Ok, so I’ve been massively slack and haven’t written a blog in two weeks. Sorry peeps! Good news is I bought a new guitar. I tried really hard to be responsible and even set a price limit for myself…then I played all the guitars that were in that price range and spent a shitload of cash on a Gretsch White Falcon.

Sexiest guitar of all time!

And I fuckin love it.

So let’s start with the UK. Funkin’ awesome! A full day of press in London with our PR guy Peter Noble made us realise that there is quite a bit of hype around the band here and we started to get excited about playing the shows.

London, O2 Academy was the biggest show Tracer has ever headlined. A head count of 550, most of whom sung there hearts out to the same songs we wrote in our parents music room over the other side of the world.

What a trip! The crowd was loud and the band really got amped on stage. People were hanging off the mezzanine screaming for their favourite song.

Apart from it being one of the best shows we have ever played and the general “rockstar” awesomeness of the whole event, this show really did touch us. I personally had a “moment” on stage in between songs and couldn’t believe that this was all happening…sure it’s what we’ve all worked so hard for but, damn man it’s actually happening! After the show we had a proper “after-party” with fans at a local bar called Surya. We had a packed room of fans who had a drink with us and took some photos, pretty cool.

Bristol at the Tunnels, Manchester at another Academy, were both smaller but still killer shows. Again the crowd was loud and noisy all through the set and we sweated our guts out in response. It was cool to see that the sets we had been rehearsing at home were really working the way we wanted them to, taking the crowd up and down before finally blasting their heads off! We rolled into York on the Friday to play the Duchess. We had never been to York before and we were all taken back with an old village that was really spectacular. After eating at a traditional British pub we cranked out another set of Tracer’s finest.

We were all psyched for Sheffield as we had hear that it was our first sold out show. We had also heard of an Aussie dude who was spinning our tracks at the rock bar called the Nelson across the road, so we surprised him with a visit. It was really weird to go into a pub before a show and a little hush comes over the patrons and eyes start wondering in our direction. People were actually recognising us as the Tracer guys! Most of the people there came up and asked for autographs or photos, it was a cool experience.

Back at the venue we all felt incredibly satisfied knowing that no matter what, there will be a packed house and come gig time there was an electricity in the air among the band and crew. The show went off! The crowd were almost as loud as the London audience! I even got carried away and got up on one of the speaker bins to thrash out a guitar solo.

We definitely have to thank Barney and especially Jules from Gig Cartel for helping us out backstage at all of our shows. These guys bent over backwards to make sure we were well fed and prepped for the shows. I mean, Jules upgraded our Jack Daniels quota! What a guy! We can’t say enough thank you’s to them.

Also a massive thank you to Planet Rock for helping the band throughout the UK with their airplay. They also just released pre-sales for the September/October dates so get onto it! Also thank you for all the people that came out to the UK shows for our first headlining tour, we can’t wait to get back!

I’ll be writing the next blog really soon, I promise. We’ve had some awesome French shows in the last week and it’ll make for a good read.

Until next time, cheers and beers,
Mike