So we have just spent a little under a week in the UK and it’s been such a crazy time already! First thing right off the plane and the tour starts off like any normal Veara tour would... with problems. We come out of the terminal and are greeted by Spadge a guy who works for a company that rents Vans to Bands. We get into the van and it ends up being a Manuel transmission. None of us can drive a manual transmission (stick shift) vehicle except for Brittany who learned how to drive one when she was 16 and hasn’t driven one since. So Patrick gives it a try and stalls out once, Spadge coaches him a little bit and Patrick gives it another try. We stall out again. Spadge comes up to the van..... laughing at this point and reassures us WE CAN DO IT and Patrick goes for it again. This time he gets a little further but seconds later he stalls out. Next Brittany gives it a try and starts to drive out of the parking lot! But it stalls out and begins to roll backwards into traffic. Needless to say Spadge was nice enough to be our driver for the day, which really helped us out a ton!




After that we headed to Norwich the first date and it was a blast! Everyone we have met over here so far have been so nice and polite to us, from the crew on the tour, the bands we are opening for to the people that live here, it’s been nothing but good times!

After Norwich we drove over to Southampton where we played at The Guild Hall, which was nice because we got some time to walk around and explore the city. I went to a mall and wandered around a little bit with one of the guys from The Riverboat Gamblers afterward I realized how small and compact everything is over here. Small cars, small drinks, narrow roads, and smaller portions of food even the value of the American dollar is smaller over here.....EVERYTHING IS SMALL OVER HERE. Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind it, it’s actually really interesting and fun to see, it’s just really strange to me and makes me wonder if living in America has made me somewhat of a pig/spoiled I mean I should probably know how to drive a stick shift and appreciate the 12 passenger van I get to relax in on those 16 hour drives from New York to Georgia. I don’t know..... anyways after the show we went to a club / bar and it was very different from the clubs in the states, instead of playing popular rap, top 40 hits, or some crappy club remix of a Celine Dion song they bands like Papa Roach, Slipknot, Comeback Kid, and old Linkin Park. It was SICK! I ended up hanging out with this guy Nick who actually came to the show that night. He was an awesome guy! He bought one of our shirts and had picked up our record off of iTunes when it hit the internet. So we proceeded to talk about music and all the things you go through when you first meet someone and he ended up being a really rad dude. He bought me a couple of shots and ended up getting me pretty drunk hahaha. By the way, thank you so much Nick if you are reading this you brought me some really interesting shots that night! So next on the tour was London. We played The Forum which was such a nice venue, The Guild Hall was nice in kind of an old school way. They had things like a wooden handle attached to a chain hanging from the ceiling to flush the toilets but The Forum was nice in a modern way. There was a dressing room for us and a nice shower area and all of the staff was really friendly. We had a couple of interviews, one with a man from Alter the Press named John and finally got to meet our European booking agent Tobbe which was really awesome. On top of that we got invited to The Eastpak after party where Cone for Sum 41 and Jim Lindberg from The Black Pacific DJ'd a couple of songs. It was a great time! I got a Sol poured on me played air guitar with Mark the guitarist from The Black Pacific and our mech man ole Shelb's. I ended up meeting a few brits and hating on the American accent for awhile. Apparently we say "OH MY GOD" and "Let's go to the mall" a lot. It’s funny to hear everyone hating on our accents but let’s get real there aint nothing like a glass of ice cold sweet tea and a T.V. dinner smothered in Texas Pete hot sauce on the front porch watching the dog chase squirrels around in the front yard. Not to mention the beauty of the American flag on your mail box blowin in the southern wind. We are now to our day off we have to drive to Glasgow, Scotland. Which we used to go site seeing with good ole John from Alter the Press, I had the the traditional fish n chips for lunch and then we went to go see Big Ben, Parliament, The Eye of London, and a ton of other awesome sites!
We will keep you updated with more and keep checking back! See y'all on the road Europe!