This weekend past I was down somewhere near London to meet up with some old friends. More specifically, I was there for the wedding of Mr. Chris Rouse – drummer in the band Hold Your Horse Is – who I’ve spent some time on their previous UK tours with.
As well as taking pictures of the big day, the whole thing coincided nicely with the fact that the band were playing at the 2000 Trees festival, which was on the Friday.
I’ve wanted to go to this festival for a number of years, and never quite made the journey, so to kill two birds (or more, probably) with one stone was greatly fortuitous. Getting to go on what was apparently the first ever time there had been no rain to find scorching sun, and drink away the band’s rider was the icing on the cake.
The guy above had the right idea for dealing with 30 degrees Celsius.
It’s been about two years since I’ve been away on any sort of tour like this, and it made me realise how much I miss the whole thing – as well as being shocked at the quality of van that the guys had this time around – given that last time we had the oldest vehicle in existence. If I could find a way to do it without bankrupting myself, and with my current domestic requirements to have a job that actually pays real money, then I’d want to spend my life (or at least a good portion of it) rattling around the floor of vans with beaten up camera equipment, wearing RayBans, and lugging amps around.
I splashed out on Marks & Spencer wine for the occasion. You’d think they’d have come up with a better name for it than ‘House Wine’ though, surely?
Perhaps the only thing that was more awesome than all of the above so far was bumping into Toby Hayes, aka Shoes and Socks Off, aka the other part of the very first tour where we all met. Literally walking past him as he sat on the grass, it took a few minutes to realise it actually was him before confirming it with his tattooed arm. Funny how these things come together.
This is potentially the scariest drum-face I’ve ever seen.
Chris ended the set by throwing his drums over the barrier and finishing the last song in the crowd.
That’s what we like to see.
What was even more impressive was the look of death that Chris’s friend and fellow member of crew gave to some joker who tried to mess about with the drums.
Ouch.
