Deaf Havana – 2nd ROAD BLOG from U.S. Tour with Ash

The UK-based rock band, Deaf Havana, is currently on their first U.S. tour ever supporting the Northern Irish alternative rock band, Ash. While they are on this tour, the band’s lead vocalist/rhythm guitarist, James Veck-Gilodi, will be writing a blog to tell you about the experiences he is having with his band while on this tour. You can check out the second entry, after the break.

February 2, 2014 – Phoenix, AZ
Onwards to Phoenix! After what was possibly one of the strangest drives ever we arrived in Phoenix. Unfortunately for us or anyone else planning on doing anything today, it happened to be the Super Bowl, Seattle vs Denver, so our hopes for people showing up tonight were pretty low. We were greeted by a dingy bar called Rips, much to our surprise the people there were lovely and probably the friendliest people we have met yet in the US. We didn’t have anything to do for pretty much the whole day so we sat in the bar, played pool, and drank fireball. We met this crazy but lovely guy called Beau who we drank with and ended up hanging out with for the entire evening! Due to the limited time for soundchecking (because the Super Bowl was being played on a giant screen in front of the stage), and the fact that the stage was extremely small, we decided to play as a 3 piece so myself, Max and Matthew played a stripped down set. As predicted the turnout wasn’t particularly good but we still had fun and our acoustic performance seemed to go down pretty well! After we had finished we stayed there for the rest of the night and hung out with our new friends and faded into a haze of fireball and sleep deprivation. I should have been slightly more sensible and laid off the booze because we had a 12 hour drive the next day and travelling with a hangover is awful…

February 4, 2014 – Dallas, TX
After spending the entire day yesterday traveling (9am until 9pm), we still had a 5 hour drive this morning to get to Dallas, America you are far too large, there is really no need. When we arrived in Dallas it wasn’t particularly impressive but maybe we were in the wrong part, all there seemed to be though was an abundance of birds waiting to shit on our heads and a hoard of police officers who seemed to like Hooters a little too much. The venue however was really nice and the sound guy was excellent. We had some time to kill so thought we would join the police officers in a quick pint at Hooters next door. We then avoided the bird shit and walked back to the venue. We walked onstage to about 30 people in front of us which, after a 16 hour drive, was pretty disheartening to say the least. But as the show went on I noticed a few people wearing our shirts which was great to see. We played well tonight, it could have been because the onstage sound was amazing. After playing we spoke to some of the people who were wearing our shirts and found out that this one girl and her rather attractive mother had travelled from Colorado to see us which was astonishing.  We left Dallas feeling a bit sorry that we didn’t get to see more of the city, but we were so tired I think all that was on our mind was sleeping.

February 5, 2014 – Austin, TX
We arrived in Austin at around 2pm and loaded in. We were playing a legendary bar and BBQ house called Stubbs, which was an extremely cool place. The others went to look around the city but Tom and I got bored and cold after about 5 minutes so we went back to the venue and drank this great beer called “Firemans 4”. Max has family in Texas so his parents had flown out to meet them and to see us so we had dinner with them and talked for an hour or so, it was nice to hear some English accents and see some familiar faces. The show was better than Dallas, there were more people there and the atmosphere was a little better, probably something to do with the character of the bar. We met some lovely people who had come from Indiana to see us (it blows my mind how much people travel in the states). We got talking and it turned out the lady was from a small town in England called Heacham, this just happened to be where Lee and I grew up, small world. We spent the rest of the night milling around and filling the time with small talk and beer, that makes a change eh…

Keep up with Deaf Havana on Facebook and Twitter. If you’re interested in going out to a date of this tour, check out the remaining dates here.