Australian heirlooms Hermitude have been in the states showing US crowds just how it’s done back at home and have gifted us an inside look and feel into the tour life.

It’s as gritty as you’d expect with the pairing of Luke Dubs and El Gusto talking jet lag, hangovers, hanging out with good buds Rufus and generally being good ole tourists in the US of A.

This will actually be the first of a three part series so expect the stories to get stranger and parties to get bigger!

Day 1. Sydney > Boston

Oct 3: Leave sunny Sydney bound for Boston for the first date of the Rufus /Hermitude tour. Having spent my life not watching The Godfather trilogy, it was a perfect length of time to cover the 14 hour flight to LA. It was 37 degrees in LA but apparently only 12 in Boston and due to wild conditions the connecting flight was rough and a couple of hours longer, so we were delirious when we finally landed. Thankfully the Rufus boys and Texas Mike met us at the airport. Mike is our tour manager – he looks like he’s been touring for 40 years so we felt instantly comfortable. Never trust a smooth looking crew member. After settling in we ate burgers and drank enormous beers while having our faces torn off by some horrible EDM music despite being in a country & western looking diner. A memorable introduction to Boston but we needed sleep.

Day 2. Boston

We awoke to thick fog and it was cold and wet. Breakfast was Cuban eggs and Mexican beef, all served with a healthy dose of home fries, cheese and filtered coffee. Perfect. The venue for the first show of the tour was a little bar called Great Scott. Greeted by a guy at the door loudly singing to his ipod, we thanked him thinking he was a staff member but he replied that he was just “high as shit”. Jetlag was taking hold so we naturally we did the only thing we could: drink. The crowd was small but really receptive, and we were just happy that people knew our songs. Rufus drew a huge response but it didn’t stop one melancholy punter sadly reflecting to us that she’d just got engaged and it meant “one dick, one life”. Her partner was standing next to us. By the time Rufus finished we were quite inebriated so my memory becomes a little patchy. We all got in the van and met Odezsa who were playing across town. From what I can remember we hung outside their hotel drinking before taking a group photo which I couldn’t recall until I saw it on instagram the next morning. On our way back to the hotel I tried to spew out the door of the van while we pulled up at an intersection. Luckily I was too drunk to get the door open because there were 5 cop cars adjacent. Somehow I held it together until we arrived at the hotel and I found the nearest pot plant in the lobby and let it have it. Hi mum!

Day 3. Boston > Washington

Waking up with an incredible headache, I stumbled into the bathroom to drink some water and realized that Gusto had brought to the bathroom what I’d given the pot plant. I should add this is not your run of the mill start to a tour for us. We jumped in the tour van for the nine hour drive to Washington DC. It’s Fall here so the trees are changing colour and the countryside is quite beautiful with huge lakes and dotted fisherman contrasting the distant cities of New York while we cross great bridges over the Delawere River. Our hotel in DC is more like a nightclub. Nearby an Ethiopian restaurant cooked up a huge feed for the touring party and we made our way to bed soon after.

Day 4. Washington DC

Our day off in DC started with a boiled egg inside a waffle. Genius. Throw some bacon and hash brown in the mix and we’re ready to hit the monuments. On what may have been the most beautiful Autumn day ever, we took in the Pool of Reflection, the Abe Lincoln and Martin Luther King memorials. Our Australian tour guide plied us with a steady stream of beer that concluded with the Air and Space Museum. A few selfies with the Lunar Module and we headed home, shocked to discover that Vanilla Ice has his own TV show called Vanilla Ice goes Amish! Wow.

Day 5. Washington DC

We’re doing 15 shows in 20 days yet our DC show is only the 2nd in our first five days so it’s about to get crazy. At this rate we may not last 20 days so we hit the healthy section of the whole foods supermarket and set up our mobile studio. The venue is U Street and it had a banging system as well and our first chance to run our visual show. DC was a great receptive crowd for us and Rufus and the first major test of the tour was overcome post show: packing the tour van. The packing of a tour van is very contentious and invites numerous opinions on method and technique so photos were duly taken of the final arrangement and said photo has become vital as the shows wore on.

Day 6. Philadelphia

Driving through Philly suburbs after taking a wrong turn was an unexpected pleasure. The foliage was really pretty on the outskirts and it was quite hilly with some classic American homes with white picket fence and US flags proudly flying. After checking into the hotel, Gusto and I had one thing on our agenda: Philly Cheesesteaks! We walked 2.5 km from our hotel to the intersection where the 2 original cheesesteak restaurants were located. Geno’s steaks and Pats King of Steaks. We didn’t really know which one is supposed to be better so we ended up at Genos. We ordered 2 cheesesteaks with provolone, cheesefries and cokes. Show #3 took place that night but things took a turn for the worse when the inhouse tech wiped all the info from Rufus’s soundcheck (meaning that hours of preparation was deleted from the tech setup). We avoided this and were lucky enough to have a sweet show. Afterwards I got dragged onto the dancefloor where one punter danced so enthusiastically she stacked it on the middle of the floor and tried to turn it into contemporary dance routine. When the show finished and everyone shuffled out one of the punters told us we should start making velvet shirts for merch.

Day 7. DC > NYC

Big Apple bound. If food is a big part of this diary then you know the first thing we did upon arriving in Manhattan: pizza slice. Second priority was Gusto getting his hair did at the barber. Third was a wild goose chase for some crucial cables and adapters – to no avail – compromising our visual show that night. As Texas Mike said, “New York always kicks your arse”. In the end it didn’t matter because we had a big enthusiastic crowd that gave us all their energy for the whole set. And we were in New York playing music so that also kicks arse.

Day 8. Brooklyn

Up bright and early we jumped the subway into Manhattan to meet up with our publishers for some important reason. The girl at the front desk was very hospitable and proceeded to tell us she thought wombats were just oversized squirrels and how she loves the boxing kangaroo video that’s doing the rounds. Our meeting mainly consisted of talking about casinos in Montreal and Service Station scams in Mexico. Slightly more important was Juniors, a lunch joint back in Brooklyn with the best cheesecake in NY. Unfortunately the monstrous Turkey and Corned Beef Reubens had enough meat on them to feed a small village and we couldn’t do the cake. To our great delight, Verboten, the venue we were playing that night, had just installed seven new projectors around the room so our visuals looked amazing. The sound system made your ears bleed so we knew the show was going to be a banger. Williamsburg was a heaving hipsters paradise as we walked down Bedford Ave for a pre-show bite, arriving back to find a line going way down the street. Best gig of the tour so far thanks Brooklyn. It was just awesomely smashtastic! In our green room we drank Mezcal Jalepeno cocktails called “Farenheight 451” till we were wobbly. Contrary to what this diary may have you believe, we’re not actually alcoholics.

Stay tuned for part two next week!