Two Door Cinema Club // My Two Door Two Day Tour and a bit more.

Music

9 Feb

11 years ago, I had just started a new job as a youth worker. About 3 days into the job, one of the guys I was working with came up to me and invited me to come with him in Belfast as he was going to see his little brothers band play a gig. I asked their name, Life Without Rory.

I went along and was really impressed, the small crowd seemed impressed too.

Not long after this gig, Life Without Rory, made up of 4 best friends, amicably split as a band but remained good friends. Patrick, the drummer, left and joined another local band. Sam, Kev and Alex decided to start a band from the ashes of Life Without Rory. The band? Two Door Cinema Club. Who started making a name for themselves as the band with no drummer, deciding early on to use a drum machine in place of a drummer. The boys from the band, I would see a couple times a week as they would help me run our local youth club. Listening to their conversations about how their new sound was forming, it was fun to watch. Any spare time they had, they would spend practice and jamming in Alex's mums house.

Life Without Rory - Pavilion Bar, Belfast - 1st August 2006

As it got towards their sixth form year in school and people started asking what university they would be going to, the boys with a chilling calm would tell you, that whilst they had places at Uni, the band was going to be their next big step. I can remember being amazed by their certainty, and it was only when I asked them to play a gig at our youth club I started to be less amazed at their confidence, it started to make sense. I announced that they would be playing and 300 people turned up and I got to experience their live set for the first time. [Check out a video below taken that night on someones mobile]. It was electric. That night people got to get their hands on their first EP - Four Words To Stand On. Think I still have some copies of this lying around.

As it approached the summer of 2009, with the massive success of their EP, the boys told me they where moving to London to see if the band was going to go anywhere. First thing that came to my mind was milking them for all their worth before they go. I was leading a team to Uganda that summer, a team that the boys had shown an interest in going on but clearly had different plans. So as part of a our fundraising for that trip I asked the boys to play a gig in the local town. I had no money to pay them, so demanded they did it and only paid them in beer and pizza. The only date that would work was the weekend before the flew off to London which meant we had a small window to promote the gig. On the night only a few people showed up, but I can remember thinking in a years time if people heard they had the chance to see Two Door Cinema Club in Bangor up close and personal, and they didn't take that chance, they would be raging. Low and behold, a couple of summers after this [2011], the boys did return to bangor, but to play a sold out Tennent's Vital in support of The Script, playing 400 yards from the small building our gig was in.

Two Door Cinema Club - Hamilton House, Bangor - 9th June 2009

Fast foward 8 years, and after announcing what would be their sold out UK tour for their third and latest album Gameshow, I had a text conversation with Kev and we thought it would be fun for me to come out on tour with them. So after syncing diaries, the gigs that made the most sense to be at was Liverpool and Glasgow. Over those two dates, amidst getting to see how normal touring life was for them, I also got to document life on the road and the faces of the fans that came along to both gigs. I stood in the pit or back stage and watched as they brought pure entertainment to the crowds that had come to see them.

As I post this blog, the boys will be preparing to go on stage on the last two dates of this UK tour in Alexander Palace, playing to over 10,000 people each night. It was an honour to hang out and capture their tour and some of the people that make it happen.

Two Door Cinema Club // UK Tour 2017 // Liverpool Guild of Students // Thursday 2nd February