Recently, Brisbane three-piece rock sensations The Grates –Patience Hodgson on vocals, John Patterson on guitar, and Alana Skyring on drums- embarked overseas for a tour of the United Kingdom, initially in support of The Zutons, and as a follow up to their already successful national tour of Australia.

Accompanying the band on tour as sound engineer and production manager is Bob Trigg, of Sydney’s Reverb Music. Here he shares with The Cud a few photos from his travels with the band of late, and offers some fun insights into life on the road.

14th May, 2006

Here we are at the Sol Bar in Coolum on the Sunshine Coast, a nice, intimate, hot and sweaty gig before we all headed off for the cold, wet United Kingdom.

Bye bye to Brisvegas and sunshine...

17th May, 2006

Finally after the flight from hell being diverted to Frankfurt complete with the screaming babies for four hours and not being allowed off the plane, we got to Heathrow and meet our ride, the nice splitter van with DVD / Playstation / nav-man /  comfy seats / karaoke microphone.

Unfortunately our navman didn’t work too well on the first day so we spent much of it getting lost and driving around Wembley Stadium. Having gotten a repeat look at the place, I can confirm that construction so far is looking pretty good, but though nearly finished there’s a ways to go yet. This photo was taken on about lap eight of Wembley, looking for the M4…

After a flight and a drive like we just had only sweet, sweet English grease could save us - our first healthy meal in the UK :-)

 18th May, 2006

Typical of the weather we’ve enjoyed so far – driving to the first show in Birmingham.

First show in the U.K at the Birmingham Academy with The Zutons. Our 25 quid light show! Not bad eh, guv!?!?!

19th May 2006

Second show of the tour at the Cambridge Corn Exchange and a really nice looking room indeed…

So much for an expensive Cambridge education – the sign on the wall reads “PLEASE DO NOT LEAN ANY BICYCLES ON THIS WALL”

Winding down after a great show in Cambridge with some healthy Greek cuisine…

20th May2006

Our first day off, so we went to the Woburn safari park, where we spotted some roaming bison, and where it would apparently soon get more dangerous as we ventured further in...

!!!!!

That night we went to watch the Eurovision song contest in this amazing pub built back in the 1500’s –or something crazy like that- and here we are all warming up for the evening - Anna (tour manager), John (guitar), Patience (singer), Alana (drummer), Bob (me), and Dan (keyboards).

Here we enjoyed some tough cow and Jenga chips. Was great though, and at present no effects of madness have been noted...

21st May 2006

The drive to Wales, and luckily we didn’t get washed away. The Poms think they are in a drought but that seems really bizarre, and today I read they are planning to build a desalination plant near the Thames. I may write a letter to Tony and suggest they build a catchment dam to save some $$...

 Oops- there’s some strange language on these signs, and that means we could only be in one place. Ah, Wales, home of Mcluskey, Tom Jones and funny words....

…and even funnier street names

The gig was at Cardiff University and what great luck – the ashes of CREED called Alter Bridge were playing which could only mean good vibes for the show.

After the show we got the dddhhggjjyggt out of Gymru and headed to Bristol which was awesome…

22nd May 2006

… And where we worked out where we stood on the pecking order, he he he…

23rd May, 2006

And on to Southampton – home of the Titanic, where she launched on her fateful voyage back in April, 1912. We dropped our stuff at the venue and Anna and I headed out on a walking tour of the historic Titanic sites. Much like the Titanic herself, our tour was headed for disaster, however… Here is the memorial for the victims but it was totally caged in behind these big ugly bars. We couldn’t see or read any of the inscriptions at all.

But So’ton is not all metal bars, and the gang played a great show at the Southampton Guild Hall…

24th May, 2006

Now on to the United Kingdom’s deep southwest, and to Cornwall, to be exact. State of Origin day dawned bright and sunny, so we decided to head to the beach for some sun and surf action in downtown Bognor. Unfortunately no-one told us that downtown Bognor beach blows a gale and is made of small stones…

So we bailed to the pub, where Anna kicked some tour manager ass and got them to open an hour early at 11.00am so we could watch the mighty blues easily SMASH the cane toads, ha ha ha ha…

25th May 2006

The next day we went for a walk to check out the White/Grey cliffs of Dover. It was too cloudy to see France, but it looked like a hefty swim there for any fool game enough to try it…

26th May, 2006

After a show in Folkestone we drove to Stoke, home of the inventor of the Spitfire fighter plane – and a cool name for a town. Unfortunately, Stoke is full of 5/8’s of f*ck-all.

Except for this excellent tribute to the Cybermen from Dr Who.

Stoke was where we finally didn’t have to drive very far after the show (normally we’d had to drive an hour or so out of town after the show and some dinner), so we stuck around and watched the whole of the Zutons show. It was very cool.

The Zutons Saxomophone player Abi in action...

May 28th, 2006

After a gig stopover in Manchester we ventured into Robin Hood country and played at a festival called Dot-to-Dot in Nottingham, in a tiny venue called the Social.

The show went really well, and the room was packed with Poms all getting into the Grates.

May 31st, 2006

On the way to our last show with the Zutons we pulled in via Stonehenge to try and grab a few rocks for our Spinal Tap grand finale show…

Because it was the final show of our tour together they laid on the Veuve Cliquot so we had a few drinks with the Zutons before they bussed off to some glamorous European festivals and we bussed off to the glamorous Traveldodge. However we will all rendezvous at Splendour in the Grass in July, hurrah!

1st June, 2006

Sadly, we have now finished our tour supporting the mighty Zutons – it was a great time and we were really spoilt with big venues, nice gear to use and lots of sweet, sweet catering. Now we are on our own in ye olde mother country! We have a few of our own shows to do in some smaller pub type of venues. The venues don’t allow us to load in until quite late though, so to pass the time we went for a frisbee at a beach town near Middlesborough (home of Captain Cook according so the sign) called Seaton...

On our way to the venue in Seaton we took a ride on the most unusual bridge I have ever seen. Basically you park your car in the yellow bit, and it swings / slides across the river kind of like a flying fox, and all for the low cost of one pound! It’s apparently the only bridge of its type in the world, and the steel was made from the same steel that made our Harbour Bridge, so we all sang the national anthem and saluted appropriately.

The first Club NME gig in Middlesborough. It was okay, but as can only happen in the crazy world of rock and roll, most of the crowd where there for a hookers and pimps ball, so weren’t all that into the bands on show. But many more gigs still lie ahead!

The Grates will be touring the United Kingdom, France, Canada and the United States until early July. For dates and more information, visit http:// thegrates.com