Entering a New Year and into the Recording Studio!

Milford Sound. Technically it's a Fiord, not a sound!

  Coming home is part of the reason I go on tour and this time, upon my return, I find myself in deepest Herefordshire remembering some of the greatest tour moments for many a long year.  

After all the hectic travel around this planet I count my blessings that I have a quiet private life in an area of outstanding natural beauty to return to.

 We seemed to raise our game during the European tour, specifically the Iberian leg. How or why is a wonderful mystery but we rode the wave in style right down into Dunedin in the south of New Zealand.
.

 After getting an MRI Scan and seeing a sports injury specialist, my knee felt quite normal and the meds were working. In Auckland a bike ride was arranged out on Waiheke Island, and we rode 35 kilometres on our electric bikes. No one got injured, although Gaz Fail almost lost it on a fast downhill right hander. He gathered a considerable amount of undergrowth in the moving parts of his transport system and almost parked it in the hedge. The end result was him looking like the commander of our camouflaged support vehicle. 

  The Forsyth Barr Stadium was our last show for 2017. My drum tech Justin Welch had been exceptional the whole year solving little problems and remembering all the things I would forget, so I presented him with an engraved 'over and above' Pretenders tour medal as a memento and a NZ highway police hat. He seemed quite pleased.

 We were invited to the stage by Stevie and said our farewells to the Nicks band only to see them again at the airport 16 hours later. Everyone flew off to Auckland and home and I went to pick up my 4x4 rental car. I was heading west to Milford Sound for some peace and quiet.

Last gig.

  Oddly enough, the following day I started off playing 3 or 4 songs with my good friend Jimmy Taylor at 5 in the afternoon in a bar in St. Clair on the coast. I then visited the only mainland albatross colony in the world and saw the magnificent royal albatross. 

 After 6 hours sleep I drove to Gore where I stopped for a bracing cup of tea and carried on to Te Anau on the lake for supplies. 

  I needed this time alone but now having no work on at all the 'end of tour rundown bug' attacked me and I felt as if I was all stuffed up with a cold. This stayed with me until I caught another bug in Los Angeles on my way home.

LA friends.Carmen Vandenberg, exceptional guitarist of Bones!

 Whilst in New Zealand, I stayed in a back packers hostel and made a few friends. I walked miles, got buzzed by nesting terns and encountered a lot of wildlife that I couldn’t readily identify. Now in my element, I sneezed my way through a pleasant week.

 I caught my flight from Dunedin to Auckland in the morning of Saturday the 2nd of December and then on to Los Angeles through the night. I arrived at LAX at 10.30am on Saturday the 2nd December, gaining a day.

The following day the phone rang and it was Johnny Borrell from Razorlight asking me to help him make his new album. Although I had many things going on when I got home, I figured I should do it and told him I would call him upon my return.

Meanwhile I drove up to Mulholland to look at the gathering firestorm.

M.D.C.