High Rise Tour - London - 22/5/17

The last day of tour was a home town show in London and it was nice to get that feeling of being home again. We took the van again to The Unicorn in Camden and were there from around 4pm so we had plenty of time to load in. Again I took charge of all the merch loading in and setting up. Although this time as punishment for not doing any loading in Tom had to help me out! After that I then set up my laptop on the merch desk to get cracking with more editing. 

At around 6pm my boyfriend arrived at the venue as a bit of moral support at the last gig. We headed down to Camden town to get some food and I brought Ricky’s GoPro with me to film some candid footage of the town centre. After a lovely filling burrito we walked 20 minutes back up the road to the venue to have a quick drink before the gig kicked off.

Callous were on first and managed to draw in a bit of a crowd which stuck around for the rest of the night. I got the chance to jam out with Defences being front and centre of their crowd which was loads of fun then it was back to work with High Rise. As the last night of tour and the crowd numbers looking up Dan finally got to crowd surf, which he was really happy about. What a way to send off the tour!

We took some time after to get a couple of group photos of High Rise and all the bands/crew together once we mostly loaded everything out. The venue were quite eager to close up as their staff don’t get paid after 11 and there was one bar guy left waiting on us. Whilst packing up we seemed to attract a rather interesting drunkard from the streets who began babbling incoherently before he started to get aggressive. Not only did he kick my boyfriend but also began hitting/prying off Defences’ license plate on their tour van! Fortunately for them their drummer and driver Kyle was prepared for anything (and I mean absolutely anything!) and had some spare screws around to fix it. Whilst all this was happening Gaz from Callous was straight on the phone to the police.

That’s when we discovered something… Dan had left his jacket and car keys in the now locked up venue which we needed to get home. After trying to think of several other ways to get home Cherry from Defences spotted the venue staff walking down the road so we chased after him and got the venue reopened. That saved our journey home! Thinking that’d be the end of our troubles I joined Jovic across the road to get some pizza for the journey home. As soon as I got there Jovic and two of Defences told me to look out on the pavement by the door and I saw a trail of blood. Apparently they had just seen someone get stabbed in the foot! I have heard of various things like this happening in Camden but had never been one to experience it, even with all the times I’ve spent in Camden at gigs.

Once our food was ready we headed back towards the van to see a police van had arrived so we went to see what was going on. Turns out the police turned up to deal with the homeless drunk man Gaz had called in about. The man had been starting to let his trousers and all sorts go and as we turned the corner we saw the police had to restrain him on the floor. Finally that was the end of our troubles in Camden and time to go home.

As sad as it was that the tour had ended I know everyone couldn’t wait to sleep in their own beds, get plenty of rest and some proper food down them! I’m sure it won’t be the last I see of the boys and hopefully I’ll get to work with them together again on future projects and tours.