Once again, the Tankus the Henge van is reduced to looking as if Jake stole the keys off George while he was asleep and drove it sideways through a landfill with the side door open. A festival weary guitar with five strings, an inflatable bed footpump, numerous hats, french bread and a copy of "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" stray across just one seat.
We're driving through France. We've been driving for about three hours since disembarking from the ship and resolving to eat our way across the land of the garlic bicycle, we've stocked up on fresh chickens, french sticks (naturally), houmus and cookies. There's about five hundred miles to go and every time we pass a truck with spray flying out of the wheels, my life flashes before me as sometimes it feels like we're flying a plane far too close to the sea, even though we're in a big red transit van.
The inside of our van is quite colourful. We had a drawing competition a few weeks ago on our way to Kendal Calling festival, and I think Kerry won, being a girl, obviously she's better at drawing while the men seem to handle driving a van a lot more naturally. Here's a picture of the entries adorning the wall.
We are holing up in France to get away from various people, ie, our local councils, the electricity board, the neighbour whose garden I had to clamber through the other day when I locked myself out of my house, but mainly we're getting away from distractions to write some new music and test it out at four shows over here. I'm sure many of you reading this will have seen us perform sometime this summer, and the music we have been playing ranges one to five years old, and some of our songs we've performed at every show for about five years. Needless to say, we've been extremely busy and there's a backlog of ideas that need to be tried and tested. Hopefully when we come back to London in October we'll open another door into a different part of the twisted world we inhabit.
"October?" I hear you cry...
Yes, that's because after we've returned from France, we'll be heading to Bestival to perform there on the Saturday, and then to Weston Super Mare to close the festival on the beach lawns.
"but that only takes up one weekend!"
Oh, of course it does. The reason for the October return, then, is because we're all going to Nashville, Tennesee to record a brand spanking new album. Nashville is in the United States of America. Long live the king!
We're not abandoning you in the slightest; never fear, we will be stopping for a tea-break at 4pm on the dot each afternoon. We'll be writing and filming bits for this blog most days and will be keeping in touch with all of you, as always!
As for now, I will stop writing because otherwise I'll see my breakfast and lunch get to know Jake's hairdryer which is in front of me.
More tomorrow.
Jaz
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