The Heart of Darkness Tour: A Debrief

Photo by Bryan Taylor

The Heart of Darkness tour finished over a week ago and I've still been catching my breath, trying to work out how to conclude it with a fitting amount of ceremony. The truth is that I've just been feeling flat and exhausted. After a few days of enforced rest (my body made the decision for me and simply shut down) I'm back to it with Crimson Veil prep, recording, and various other jobs, while trying to rebuild my daily routines with the million things I want to achieve in any given day. Two weeks at home and then I'm back in the UK on Saturday for Crimson Veil.

It's my podcast and blog evening today, (now yesterday), so I thought I'd get to it before the moment passes.

First things first: we released a podcast yesterday which is an interview with my dear friend Jason Achilles. Jason has a seriously impressive CV: big name rock stars, orchestras, his own solo tours, and designing the first mic on Mars. What I loved about this interview, apart from the considerable silliness of it, was how open he was about his career and all the things that had to happen before his big breaks. Jason and I have had many adventures together, from throwing a mad party at his house in 2017 to screaming at each other in a Glasgow alleyway, which was probably the most authentically Scottish experience of that particular tour. You can listen to the podcast here.

Now. Back to the Heart of Darkness tour.

WEDNESDAY: The Hire Car

One of the many strange skills you develop over years of working as a touring musician is packing like a pro. I hired a car to get us up North to our tour manager Brad, who was driving us for the rest of the tour - and the photos below are what it looked like before we'd even picked up Jim and all his gear. Every inch of that car was full, though I'm pleased to report my slippers still made it. We snuck around the side of the car hire place to unload as it felt audacious to empty the car in front of them!

Practising regularly and well in advance of a tour is so essential, because once the logistical madness hits there is simply no room left for music. We got to Brad's late and the evening was spent updating my SumUp store for selling merch and folding t-shirts.

THURSDAY: Bannermans, Edinburgh

We left early on Thursday morning for the long drive to Edinburgh. Now that the hire car was returned, we were travelling in Brad's van, which I was grateful for - I really, really dislike driving so having someone else at the wheel is always a real luxury.

Edinburgh was a little shaky. I'd been looking forward to it as a strong start to the tour, but the attendance was less than I'd hoped for and the sound wasn't the best we'd experience on the run. The first show always carries a few mistakes too. We played Naked Flame as a special request, but I forgot some of the lyrics, and sitting with that afterwards I realised something: my brain doesn't want to retain that information because I'm not enjoying that song anymore. A strong lesson in just playing the songs that give you pleasure!

The highlight of Edinburgh for me was meeting up with my brother Jon who now lives and works there.

FRIDAY: Taylor's Shure5 Studios, Oldham

We'd played this one before and it remains brilliant - a really cool blackout stage, excellent sound, and Chris the sound engineer running the whole venue with real passion for what he does. It's close to Brad's, and it was great to see some friendly faces.

Photo by Jeremy Sayle

Mishkin and I also debuted our new HVIRESS "tracksuit set" for this gig. HVIRESS is the project Mish and I run together, and we opened several nights of the tour in our HVIRESS guises before changing and reappearing as Hana Piranha. The tracksuit set went down so well that we decided to open the night with it whenever we could - though HVIRESS, as a rule, never sticks around long enough to watch Hana Piranha play. Always somewhere else to be. Very mysterious, very elusive, and just plain rude.

SATURDAY: Alt3, Blackpool

We rocked up to Alt3 and immediately felt welcomed. It was a tiny bar with a tiny stage, run by very alternative people, and we loved it from the moment we arrived. Andy was wearing a hat and an amazing vintage bow tie for his stage outfit, so the staff decided a bottle of cider wasn't classy enough for him and poured it into a martini glass. They weren't wrong.

The audience was small but spectacularly enthusiastic, and we ended up spending half the set in the crowd dancing with them. At the end of one song, someone screamed "SHOW ME YOUR FILTH" - which will now live forever in the repertoire of sentences we repeat at each other like parrots.

SUNDAY: SORM, Bradford

This was a hard one. The stage was big and the sound was great, but I couldn't find the right headspace, and sometimes all the external factors being in place just isn't enough. I've been doing this long enough to still put in a decent performance regardless (I hope!), but the thing that goes first when I'm not feeling right is the banter between songs, and losing that always makes a set feel like a struggle. Chat between the songs, however much or little, is the glue that holds the set together and without it I feel like I've lost the connection to the audience. By the time we finished I was completely drained.

MONDAY: The Globe, Glossop

This one was really fun. We'd hired the venue ourselves and weren't sure about turnout, but ticket sales were surprisingly good. The venue was a brilliant pub with a proper stage upstairs in what looked like a listed building, and the sound engineer - operating from his own little nest up near the ceiling - had to endure us torturing him with recurring Phantom of the Opera motifs throughout soundcheck.

TUESDAY: Trillians, Newcastle

Newcastle required a longer drive so we checked into an Airbnb before heading to the venue. We've played Trillians before and love it - a proper rock venue with a reliably great crowd, and a particular soft spot in our hearts for the house sound engineer Womp.

Photo by Brad Bennett

This one was hard for me though. I felt really low before the show and sometimes I have a real crisis about something to do with my playing or appearance. There are evenings where I look in the mirror before the show and feel like I'm staring at a clown, which is not exactly the image I'm going for. I had to record content for the Valentine release too, and doing that kind of social media work when you feel so bad about yourself is miserable. The anxiety sat with me all evening until I went to sleep.

WEDNESDAY: The John O'Gaunt, Lancaster

I felt better the next day. We drove from Newcastle to Lancaster and stopped at a pub for lunch. The John O'Gaunt was a venue we'd played years before, now with a new very narrow stage and the drums tucked right at the back. The sound was exceptional - the engineer Sam was so enthusiastic and attentive that it was one of the best sound experiences of the entire tour. The crowd was great too, and someone turned up with a poster of me from thirteen years ago and a gift of a red squirrel toy.

Photo by Brad Bennett

THURSDAY: Bar 39, Darwen

We weren't sure how this was going to go. We arrived with very little setup time, the sound equipment was limited, and the vibe at first was hard to read - almost like walking into a rotary club. It was a particularly hard one for Cath and Taylor - touring with two solo acts make me grateful for being in a band where you can feed off each other when it gets tough. But by the time we hit the stage something had shifted and there was this extraordinary energy in the room. I felt on fire — like everyone was eating out of the palm of my hand.

This is the rollercoaster of touring: one night you feel like a failure and a hideous monster, and the next night you feel completely invincible. The room just has it, or it doesn't, and when it does, there's nothing quite like it. Darwen had it in abundance and was one of the real highlights of the tour.

FRIDAY: The Victoria, Coalville

We'd sold about three tickets and the person on sound did not want to be doing it. Soundcheck was painful and we'd basically written this one off as a grit-your-teeth situation. What followed was proof - not for the first time, and certainly not the last - that the people in the room completely make the gig. There were fewer than ten people in the audience, but they were wonderful: warm, completely up for it, and they made us feel really loved.

Photo by Brad Bennett

Cath and Taylor both played brilliant sets and we all sold an insane amount of merch for a show that size. By some grace, the promoter arrived in time for our set and took over the sound. We met some really lovely people that night and it will stay with me as one of the highlights of the tour.

It was also the day our new single Valentine was released, which is always a difficult thing to juggle within the madness of being on the road. The whole thing had been an enormous scramble to finish, and the added stress of the label being unable to promote the video, due to gun use, made it a really difficult release day for everyone involved. Everything about the release was late and by the skin of our teeth. In an ideal world the timeline would have been pushed back, but the tour and the Valentine's Day connection made that impossible. It was one of the most stressful releases I've ever had.

At this point a particular shout out to Arron West is necessary - who put the whole

video together masterfully in the space of about two weeks.

SATURDAY: Mark's Wedding

Mishkin and I left the tour for a day. We got up early and drove to the Cotswolds for the wedding of a long-time friend and fan, Mark. We played Phantom of the Opera for the ceremony and had prepared a setlist of instrumental covers - Nine Inch Nails, Deftones, Birdeatsbaby - which we had been slightly nervous about, seeming a bit dark for wedding repertoire. When we arrived, however, we looked around the room and realised that pretty much everyone there could plausibly have owned a Nine Inch Nails t-shirt.

It was a Winter wedding, blue and white themed, and the whole venue looked and smelled like a Japanese spa. The bride had a black dress and bright pink hair. It was one of the coolest and classiest weddings I've ever played.

SUNDAY: The Fulford Arms, York

Photo by Graham Campling

A matinee gig at The Fulford Arms, a venue I've played a couple of times. The sound was absolutely amazing, and Mish and I opened the evening as HVIRESS — who, as ever, were absolutely nowhere to be seen by the time Hana Piranha took the stage. We also swapped out "Only Love Remains" for an older song "Voyeur", which added a different energy to the set. It was great to see some faces I hadn't seen in years.

MONDAY: Wuthering Heights

A day off, so Jim and I went to see the new "Wuthering Heights" film. We bought popcorn and prepared to revel in its awfulness, and I'm happy to say it did not disappoint - in fact it exceeded our considerable expectations for how bad it was going to be. There is a real pleasure in hating something together wholeheartedly and it was a real bonding experience.

WEDNESDAY: Porter's, Cardiff

Photo by Iain McCallum

Porter's was a really cool bar — a great stage, great room, and a crowd that was warm and supportive in the way a home crowd tends to be for Cath, who is local to Cardiff. We hadn't had a proper meal in days so I ordered pizzas for everyone and we managed to convince Brad that vegan pizzas aren't that gross. The best thing about Cardiff, though, was that we discovered we each had a leopard print item of clothing and performed in a full coordinated leopard print set, which brought the entire touring party a huge amount of joy.

THURSDAY: Tattoos

A day off in Swansea. We all went in together to get matching tour tattoos, which has become something of a tradition - there's an ever-growing pattern creeping up my arm marking the tours and the connections and the experiences that have mattered. Getting the Heart of Darkness tattoo with everyone was a real bonding moment and something we now have tying us together forever.

FRIDAY: Hangar 18, Swansea

Photo by Brad Bennett

Probably my favourite gig of the tour. The staff were so warm and welcoming, the stage was epic, and despite some nerves about ticket sales in the lead-up, the attendance turned out great. Everything came together and it was a wonderful night.

SATURDAY: The Finsbury, London

London was our home crowd and the final show. I'd been building this one up for weeks and every time I do that, there's no room for anything but disappointment. There was nothing wrong with the gig; the crowd was great and the set was solid. But I got annoyed about the sound early on and couldn't fully shake it, which made parts of the set feel like a chore rather than a pleasure.

Photo by Robert Lane

We were also, by this point, completely exhausted. The post-gig was a scramble too, everyone dispersing off to various cars, and it was sad to see people go after such an intense few weeks together.

The real highlight of the night was seeing Hussein Boon - Jim and my old tutor from university - who turned up as a surprise. Seeing him again after all those years was really wonderful.

SUNDAY: Flying Home

The day after London was my flight back. It felt really intense after the madness of tour, but I was glad to get home to Cómpeta so soon after. I'd been in England for a whole month by that point and had spoken to Dara only once during the entire time I was on the road, which might sound crazy to some people! However I find that when I'm surrounded by people every waking moment I have no desire to message or call anyone, no matter who it is. Luckily Dara is as antisocial as me and also very busy with work, so we're very compatible in that way.

Cath and Taylor

Something I haven't said enough in this write-up is how much of this tour's spirit came from Catherine Elms and Taylor of Emberhoney. The four of us go back to the Indie Noir nights of 2015, events that Taylor created specifically to give a platform to dark, female-fronted acts. Over a decade later, here we were on tour together, watching each other play every night.

Photo by Jeremy Sayle

Photo by Andrew Mitchell

Cath and Taylor were both extraordinary throughout this run and watching them on stage was a consistent highlight. Watching them grow in confidence night after night was inspiring. You can tell when songs are good when you experience new things with them or new revelations in the lyrics the more you hear them and I never got bored of watching their sets.

Photo by Brad Bennett

Every night we brought them both up to sing a verse each on Valentine, and the crowd absolutely loved it. It gave the song and the end of the set a real energy, and they both shone.

"Our" Brad

Of course, the person who mattered most on this tour was Brad Bennett. He booked the tour, drove us, let us crash at his place, took a million photos, and was an absolute pleasure to be around. I can't believe our luck having him on our side and we would not be on tour without him.

These are just my brief notes on the tour but I believe Mishkin will be releasing a video documentary of it soon. You can join her Patreon here which always shares loads of behind the scenes material. Also I should mention that Cath is the social media QUEEN so if you want to see some great posts and reels from tour you should follow her Instagram account here. Taylor's shares are also beautiful and you can find her on Patreon here. 

After

Post-tour blues is a well-documented phenomenon among musicians, and I'm currently experiencing it. I love being on tour - that level of purpose is the only time I don't question what I'm doing or struggle a bit with the day-to-day - and it's hard to adjust when I get back home. I'm also at the end of several months of heavy social media use and it's taken its toll - I feel a social media detox coming on.

But I'm looking forward to the next tour already. Every tour is built on the last and we can't wait to return to the amazing places and audiences that we played to, while discovering new ones.

Thank you to everyone who came out to any of the dates and made them such a memorable experience. We'll be back.

🖤 Hana, Mishkin, Andy and Jim 🖤