A JOURNEY TO THE UNITED KINGDOM
Entry Five

We get checked in and Troy is thrilled that he has time to go for a run before we get ready to try and find the club, which is sort of on the outskirts of London. We leave with what we think is plenty of time and we barely make it in time for sound check. The Bitter End is a cool club in an old building that sort of reminds me of the old Kennedy's down on The Landing in St. Louis minus the balcony area. They just started having live music so they have a portable sound system put in for the night, which is already set up by the time we arrive. There are great big speakers- Troy and Mat say it is something that you would likely use out in a big field somewhere. We will definitely be heard tonight. I am so anxious to plug in our stuff. We still don't know if our gear will actually work. Troy had researched power converters, which we ordered and hauled over with us. One extra just in case, they are only forty pounds- what the heck! We turn everything on and Troy runs out front to get our line check. It is always a little awkward going into new venue and explaining that we run our own sound and mix it from onstage with our automated mixing board. We are lucky to have Troy who is also a professional soundman to program everything and do minor adjustments at each venue to compensate for the different speaker configurations. They are sometimes hesitant because they basically just have control of the volume knob. But, this setup allows us to have a consistent sound as close to the album as we can get. And as long as the system is in stereo and there are subs, we are happy. We kick in and the crowd is wonderful. They actually came out to see a band playing original live music. They watch and get into it. I can’t quit smiling and I tell the crowd we are happy to finally be playing after what it took to get here and to have everything actually turn on and make sound. After the second song or so I tell the house soundmen that there is no question of the low end in this place. I can feel it vibrating up through my feet. They just grin and nod their heads proudly. We finish up our set and get to meet some very cool people. They are very encouraging and we hope that we can stay in touch. We give away some tour shirts to Jenny for her birthday and Rob the owner for being so supportive of live music. Kate his girlfriend takes a few of our singles and wants to help promote us in the area. It will be wonderful having these connections for next time. Rob has separate green rooms for each band and two guards that keep watch over our stuff so we don’t have to worry about anything and can get away from the volume if we want. The guards are dressed in cool dark suits. They don‘t speak to anyone that I notice- I‘m impressed. The green rooms are in a separate building that has a connecting outdoor patio area. Rob explains that he has designs on making another room over on this side. We have never seen a club owner work so hard. He is on top of everything, taking care of the bands, serving up drinks at the bar, and whatever- that can be pretty colorful this late at night. We enjoy sharing the night with the headlining band Brigade. We wish them the best of luck. Special thanks to Paul for helping us carry all of our stuff out. We are completely shot- remember we left Amsterdam at 3:30 this morning and it‘s 1:30 am - I guess the next day now. We were sorry to not meet up with our Woodcrest friends that are traveling with us. They are not a make believe entourage they do exist. They flew from Amsterdam to Birmingham and couldn’t get a train that would get them to our show in time. Debbie was especially upset to not make it- she had hopes to be at all of our gigs. We’ll catch up with them tomorrow hopefully because Birmingham is our next stop. But first we have to have to find food. We had so much fun over the sandwiches the club brought us hours earlier. We have in our mind Subway, but that is not English!! They serve us sandwiches on super thin white bread half as thin as regular sandwich bread with BUTTER and egg (hardboiled- not egg salad mind you) and cucumber. There must have been ten sandwich wedges all stacked up tall. If it had only been whole grain bread Troy could scrape off the butter and pick out the egg yolks and remain completely starving as usual. I think he needs yogurt. Finding something open at this hour is going to be real fun. We never once see a super Wal-mart. We do about run off the road when we see something that says open 24hrs. We pile out of the van and are busy chattering away about what we are going to look for when we get up to the door… and it is locked. We proceed to go nearly around the whole thing trying doors when someone asks us if we need help. When we say that it is suppose to be open 24hrs, - he says “Well, not on Saturday!” What does Saturday have to do with it - we were wondering? It is a whole different world over here, people don’t seem to be racing around as much and things close up early - as Shannon and I are sad to discover as we would like to buy something besides food. We want something we can wear!!