After locating a decent coffee and a gourmet sandwich as big as my head for breakfast, we once again mounted our trusty steed and rode towards the horizon. This time in the direction of Kansas City, Missouri. The venue for last nights show was the “Uptown”, an old theatre with an Italian Renaissance styled interior. It reminded me of a slightly smaller and more colourful Brixton Academy (U.S. readers – the Brixton Academy is a famous venue in South London.)

Last night we performed our first show in the United States of America. It was a momentous occasion for us and spirits in TTM camp are high. We’ve been made to feel very welcome by all the guys in the Blackberry Smoke camp and we look forward to spending time with them over the months ahead. It was a fair old drive from Nashville yesterday, although compared to some of the distances we’ll be covering during the tour, it was really just a short hop down the road. Still, the Gateway Arch beside the Mississippi river was a welcome sight as we approached the city of St Louis. Several years ago, I came to St Louis with another band. It was summer and birds were literally dropping dead out of the trees it was so hot. This time however there was no danger of that as their poor little feet were most likely frozen to the branches. Gear was loaded into the Pageant Theatre and set up on stage. I went chasing around St Louis looking for a 1 amp fuse, came back and blasted through a soundcheck. We we ready for our first show.
Being in this band never seems to get old. We’re out here promoting our first album which we’ve already been playing around the UK and Europe for well over a year but as we ripped into “Midnight Black” last night, it felt fresh as a daisy. I think we all had the same thought as we grinned at each other onstage last night. “Wow! We’ve done it boys…We’ve made it to America!”

Yesterday was mainly spent shuffling around the Nashville ice caps like newly hatched penguins exploring their surroundings for the first time. It was a fine sunny day with a high of about -5º which actually felt tropical compared to the temperature it plummeted to once the sun went down. Our priority yesterday was to round up all the backline that had been delivered to various parts of the City. Drum Kits, Guitar Amps, Bass Amps, Pedalboards and Flightcases all had to be corralled into one place and loaded into our splitter van which also needed collecting. Full marks to Mr Iain Graham, our unstoppable tour manager for achieving the impossible whilst we sat around in a nice warm vintage guitar shop. In the afternoon, we had a radio session with the one and only Steve Gorman – drummer with The Black Crowes who hosts his own show in Nashville. We had a little sing-song and a chat with Steve before finding ourselves out in the tundra once again. As we didn’t have a show to go to due to the city being entirely frozen, the evening was spent at Soundcheck – a great rehearsal facility in East Nashville, running through some tunes and making sure all our gear was in order. It felt good to be in a room playing again and after the last few days of battling ice, snow and jetlag, we were fired up and ready to take on whatever this tour had to throw at us.
Bring it on America!

“Welcome to Chicago. Any passengers connecting to Nashville, please make yourselves known to the airport officials waiting inside the terminal building as you disembark the aircraft.”…

Air hostesses never live up to the hype. The adverts promise you 5 super-models of identical proportions walking through the airport in choreographed synchronicity. Instead you get a glorified dinner lady in a nice blazer. Well today was an exception – we were checked in by American Airlines finest ambassador who turned a blind eye to half of the 18 pieces of equipment we were checking in. This US tour is already off to a good start. Spirits are high in the TM today, despite saying our last goodbyes to the loved ones we won’t see enough of for the next 3 months. This trip has always been part of the dream for us, as I’m sure it always has and will be for any Rock and Roll band who have set themselves the task of taking their music to as many like minded souls as time (short and long term) will allow. First stop Nashville and a show at the legendary Ryman. No pressure then – but I know that my brothers and I will rise to the occasion as always seems to be the way. Our worries about being accepted by the fine folks across the Atlantic have already been settled slightly – our debut album was released in the US last week and seems to be doing well. Plus, we’ve been offered a free cowboy hat each as soon as we get to Nashville. We’re incredibly grateful for the positive reaction to the music but have politely declined the cowboy hats. I’m not sure if we could quite pull that look off, and anyway, we plan on giving the US a heavy dose of some British flavoured rock and roll, so it’s important that we embrace the culture we’re stepping into whilst staying true to our roots. Bowler Hats it is, although we did manage to convince Phil and Iain to leave the kilts behind.

Well I started writing this tour diary entry after the Berlin show and for one reason or another, didn’t quite get it finished so now you get a marathon diary entry stretching all the way from Berlin to Glasgow via Zurich, Vienna and Munich So make yourself a nice cup of tea and get comfortable, this could take some time!…
“Berlin is not a Rock and Roll town” we were told a while back. “Berlin is mainly House and Techno music”. Unfortunately the person who told us that wasn’t at our show at the Lido for if he had of been, we would have enjoyed watching him eat his own words. It was a raging fireball of a show and one that I think we’ll look back on as a turning point for us in Germany. The reason it was so good? We had a room packed full of people who wanted a good Rock’n’roll show and weren’t prepared to go home without one! A great show needs two key ingredients, a band and a crowd of people, and these two elements feed off each other. I think last night us and the good people of Berlin created a perfect storm. You know it’s a good show when you see not only hands in the air but feet too!
So after a sweaty hour and a half of escapism, it was back to the reality of getting ourselves to Zurich for a show the next night. Geography was working against us. We looked at various options of how to do this and get some sleep and none of them quite seemed to work without a splitter van capable of travelling at 540mph so we trundled off to Leipzig to catch a few hours of shuteye with the intention of hammering the rest of the way to Zurich the next day. This in theory would have worked fine but what we hadn’t foreseen was first getting pulled by the German Polizei and then held at the Swiss border by customs officers keen to know how many t-shirts we were bringing into their country so they could calculate how much to tax us. These obstacles meant that we arrived at Komplex an hour or so before we were due to play but in true TTM style, the gear was hauled into the venue and set up onstage before you could say “Edelweiss”. Pepper embraced the situation like a true pro as did Mr Iain Graham. We’re lucky to have these guys with us on the road. As much as we like to torment and take the piss out of each other, there’s also a level of respect as we know that when it comes down to it, everyone is capable of doing their job and doing it well. So, stand up and take a bow Iain Graham and James Pepper for making Zurich happen!
Another great night was had by all and it was off to bed with ringing ears for some well deserved sleep.
The next morning we found ourselves back in the splitter bus for another 9 hour drive to Vienna. A couple of Tarantino movies, a schnitzel stop and long periods of staring out of windows and we were pulling into Vienna just in time to grab some food and get to bed.

I would be sharing a room with Mr Paul Sayer. We had a pretty large room with a sliding screen that you could pull across for privacy. There was a king size double bed on one side and a single obviously intended for a small child on the other. Neither of us was going to volunteer for this one so we flipped a coin – I lost! Once we had settled ourselves in our respective beds. Paul in his palace of slumber, me in my tiny cot, Paul got up to go to the bathroom. I took this golden opportunity to hop out of my bed, stuff a large cushion under the duvet to make it appear as though I was still in it, and go and get in his bed and hide. Paul comes ambling out of the bathroom, chatting away to the large cushion under my duvet and pulls the dividing screen across behind him at which point I leapt out of his bed at him. Paul left the ground as though propelled by unseen springs in his feet whilst at the same time emitting a comedy “Aaaaarrrggh!” – being in his birthday suit made it even funnier! Over the next 24 hours we became like Clouseau and Kato, jumping out of wardrobes and from behind doors at any opportunity trying to scare the shit out of each other – This is what touring does to you!
The day of the Vienna gig we actually had some time to go and explore. Whilst wandering through the chilly backstreets of Vienna with Pepper, our directionally challenged guide, we were lured into an interactive photographic exhibition by a girl promising warmth and a free SD card. We didn’t need much persuading. The idea, cleverly dreamt up by Olympus, was that you take one of their cameras around the exhibition, photograph each other being idiots and take the results home on the SD card. This is exactly what we did and will post some of the pictures up for you in good time.
The rest of the day was spent eating sausages and searching for apple strudel before it was time to make our way to the venue.

We’d played the Chelsea in Vienna before. On our previous visit there were maybe 27 people in the room. This time however, there were considerably more – It had sold out!
We had some issues setting up for this show. Damon had his kit set up in an arched stone alcove alongside my bass amp which resulted in an excessive amount of bone shaking lower frequencies and not a lot else for him. We then moved the amp out of the alcove and behind Paul so he got all the bass whilst I, standing to the side of the amp, got none! However we tried, we couldn’t arrange the stage in any way to allow everyone to hear themselves properly. There was inadequate monitoring for vocals, the lights made everything buzz and hum. In short, it was fairly hopeless. Mr G did the best he could with the hand he was dealt and we went on stage with the attitude of “we can’t hear shit but let’s enjoy this one for what it is”. And what a show it was. Possibly one of my favourites. Hot, sweaty and loud! By the second song, Luke had jumped off the stage onto the bar for his guitar solo. As Damon said afterwards, “It was like Coyote Ugly in there!”
Back to the hotel, and after another night of checking in wardrobes and behind doors for Paul Sayer, we departed for Munich.
Our last show at Backstage sold out, as did this one and we’d been moved up to the larger room. We were quite excited about this one. It would be our biggest German show to date and we weren’t disappointed. The good people of Munich gave us an awesome night.
It was certainly hot in there. Kind of like Bikram Yoga but with a lot more noise, flashing lights, a crowd of people…and no yoga.

The morning after the morning after Glasgow…

I’m now at home. Life has returned to normal – or is normal life being on the road? I don’t even know anymore! What i do know is that despite the ridiculous amount of hours spent in a splitter van and the late nights and early morning departures leaving us all dazed and confused, this has been one of the best tours yet. The shows have been awesome and it’s been both encouraging and rewarding to see the crowds grow not only here but in Europe too. Glasgow was the perfect end to this small run of shows. A great, vibey venue with the biggest glitter ball in Europe and a packed house of beautiful Glaswegians happy to spend their tuesday night celebrating with us. Not much can be said of this show that hasn’t been said before of other shows but it rocked! Not being able to reach the bar this time, Luke scaled the p.a. for a guitar solo and Sally the Sunflower managed to hold herself together just long enough for what could have been her last appearance – who knows?
A big thank you to Pepper and Iain for being such stoic and capable companions on the road. Thanks to all the other cogs and wheels that make up this ambitious machine we’re building and most of all, thanks to you for giving us a platform. Without you, there would be no us!

We’ll be back soon…

Nick x

It’s a cold wet morning and we’ve met at Shoreditch Grind for a hit of caffeine to fuel our journey to Belgium. The main topic of conversation is Friday night’s show at The London Forum. In short, It blew our minds! We couldn’t have hoped for a better night. We’ve toured our first album extensively and one concern, aside from the one of “are they going to like the new material”, was that maybe people had seen enough of us already and maybe we’d be playing to half empty rooms, especially as venue sizes on this tour were the biggest so far. It was perhaps a little over ambitious? Our fears however were unfounded as the Forum was packed to the rafters with beautiful people supporting us every step of the way and singing along even louder than we were. It really was a special night for us and we thank you all for making it one to remember.
So, in the time it’s taken me to write the last paragraph, we’ve travelled to Folkstone and are now about to board a train resembling a giant Rimowa suitcase which will hurtle through a tunnel underneath the sea and pop out in France from where we will continue driving to Middlekerke in Belgium. Due to rapid advances in technology, we no longer have a printed tour book but an app on our phones called Master Tour. This tells us where we’ll be on what day, what hotel we’ll be staying in and other vital information like how long the drives are. We obviously never read this and repeatedly ask Iain Graham questions such as “where is the hotel” or “how long is the drive to Zurich?” Which is either ignored or elicits the standard, blunt response… “Master Tour!”. I have just consulted this digital world of information (surprisingly, there is 4g under the English Channel) and it appears that there’ll be a fair bit of driving on this little tour. As you probably know, we are no strangers to marathon drives followed by a soundcheck and a show but this style of touring leaves no margin for error and with our track record of flat tyres and faulty splitter vans, we’ll be crossing our fingers that each show is reached without the help of roadside assistance.
So, after Friday’s epic night, we embark on yet another jaunt around Europe with next year’s marathon U.S. Tour looming closer by the day. The feeling in the Temperance Movement camp however is not that we are approaching the end of a long period of touring, but that this is just the beginning of a whole new chapter.

– Nick

So here we sit, on the hard shoulder of the M5 northbound with a flat tyre and no spare. It’s a cold, wet, dreary day and we may be here for some time. The Temperance Movement and rental vehicles do not appear to be good friends. This, however, has failed to dampen our spirits as last night we played the first show of our end of year tour in Bristol and were, once again, reminded of the reason why we endure flat tyres and broken down splitter buses to get to gigs. We continue to be overwhelmed by the turnout at our shows. It doesn’t seem all that long ago that we were wondering if anyone would turn up at all and yet last night I was looking out at over 1100 people. Thanks to all of you who were there last night. You made five boys very happy!

There was a feeling of mild anxiety yesterday after soundcheck as it had been a while since our last gig and we would be airing new, unheard material. Would the crowd like it? Would we remember everything? Would Paul’s pedalboard behave itself? Well, two out of three ain’t bad…the new tunes appeared to go down well and our memories served us correctly. We’re getting pretty excited about album two now as its starting to really shape up. The litmus test was always going to be how a crowd react to it at a gig and last night I don’t think I was alone in feeling a sense of relief when the new material was played and it felt really good. We look forward to you hearing it all next year.

We’re now in Gloucester. We were collected by a friendly AA recovery man and the car’s in the tyre centre receiving some new rubber. As we’ve been discussing our bad luck with vehicles and tyres in particular, we thought we’d compile a list in chronological order of our misfortunes on route to shows. Here it is…
1. Flat tyre – (Pauls old BMW) resulting in scrapping of vehicle in Glasgow and hiring a car to get home.
2. Tyre blowout as a result of entanglement with Swedish petrol pump. After emptying out entire backline to access spare tyre, we were soon on our way. The petrol pump unfortunately didn’t fare so well.
3. The worst splitter van hire company in Great Britain – Should really name and shame these guys or at least give them some kind of Award for having some of the shittiest vehicles in the country. A Splitter van hire company (name withheld) provided us first with a van with a sliding side door that wouldn’t close properly so we had to buy a padlock and chain to secure it whilst parked and physically hold it shut whilst moving. Then they supplied a second vehicle with the opposite problem. We couldn’t actually unlock the rear doors to get our gear in or out. This, coupled with the fact that you couldn’t wind the passenger window up once it was down and the unsettling clunking noise coming from the axle forced us to give the van back and look elsewhere at which point they refused to refund our deposit. Thanks guys!
4. Double breakdown on route to Hamburg – broke down not once but twice. Ended up arriving at the venue in two separate hire vehicles at the exact time we were due to walk on stage. Loaded in, did a gig and loaded out in 2 1/2 hours!
5. Transmission failure. Managed to drive for 2 1/2 hours without changing gear before breaking down 3 miles from the venue in Upsalla, Sweden. Arrived at the gig with the splitter on the back of a recovery vehicle. The breakdown vehicle driver stayed for the show!
6. Flat tyre – Italy. Limped into a tyre centre in a small town outside of Padua. Was closed for lunch but by communicating via sign language (we didn’t speak Italian, they spoke no english) they kindly agreed to fix our tyre in exchange for a CD and a T-Shirt.
7. Blown tyre – Damon on his way to the BT Sport TV appearance, run off the road by an impatient motorist. Tyre burst on contact with curb.
8. Yet another flat tyre – Luke’s slightly deflating end to our UK spring tour. (Apologies for the terrible pun)
9. Today. Flat tyre in rental vehicle on M5. No spare or repair kit. Fear not Manchester, we’re now on route!

Stay tuned for more inevitable tour mishaps!

– Nick

The following may or may not have happened. I mean, I’m pretty sure it did. I was there. We all were. I pinched myself a few times to see if maybe I was daydreaming and still at home doing the washing up but no, it appeared as though we were actually standing in a corridor outside Camp X-Ray, hanging out with the Rolling Stones! In the flesh! Let me backtrack.
We had just done our set in the Esprit Arena in Dusseldorf. A huge cavernous, behemoth of a building big enough to fly a helicopter in. It possibly has it’s own weather system.
Before our set, as we were waiting in our dressing room, me deciding whether to go on with or without socks, we were visited by Mick Jagger’s P.A. “Mick would like to say hello” she exclaimed. It was at this point that things got pretty trippy.
We were taken upstairs and led down a corridor, past a smiling Charlie Watts and into Mick’s dressing room. All was tranquil and serene inside and a very welcoming Mick Jagger was there to greet us. We sat on sofas around a coffee table chatting about this and that. It was such a surreal experience that I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Elvis had popped his head round the door. I’d loved to have stayed and chatted for longer. He was an instantly likeable guy with an impressive energy about him but as it was time for his vocal warm-up and time for us to do a show, we got up, thanked him for having us, as all polite boys do, and left him in his sanctuary.
Finding the stage was no simple feat. There is an internal road that orbits the venue with various parking areas and slip roads that take you into the main arena. It was on this road that we found ourselves anxiously scratching our heads wondering which exit to take to get us to the stage. It was “Hello Cleveland” all over again but this time we were jogging round the M25! We finally found our way to the back of the stage and after a few moments to slow our heart rates back to a safe level, we walked on to the stage.
The first thing that struck me was that it was dark. Our previous shows with The Stones had been outdoor venues, hence in broad daylight, but now we had lights to add to the excitement of it all. Our logo was emblazoned on the giant screen behind us and 46,000 people stood in front of us. It was a far cry from the Water Rats in Kings Cross and yet, as Damon launched us off with the drum fill intro to “Ain’t No Telling”, everything felt familiar and as it should be.
It was great to look out and see a few more Temperance Movement T-shirts in the crowd and we even had a banner this time. Nice one Movers!
As if our meeting with Mick wasn’t enough, we had been asked to return to the Stones’ dressing room area after our set for a meet and greet so back we went. As we walked past Camp X-Ray, the pulsing sounds of Reggae could be heard coming from inside. These were followed by Keith himself. I don’t know who it was who said “You should never meet your heroes, you’ll only be disappointed” but they were wrong. Mick and Keith were far from a disappointment and although like star-struck teenagers we may have been, I’d like to think we kept some semblance of cool as one by one, all members of The Rolling Stones emerged from their dressing rooms to come and say hello to five slightly overwhelmed members of The Temperance Movement. This was better than Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory! (see diary entry #1)
As we stood in the corridor with Mick, Keith, Charlie and Ronnie, I couldn’t help noticing how, even though they have reached legendary status and live in a slightly different reality to most of us, they came across as just a bunch of guys who have been bought together through a mutual love of music and still get off on playing live. They have a vast catalog of incredible tunes and, when you see their live show, there is still that spark which ignited them in the first place. After all these years, the energy appears not to have been diluted. If we can achieve a fraction of what they have and maintain the same level of energy, I’ll be happy. Rolling Stones, we salute you!
We’re now in Vitoria-Gasteiz near Bilbao to play the Azkena Rock festival. There’s a storm brewing outside. Our stint with The Stones is now over and as incredible as it was, and it was incredible, we’ve a lot more adventures to look forward to.

Stay tuned!
– Nick