the toy hearts's blog

Well after a sleepy Monday show in Ansbach, which was still lots of fun, even after experiencing one of the smallest dressing rooms of the tour, we are all on the bus again. The average journey seems to be taken around six hours although tomorrow we will have the shortest journey of the tour to our fifth venue…. Hurrah! We are ALL looking forward to sleeping in. Due to German law regarding driving we are required to make half hour stops regularly…. So we are all fast becoming accustomed to German service stations and practically everything they stock…. We all get our 50-cent ready for the loo at least!

Wow, what a weekend! Our first two shows went off to flying start with high energy and plenty of smiles to our audiences who are proving to be very awesome…. Last night we were in Bonn and played in a lovely little venue called Harmonie. Steve had played there before, so we had managed to establish the low down before we arrived. All the bands shared a cool communal dressing room, which was really cool with big tables so everyone can sit round and eat, chat and socialise in general. Everyone played really well and was in high spirits at the end of the show, the crowd were super loud with lots of cheering and clapping, which is always nice. The Toy Hearts were pleased to see Ju We all tried our best to stay up, even if the ibis rooms and bathrooms were very, very small! We crowded into a bedroom and are all enjoying continuing to get to know one another… Sophia was a flake and went early to bed that night… But we forgive her so long as she does not do it two nights in row!

We have our first show under our belts…. Hurrah! We played in lovely venue called ‘Franz K’ last night in Reutlingen and although we were all a little nervous we had a great time and seemed to go down well! We also met some very nice people in the audience who came to say hello at the merchandise booth. Steve did a wonderful job on bass (it was his first ever show with us) and really is an all round great guy as well as an awesome bass player! Our set is 30 minutes long every night and we have been trying to throw in as much new material as possible in preparation for the new album. Carl and Beverly played a brilliant set to open the evening and then the SCR tore it up with the closing set. But without a doubt, the highlight of the evening for us Toy Hizzels was the finale when all three bands got on stage and closed with four songs, plus an encore! Playing and singing with such talented musicians is such an honour… Of course we played some ol’ favourites for the audience to join in on including Monroe’s ‘I’ll Stay Around’, which we sang, ‘Cluck Old Hen’ and ‘Will the Circle be Unbroken’. For our encore the Rangers raced through ‘Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms’, which we all had fun trying to keep up with, although Sophia and dad played killer solos! The night was a triumph and we enjoyed some beers afterwards even if Sophia and Mike were told at 3.30 am to stop playing guitar and to go to bed by the hotel porter.

Day one of the tour and we got picked up by the enormous tour bus at 6.30am (not a musicians favourite hour for rising!) We drove to Frankfurt to pick up The Steep Canyon Rangers and Beverly and Carl, who all made it safely but seem more than a little jet-lagged! At our first stop at the German services we discovered you have to pay 50 cent to use the facilities, this scarily means that if we use the toilets at the services every day we could rack up nearly £40 in Toy hearts toilet stops alone, never mind the other 7 musicians, sound man and driver! (We have since discovered a loo on the bus - this makes much more sense economically!)