Coex, France
26/08/26. Tom Hollister
It’s the end of August and all three of us are having time away withfamilies and taking a much needed break from music for a moment…
As I navigate the early morning swims and late night dad-dancing, the holiday has given me space to reflect on the past year for the band and digest the task ahead as we enter into 3rd album territory.
Being in a touring band is a funny old thing. Moments of elation followed by long periods of simply running a business and the complexities of dealing with stresses surrounded by people who simultaneously and inadvertently fall into the categories of best mates and business colleagues. It really is unlike any other job.
The three of us talk a lot about the cycle of the band being split between writing and recording on the one hand and touring on the other, with the two parts rarely overlapping. This year, however, the two have merged to a degree we haven’t dealt with before. In the words of my wife, ‘for a non-touring year, you sure have toured a lot!’. From an early stint in California to celebrate and promote Chris’ signature Yamaha Revstar, to headline European and North American tours, to a month-long support slot with Alterbridge (not to mention Chris’ guitar clinic tour!). Amongst all this we knew we had to find time to write and record a brand new record…
It’s important to realise we’re a small team. I mean, really small. Outside of the three of us, we have a manager, our trusted friend who oversees some of the bigger decisions we take, but from a day-to-day point of view, it’s just us three.
So it can be a pretty stressful endeavour to go from paying insurances,dealing with customs issues, running social media pages, ensuring your European social security and USA withholding tax obligationsare in order, while at the same time, snapping your brain into ‘creative mode’ and trying to write a new album’s worth of songs, arranging studio time (around shows on tour) and hoping by some small miracle to come out of the process with music anywhere close to being good enough to show you guys!
It’s honestly something I’ve struggled with a bit this year. It’s been a challenge balancing both parts and there have been times when I’ve questioned how I’m approaching the industry and my role within it.
I’ll just say this, if you’re knocking around in local bars playing in a covers band and wishing those days away in order to be in a full-time band playing original music, don’t be so quick. I went out with a few mates from home recently and watched a band in a local pub. It was magical to see how much they loved every minute of it. The escapism from day jobs and the weight of life was plain to see. Who cares if they were playing other people’s music and the room was made up of about 20 people. It was genuinely such a lovely moment to be in that place, enjoying music without any other pressures! I look back at my 20 years playing those gigs with a lot of great memories!
The moment music becomes your livelihood, it’s inevitable that some of the shine comes off it. You get to see how the sausages are made and if you’re not careful, it can spoil the ride.
And that’s the key here. It’s about the journey, not the destination. It’s about embracing difficulties because they make the successes thatmuch sweeter. Like any relationship, our one with music is so much more rewarding because of its challenges, not in spite of them.
I’m sure some of those challenges will be apparent in the new songs we’ve written, but for better or worse, they’re a realtime reflection of where we are as a band. From its writing and arrangement, through to its engineering and production, this record is all done by us, just the band, and we’re proud it. We can’t wait for you to hear it.
Written while sipping an average-to-bad instant coffee in my hotel room.
Coffee - ⭐️
Vibe - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
