+ Sky Larkin +

Hello everyone,

We recently asked for some help at the bands shows on a few bits and pieces and would once again like to ask your help. If you’re interested take a look at the gig list here or on myspace to see which shows you can make it too and drop Team lark an email here . There may be age restrictions so please inform Team Lark if you are under 18 (sorry guys).

Until next time, with news of Antibodies and more than likely a whole lot more

Team Larkin.

sky larkin – Beeline (at sxsw) from Land Wolf on Vimeo.

View more at the Awesome Pals blog

www.savelorenzo.com

We should add that Douglas Adams, epic bass player marvel of Sky Larkin has teamed up with a number of uber excellent bands to co-curate the soon-to-be seminal Awesome Pals blog, alongside

• COPY HAHO
• DANANANANAYKROYD
• DUTCH UNCLES
• FAVOURS FOR SAILORS
• FOALS
• HOT CLUB DE PARIS
• JOHNNY FOREIGNER
• LOS CAMPESINOS!
• ROLO TOMASSI
• SKY LARKIN
• THE FUTUREHEADS

A final note of triumph tinged with sadness is that the Beeline watches which became one of the most desired commodities of the Western World in recent months are completely sold out – not a single one left. Sorry!

Hello Sky Larkin, I took a photo of you at your recent gig in my bedroom and I thought you would like to see it. You guys are great. Bye now

Calum S. Gunn of dananananaykroyd

we got it www.twitter.com/weareskylarkin

LA beware, my pale northern english legs are coming to cali. I may spontaneously combust. I’m as white as ET when he was face down in that ditch, perhaps Drew Barrymore will be compelled to save me. See you soon west coast!

katie
x

x

oh PS, the last time we went to heathrow this happened…ew

April
21 Brighton Concorde 2: with The Rakes
22 Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms: with The Rakes
23 Manchester Club Academy: with The Rakes
25 Glasgow Oran Mor: with The Rakes
26 Newcastle The Cluny: with The Rakes
28 Nottingham, Rescue Rooms: with The Rakes
29 London, Koko: with The Rakes
30 York Fibbers

May
1 Glasgow Hinterland
2 Leeds live at Leeds
3 Birmingham The Victoria
5 Dublin Academy 2
6 Belfast Auntie Annies
8 Canterbury The Farmhouse
16 Brighton Great Escape
23 Liverpool Sound City

Word, so, thanks to the magic of National Express East Coast Mainline trains I can now blog about anything and everything from the comfort of my £85 train seat (‘SAVER’??) including…

Europe

Europe was awesome, amazing and great.  Alexei JoFo wasn’t as smelly as Nestor and besides, we had a MASSIVE van so it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.  Thanks to the hire company and their VTBD (Vans that break down) we got upgraded from the cheapest van to the most expensive, for FREE.

Serious, we’re talking Playstation 2 (Burnout Revenge), Movie Hard Drive, Light Switches, Airline Seats, cleanliness… basically, far more than we deserved.  Who knows how the tour would’ve turned out if we’d stayed in the original van, or, god forbid, our own van, luckily the only problem was trying to find room for the crates and crates and crates and crates of amazing German/Belgian/Swiss beer that we stole from the rider each night.

So we did a few shows round and about, Hamburg was amazing, and as the red light district is all we’ve seen of the city I think it is known for Dildos and skull and crossbones flags.  Although I’ve been informed that “der’s more to hamburg dan dis”.  Party town though anyway.

Koln was awesome as well, we got there the day after Karnival so I think the whole city was hungover, we stayed at the same hostel as last time – now missing a polystyrene sheep that Drake kicked the head off last time (we did not mention this to the staff).

Where else…

Schorndorff, surprisingly good, I got shouted at by a teenager because he felt I was being mean by not giving him MY beer off the stage because “you have loads of fucking beer, and we have to buy it”.  He caught up with me later on and offered his and his friends services as a headline band as we’d finished early, but then they got asked to leave so it was alright. Could’ve been awesome though.

Berlin was incredible as always, we had a day off so we went to checkpoint charlie and then the obligatory trip to white trash wherewe had the best waiter ever (seriously, I was in awe of his customer service skills) and I drank a lot of Vodka Tonic.  Then Scandinavia.

Scandinavia, jesus christ… a long drive from Berlin to the ferry, then the ferry VERY early in the morning up to Malmo(ish) then to Copenhagen.  Where we entered a gangland war, apparently.  It was completely safe according to the hotel, but we played a street away from where a man had been shot by Hell’s Angels the night before.  Needless to say there was lots of running around pretending to be in Full Metal Jacket and lots of “stop fucking about, we could get shot” from the more ’sensible’ members of the touring party.

Then to Norway, where I missed a man shitting in the street.  Everyone else saw him. boo. This carries a substantial fine in Oslo apparently, as the people are usually quite reserved so this man must’ve been a super-tramp.

Stockholm, ahhh, stockholm, how I missed you.. I only got to see about 100 sqm of it, but it’s a nice little bit. Got to watch/hang out with wintersleep again, quality guys, quality band.  I got a copy of the Jeniferever album from Jeniferever (I don’t think this counts as a name drop because we have the same tour manager), I’m yet to listen to it though and I definitely did NOT give it to anyone else to rip.

And then we flew home, well… nearly home. FIRST “Being late for our Visa Interview”

In a bizarre twist of fate involving the most organised member of the band somehow sleeping through his alarm, and me having so much faith in him to be this organised and thus, not book a wake up call myself or anything (in hindsight, probably a bit short sighted considering the importance of being on time) we managed to wake up at 8am.  We were supposed to be at the US embassy at 7:30. Shit.
Katie had opted to stay with a friend and so was not a part of the whole debacle.

An official apology is required here to our amazing, wonderful managers who we nearly gave a heart attack this morning. Anna, Gareth, I’m very sorry.

But we got there, and it was fine, and a bit scary, but we got done and now we’re heading back to Leeds, for 3 days of going to the Brudenell and eating Pasta.

Oh, why do we need said Visas? Not just because of SXSW but because of the MASSIVE US TOUR WE’RE GOING ON IN APRIL OMG LMFAO FML ETC

The routing’s below, the venues and shit’ll be up at somepoint, I’m getting too hot to type here, sat by the window. Stupid britain and it’s Hot weather.  In Norway the SEA was frozen.
View Larger Map

That is all for now, I’m sure there’ll be a better written blog to come from Nestor or Katie, but for now I’ll leave you with this thought.

These are my hands.

Love you, BYEE.

Douglas

Taking time out last week dear Nestor sent this over to Sky Larkin HQ.

Gutentag from Köln, Germany! We’ve just had a much deserved day off in this fair city after an eventful and action-packed first third of our European stint…

I’ll start at the beginning shall I? Well, as you may know, we said good bye to Horse in Birmingham so we could take everyone’s favourite Johnny Foreigner with us and all clambered into another van to start the tour in earnest!
I think we made it about 90 minutes down the M25 before things took an unexpected turn for the worse. With an “uh-oh” from Lea (our driver and stage tech and saviour) the engine puttered to a stop and we rolled gracefully to a halt on the hard shoulder. To cut a long and uneventful two hours short, we ended up hanging out by an abandoned (and almost certainlz haunted) Cuban restaurant before being taken to our hotel for the night by a very bewildered taxi driver.

We were met here a few hours later by our knight in shining armour, otherwise known as the van we are currently driving around Europe in that is as yet unnamed (any ideas would be very much welcome!). So without further ado, we set off for Dover and a lovely morning view of the White Cliffs before we hit Calais and cruised on over to Amsterdam and the Paradiso where we’ve never played before but had heard many good things, so it was great to finally get inside! As a little treat and by the power of the internet I believe you can watch some snippets of the show right here http://www.fabchannel.com/sky_larkin_concert/.

After that it was on to gay Paris and Le Fleche D’or, another venue hallowed by those we know but somewhere we had never visited. The venue used to be an old tran station and is situated literallz above the tracks which makes for some pretty spectacular views out of the windows… Oh and the gig was great too!

Then it was on to more familiar territory wth another trip to Le Botanique in Brussels, Belgium. We played there in the Orangerie with Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band back in September 2008 and then in the Rotunde with Los Campesinos! and Lovvers in November so it was great to come back and take in the lovely gardens again despite the chily breeze. That nights venue was the Witloof Bar which is actually in the basement, which as Katie pointed out made the gig feel like some kind of clandestine operation, still awesome fun, but awesome fun in secret. Shhhhhhh.

Which brings me to last night in Köln at Gebaude 9, which is an amazing warehouse with the most powerful bass bins that we’ve ever felt on stage. My drums we’re actually wobbling about with the sub sound!I It was great to see some familiar faces from our last time in Köln at Luxor, its great to know we made an impression, and makes us even more excited to get back onto the road.

Righto, my food is here and I am a hungry, hungry hippo so I’m signing off. There’ll be more banter from us and hopefully some pictures very soon.

loveyoubyeeeeeeeee!

n x

Many thanks to a certain Katie Harkin for collating and editing this in such a masterful fashion.