Lake
