Wow. What an amazing time! Now I’m no stranger to touring, and I’m no stranger to being looked after…but this…this was something else. So, you prob read in my last post about everything that was waiting for us when we got to the venue…but well…that was the start.

Tricia, Matt, Janet and Kate basically made this stay out of this world! After a cooked breakfast Tricia shows us around town, man, did we feel like rockstars, the first café we got to, there is a bloke outside who we start talking to… he not only has heard of the show, but is coming and had heard that we had done a show on Dublab! I mean, Bishop has a population of a couple of thousand people, we’re talking half the size of Motueka and the first person we run into has heard of the band. Awesome start. We get some coffees and after hearing the accents…”Oh..you guys must be that band from New Zealand”.

PIC - Us at the beginning of the Pot Luck dinner

We hang out in Bishop for a while, got some sweet scores at the opshop, thn went back and set-up the gear. The show was starting at 7:30pm with a pot luck dinner starting at 6:30pm, so we quickly set-up the PA so we could relax and hang with the locals. This was as classic a small town pot luck house party as you could imagine. The BBQ cranking, kids jamming on their ukeleles, everybody arriving with a dozen under their arm popping in the communal shared beer fridge, people laughing, awesome food…man, and all in Over the Atlantics honour… man, we were so bewildered. So amped to play it was crazy…no support bands (unless you count the kinds banging on the floor tom before the show) so looking like they were gonna have to play every song they knew. (pretty tricky for a band whose first live show together was only 8 days before)

Over the Atlantic live in Bishop will forever be one of my favourite all-time shows. I think the video footage below kinda sums it up, but yeah, people know how to party in Bishop! There were no holds barred…just everybody in the room dancing to every second of everysong. After a week of typical poor turnout, support band status, minimal dancing it was so amazing to have a show where it was all about OTA…and even though the show was donation based, the locals came to the party and got us enough money for petrol to get right up the west coast…and also sold around 20+ CDs and records.

After the gig finishes…and I’m sure it woulda gone longer if the band had known more songs…but haha, I think it had already been around a 90 minute set, including stretching out several of the songs anyway…everybody sticks around to party, there is some sweet campfire action going on outside and plenty of boutique beers and this RIDICULOUSLY amazing homemade lemonade, whipped up by Janet. I had at least 20 cups and coulda done more if I could fit anymore in.

After a few hours of post gig party and heaps of signed records..haha, rockstars… we looked at the clock and it was only 11:30pm..man, so sweet…a gig and a sweet after party and still in bed by midnight.

I’m going back to Bishop as soon as possible