Down on the South Island now, in Dunedin... we are criss-crossing back and forth between the east and west coasts, few more shows here and we head for the North. Really looking forward to Milford Sound, but yeah, this is a beautiful country, and the Kiwi's are great! (great pic Polly!)
Not going to Australia, although our flight here did go through Sydney, only saw the inside of the airport as to avoid customs and our layover was only a few hours.
The band doing this is Jay Spectre, pretty sure the myspace link is in my sig, it's got all the dates and some pics on the blog if anyone is interested... mix of rock, funk, folk and some swing - stuff to get people dancing, which they have been
I have to give a shout out to The Ontario Arts Council, we were awarded an touring grant that pretty much covered our plane tickets, van and gear rental. We are staying in hostels or at 'new' friends places, buying groceries and trying to avoid spending a lot of money, our budget at the moment is showing $52 in the black - we aren't making any money, but the band is essentially paying for a month long trip of NZ, no complaints here!
I rented a kit and brought down my cymbals, snare and kick pedal - (a little concerned that I'm going to have to check my cymbals now with the current state of flying through the US, I bought a soft case specifically for the trip (Rock-Steady, which is awesome btw...)). The kit I got was from a mate as opposed to a store or hire company, 90's Tama Rockstar, good Sonar and Gibraltar hardware, but the drums themselves are rough - had to 'fix' a leg on the kick, basically put a bolt through it and tightened it and left it... reso skin on rack tom missing a lug screw, tuning was horrible until I could get to a music shop, same with the floor tom that was missing 2 lug screws... kick reso held on with 3, yes 3 screws. Not as much worried about it as I am the toms, I'll make do. Have them sounding passable now, but it took a few shows and some time but I got there, definitely better than spending the multiple hundreds we were quoted for a proper hire, our guitar amp cost $600 for the month...
Had an indecent with my digital camera and the tide coming in while watching the sun rise on the first morning we were here, picked up a new one yesterday - lesson learned... rocks really close to the water don't make good tripods in coastal regions, especially when you are up late enough to watch the sunrise when drinks were covered by the bar...
To make this thread less me-centric, I'd love to hear from some about when they first felt that (potentially years), of hard work finally paid off...
Arohanui!