Gold Fields: Tour Diary

When Australian quintet Gold Fields visited The Alternate Side's Studio A earlier this year for a session, they had just released a self-titled EP which housed their catchy pop hit "Treehouse."

Fast forward six months and the band — Mark Robert Fuller, Vin Andanar, Ryan D'Sylva, Rob Clifton and Luke Peldys. —is on the brink of releasing its debut album, Black Sun, on February 26 on Astralwerks. The Ballarat group is currently touring North America   — they play New York's Bowery Ballroom on December 4  — and TAS asked Gold Fields' frontman Mark Robert Fuller if he'd keep a fall tour diary of their travels which he did, noting everything from a first Stateside Halloween to filming a music video to an encounter with a peeved police officer in New Mexico:

Wednesday, Oct. 24
Sleeping on the floor at an airport is a lot better than trying to sleep in the van. And flying is a lot quicker than driving. But after paying $700 in excess baggage, I can see why we usually drive everywhere. But we have a show tomorrow, so we're leaving New York for LA to start another tour, this time with Diamond Rings. 

Thursday, Oct. 25
Before the Diamond Rings tour kicks off tomorrow, we're playing a one-off show in LA at the Capitol Records Tower. Weird. LogitechUE are throwing a party in the car park there and we're playing it. LogitechUE have said they'll support the band from here on in and give us in-ears and stuff. So everything about this is awesome. Until about half an hour before we went on and I started vomiting and learned I had food poisoning. The show went well and I kept it down but again afterwards I was spewing my guts, up all night into the morning, as we headed to the airport on no sleep to fly to Chicago. This was also our last show with our sound guy, Damo, who has to fly home to Australia because he fractured his ankle at our show in Salt Lake City the other week. 

Friday, Oct. 26
I had one last big spew before we boarded the plane and started to get pretty worried about tonight's show. The first show of our tour with Diamond Rings. We hadn't slept a wink so all the other guys were tired but in good spirits. I felt like absolute s**t. We landed and went to the hotel and got some sleep. I woke feeling heaps better and everyone was feeling good. The show was good. The crowd was dressed in Halloween costumes. Of course, none of them knew who we were but they seemed to warm to us gradually. It was our first show with our new sound girl, Lucie, and she did a ripper job; we're pretty excited about having her — she's great. I didn't vomit again.

Saturday, Oct. 27
Minneapolis is f**king cold. After an early lobby call and an 8 hour drive, we hit 7th Entry and found out The Wallflowers are playing in the big room next door — Bob Dylan's son's band. We got to watch them sound checking while we loaded in. We finally met the Diamond Rings crew properly and got a bit of a chance to hang out; they're all super nice. Doors opened and the smallish room filled up quickly. The show was great. Afterwards, the big room next door, where the Wallflowers played, turned into a big house superclub with thousands of people dressed up in Halloween costumes. Probably one of the best parties I've ever seen, alas we are all buggered and have another show tomorrow, so home to bed at about 2 a.m.

Sunday, Oct 28
Today we got a sleep in which is the best feeling ever on tour. Lobby call was 10 a.m. so we're all feeling rejuvenated and fresh. The drive to Madison flew; tour manager Jon drove the whole 7 hours and when we drove into Madison, parts of it are reminding us of home. Especially the big lake. We loaded into the Frequency and down in the backstage area they had this awesome ice hockey table. Like a foosball table but ice hockey. There was nobody in the venue, but when we went on, about 30 people came from the front bar and filled up the small space. Again, the show went well; It feels like we're getting pretty tight on stage. Afterwards we went to the pub next door for late night burgers and a beer. Rob and I played pool. It was very American in there despite being an Irish pub. Bed by 2 a.m. and tomorrow we get another sleep-in. We're all looking forward to tomorrow.. Our first day off in weeks.

Monday, Oct 29
A 10 a.m. lobby call for our drive to St. Louis. When I think of St. Louie, I think of Nelly so I had "Ride Wit Me" in my head the whole drive. Which is a good thing. We love playing shows, but having this night off was awesome. We went to an American BBQ joint for dinner and then drank beers and sat around the hotel pool before bed. Our new sound girl is a legend.

Tuesday, Oct 30
Had a big sleep in and then headed to Walmart to get some Halloween costumes for tomorrow night. It's our first ever Halloween in America, so we're pretty excited. Picking our costumes was pretty fun and we took way too long in Walmart. We loaded into Off Broadway and set up. We knew there wouldn't be heaps of people there tonight, but this venue would be so good to play in front of a big crowd; definitely want to come back here one day. Diamond Rings was great and Lucie is doing their sound too now. We hit up some late night Denny's on the way back to the hotel. 

Wednesday, Oct 31
Our first ever American Halloween. We are bloody excited for tonight's show in Nashville. We got up early and made the drive and loaded into the High Watt. Again, the venue looks great and there's a lot going on.. Three rooms/venues in one big building. We ate some awesome Japanese where the waitress was calling herself "Momma" and then got into our costumes. The show was awesome. Afterwards we stuck around and drank and danced to Soulwax, Justice and the Presets.. We gave the DJ our ipod. This night was unreal, probably the best night we've had in America. 

Thursday, Nov 1
Apart from a few sore heads, today was nothing but a mammoth drive to Austin. Our GPS fucked up and had us arriving at our hotel at midnight but when we arrived at our "destination" we learned we still had 4 hours to drive. Finally got there about 4am and died in bed.

Friday, Nov 2
I don't know what it is but the vibe at the moment is just really chilled and it seems like we're all having a good, easy time with all this driving and all these shows. Maybe it's the fact that the weather in Austin is amazing today and we have the day off again.  We all had a huge sleep in and then did our own thing for the arvo [afternoon]. I slept by the pool for a bit. Funfunfun fest is underway today, tomorrow and Sunday. We play tomorrow, but we're all keen to see Santigold and Run DMC tonight so we had some beers and then went to the festival to scope it out and see what our stage is like. The festival is awesome. A lot like a summer festival back home and right in the middle of the city. It ended up being a pretty big night for everyone bar me; I phantomed back to the hotel around midnight while the other guys hit da clubz. I'm too wrecked and need a good sleep before the show tomorrow. And I wanted to Skype my girlfriend. 

Saturday, Nov 3
Luke uses the worst alarm sound on his phone. It's that loud beeping siren-alarm-buzzer s**t sound and it's the worst thing to wake up to. Anyway, woke up to that at 8 a.m. and quickly got ready and headed back to the festival. The guys are telling stories about Vin starting a stage invasion at some club last night. Sounds like they had an awesome night. It is stinking hot again today. Refused are headlining tonight and they were soundchecking, so we got to watch that before we started setting up. We could already tell it was going to be a massive s**tfight to get our set right today with five-minute changeovers, so we had our game faces on when there was a few issues with our line check while a decent sized crowd was gathering in front of our stage. We were running a bit over time because of those issues and they ended up cutting the PA halfway through "Treehouse." We couldn't f**king believe it, but I guess they need to stick to their schedule. Lucie went pretty nuts at the bloke who did it, but the crowd was really good about it and just cheered. First time for everything and, besides being cut off, the show was pretty good. It was so bloody hot and we had to leave straight after our show to drive to Tucson (15 hours), but we stopped at the Barton Springs Pool on our way out of Austin for a swim and a cool down. We've been driving now for nearly 10 hours and we're about to stop at hotel to sleep.

Sunday, Nov. 4
4.00 a.m. We just got pulled over by the police on the border of New Mexico. We were on the side of the road with the cop for almost an hour. Apparently our van isn't registered properly for a "commercial vehicle." Apparently we need to register our van as a commercial vehicle. Ryan was driving and he needs to go back to New Mexico to go to court in a month. Happy days ....

Sunday, Nov. 4 (after sleeping)
Driving into Tucson, we weren't feeling the greatest. Our tour manager, Jon, was stressed about the whole police thing and he'd been up all night trying to sort it out. We were all just buggered. As we got into town, we noticed a few freaks walking around — like people in Halloween costumes again. And some of the streets we were trying to drive down were blocked off, which was pissing us all off.  Little did we know this was to become another absolute highlight of the tour. It is the "Day of the Dead" or "All Souls Day" and there are people in amazing costumes and make-up filling the streets where we're about to play. Then we learnt our show with Diamond Rings is the afterparty for all this. The show was amazing and afterwards we had drinks, danced, and drowned our sorrows away. It was pretty unreal.

Tuesday, Nov. 6
After a couple of days off/driving, we got back to LA to play the infamous Viper Room. This show wasn't supporting Diamond Rings; we were opening the night with a few local bands. We've known of this place for a long time, so we were looking forward to seeing it and pretty nervous about playing it. Plus, it's a Tuesday night.. So we expected the crowd to be small and, on top of that, our set was at 8 p.m. and we had a 10:45 p.m. flight from LAX to San Fran for a show tomorrow. How was that going to work? Well it did. And for some reason the venue was packed when we played. I think there was a fair few people there from the record label — which helped — and we played pretty well so it was good. We packed up in 15 minutes (absolute record timing by far) and loaded the van and bailed to the airport. We made it easy. 

Wednesday, Nov. 7
We had a nicer hotel than usual last night: it was an actual hotel. Bar in the lobby and all. I think that's because today's show was a showcase show for iTunes. The venue was a massive Greek ballroom and the iTunes guys all sat at dining tables, eating really nice food, while we played. It might sound extremely odd and it definitely was. But it's stuff like that that keeps things interesting for us. We're used to playing in a dark, smoky, hot pub underground in front of a bunch of people off their heads. This ballroom had full-grown palm trees inside it, on either side of the stage. The food was amazing too and all the iTunes people were really nice. Especially Justin, who talked about Bang Gang and then had me going on about Third Class for ages. Big Boi played the show too and we got to meet him. He said he loves Melbourne. 

Thursday, Nov. 8
Back to LA today to film the video for "Dark Again." Aside from the shows, today was the best part of this tour. It's pretty amazing to have all these people, who are so good at their jobs, come to work one day to make something we want come to life. And that's exactly what today was. I haven't seen any edited footage yet, but it was looking pretty amazing and the whole day was awesome. 

Sunday, Nov. 11
Portland seems a fair bit like Melbourne. After a couple more days off, we're in Portland playing the Doug Fir Lounge which was one of my favourite venues from the whole tour. We stayed at the accommodation right at the venue which made things really easy. We also got to take a tour of the LogitechUE building and they showed us how they make all their stuff — pretty mind blowing what goes into making the in-ear monitors we wear.  The show was really good, the crowd grew gradually throughout our set, and by the end everyone was dancing and it was lots of fun. 

Thursday, Nov. 15
The last show of the tour supporting Diamond Rings is at the Crocodile in Seattle. I feel like a bit of a d**k because I've said all the shows were awesome or really good but it's the truth. We've been really pleasantly surprised at the shows and especially the crowds by the end of our set. Tonight was no exception to that and, if anything, probably stands out as a favourite. Diamond Rings came onstage during our set and we did the same during their [set]. We'd had a few too many drinks by then, but all in all this was such a good night to finish the tour on a high. It's been an amazing ride and there's plenty more to come. Now we’re about to do it all again, this time supporting St. Lucia on tour around America. 

Mark Robert Fuller
November 2012

Gold Fields' Upcoming Fall Tour Dates:
11/29 Kansas City, MO Czar Bar
11/30 Chicago, IL Twas The Night Before
12/4 New York, NY Webster Hall**
12/6 Philadelphia, PA The Barbary*
12/7 Cambridge, MA The Middle East*
12/8 Brooklyn, NY Music Hall of Williamsburg*
12/10 Montreal QC Divan*  
12/11 Toronto, ON The Drake*
12/13 Washington, D.C. U Street Music Hall*

*As special guests of St. Lucia
**As special guests of Diamond Rings

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLndITijot4]