ABC ABC Country

Friday April 29: The Empire Theatre, Toowoomba, QLD.

The Morning

Today is the first day of The Shape I'm In Tour, the biggest I've been a part of to date, with American country star Joe Nichols and my mate, ARIA nominee Jasmine Rae. The first show is in Toowoomba, and I'm in Sydney, which means a very early start - 7.30am for a musician, half an hour after people with regular jobs get up every day.

The most important item to remember on a tour like this is the Tour Book, a little booklet they send you before the first show which has all the details you're likely to forget when on the road, like what time soundcheck is, the address of the venue you're playing and what your flight number is. So no matter what state you're in (mentally or geographically) when you wake up, you know where to go next.
 
Armed with this handy book, I met up with the band (Callum, Isaac and Scott) and some of Jasmine Rae's band at Sydney airport, and together we jumped on a plane and headed up to Toowoomba.

The Afternoon

I've never played here before, but I got a huge buzz as soon as I stepped onto the stage for soundcheck. We're in the Empire Theatre and it's gorgeous. The band and I had front row seats for Joe and Jasmine's soundchecks, which is pretty cool.

We had a bit of a Spinal Tap moment trying to find our dressing room, but once we got there, we had a nice surprise. The ladies of the Empire Theatre had baked us a tin of wicked tasting biscuits and left them there for us as a present. Now that's country hospitality!

The Show

After doing our best to solve the problem of how to not eat crap while on tour, we headed back to the dressing room and played the waiting game. We had our last minute rethink of the set list. We'd road tested this set when we opened for Jasmine a few weeks ago in Campbelltown, and it worked pretty well for us then, so aside from a couple of reordering of songs, we left it as is. My managers once told me you should "open with your second-strongest song and close with your strongest, or vice-versa." I reckon that's pretty sound.

Five minutes before showtime, there's a knock at the door and a call to come and stand at the side of stage. It makes you a bit nervous and a bit excited, staring out at the sea of faces waiting expectantly. I always try to remember that they're there to be entertained - they want to like me, and I've just got to make that as easy for them as I can.

When it's time to actually time step onto stage, time stops for a second and there's a moment where a bit of your brain says "Ya know, there's still time to walk away from this" and then you just go "It's show time" and put your left foot forward and walk out into the lights and strap on your guitar.

I'm not using my own guitar on this tour. I've borrowed a very nice Maton 808 for my old guitar teacher, because I lent my Cole Clark to someone at the Rocks the Hunter festival last month and it didn't exactly come back in the same condition it left me in. So that's in for repair, while I try run with this new acoustic for the tour. Thankfully, my Les Paul is still in fine nick and I get to rock out with that.

We launched into the intro for I Will Stand By You, and the crowd seems to be on our side from the start. Some people seem to know the song, and they all seem to like it. This bodes well.

Despite what you might think, the first night of a tour usually goes pretty well, partly because you've been building up to it for x many months and you have a lot of energy saved up that you let out on the first night crowd. It felt awesome up on that stage, and by the time we hit our closer the punters were definitely with us.
 
We finish with Girls In The Summertime, my latest single, and we pushed extra hard on it tonight, everyone soloing with each other at the end of the song, and we hit a big note to close. The audience went off and it felt awesome.

The Aftermath 

We all had pretty big grins on our faces when we walked off stage, and we saw Joe standing there. He grinned at us and said "Good job up there, buddy". Now that's cool!

Now we were free to head out front and enjoy the rest of the show. I first saw Jasmine Rae live over two years ago and she was great then, but now she rocks on a whole other level. She always delivers and tonight was no exception. Her new album is awesome and she featured some tracks off it in the set tonight, which went down great. She and her band are great guys (well, she's not a guy obviously, and neither is Hannah who does her backing vocals, but you know what I mean). We've known Travis, her guitarist, the longest - he's been playing with her since late 2008, but they're all great people and players. Recently, Lawrie Minson and Mitch Farmer both joined her band, who are legends and play with Lee Kernaghan. My drummer, Isaac, idolises Mitch and he's pretty chuffed to be touring with him.

After Jasmine's set, I headed out to sign, which I always enjoy. It feels great that people enjoyed your show so much they want to come and say Hello. My dream is to get carpal tunnel syndrome from signing too many copies of my album. The line here was huge, and people said so many nice things about our set - I think we converted a couple of people to fandom tonight.

The last bit of the night to go was, of course, the man himself. When Joe Nichols walked on stage, the crowd just went nuts. I've been a fan since I was in high school, and watching up there tonight made me remember why I've loved his albums so much, and why he's JOE NICHOLS.

A great night was truly had by all and now it's time to head to Caboolture for the Urban Country Music Festival in Caboolture for day two. Now where did I put that tour book….

Feature Type: 

• Review

Tags: 

• live
• concert
• tour diary

More about: 

• Peter McWhirter
• Jasmine Rae
• Joe Nichols

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