Dog days and collective naps: Dog Race on their autumn tour of UK and Europe

Our tours start the same way as those of any other rock’n’roll band, with meticulous planning and rigorous logistical roadmapping. As a self-managed group, admin responsibilities are divided up and tackled by the most organised members. It’s then the job of the less organised members to try their hardest to ruin those plans.

As a group made up of full-time, nine-to-five workers, any band activities are stuffed into the moments we can find: evenings are spent rehearsing, weekends are spent writing and performing, and tours have to be booked off in advance, meaning there hasn’t been much room for non-band-related holidays in the past two years. This also adds a layer of logistical bureaucracy to touring; nothing is more anti-punk than waiting for your manager to approve your holiday so you can play a show.

One thing we can always count on: whenever we’re on the road, there’s a high-profile death. Now, we’re not saying there’s something going on, but by the seventh or eighth time, it stops feeling like coincidence, and more like something we should keep an eye on.

Day 1: Belgium

Our first stop is SMG Music Fest, an hour outside Brussels, in the village of Sart-Messire-Guillaume. It starts with a quick drive down to the Channel Tunnel, where we are greeted at the border by the usual workers – over the past year, the tunnel has been our home from home.

The long drives through Europe are made more uncomfortable by the fact we are usually travelling in a five-seater car with a full boot and an even fuller roof rack. A spin-the-wheel situation determines most big decisions in the band: sleeping arrangements, track running order, and where you sit in the car.

Six hours later, we reach our hotel. The aforementioned wheel spin is repeated, and rooms are decided. Usually, hotels are a taxi ride away. On this occasion, however, the cheapest taxi to the venue is €65 for a 25-minute journey. “We’re not spending €65 on a taxi – Jed can drive,” we all agree. This means he will have to be the designated driver, a sacrifice we are willing to make. “It’s fine,” we all promise, “tonight will be a quiet one.” 

Sound check goes smoothly, mostly. We are one member down after James realises he has forgotten the key to his guitar case and has to make the hour-long round trip back to the hotel. It doesn’t seem to dampen the spirits of the 10–20 primary school kids bouncing along outside. With soundcheck coinciding with home-time, they are treated to a free gig they’ll probably end up telling their kids about. We sometimes worry our fanbase is solely 6 Music dads, so it’s nice to know we’re still down with the kids.

We love playing in Europe for a number of reasons. Arts funding usually means significantly better pay (on occasion, 10 times more than what we get in the UK), which keeps us afloat for a little longer. The catering set-ups are amazing. Forget the crisps and nuts of UK green rooms; European shows go all out with home-cooked meals, local cheeses, fresh bread, but most importantly, all the beer you can drink.

And then there are the people we meet that also make the tour experience for us. We love nothing more than chatting to fans, bands and anyone in between. On this occasion, hanging out with the band O. devolves impressively quickly, and before we know it we are going head-to-head in a drunken bumper car death match. Having loaded up with beer and fairground tokens in equal measure, fortunately being over the limit doesn’t apply to bumper cars.

As 11pm rolls around, our designated driver has had enough fun for one evening. Sensing more fun was to be had (and noticing taxi prices have conveniently dropped to €20 the moment Jed leaves), the rest of us decide to stay.

Day 2: Belgium

Bleary-eyed, we wake to the sound of pounding. The three of us (Will, Dill and James) roll over to check our phones: multiple missed calls and a string of “WHERE ARE YOU?!” messages. We have overslept by two hours.

In her noble yet futile effort to keep us on schedule, Katie had asked reception for our room number. They couldn’t give it to her, but they did tell her the floor we were on. Before reaching our room, Katie has knocked on half the doors on the floor and woken up two families, one of the bands we had stayed out until 3am with, and a very confused elderly Frenchman. 

We do not make our train.

Day 3: Leeds

The third day marks something of a homecoming. Our first show in Leeds is on the horizon and offers a rare chance for two sets of parents to hear the noise their tearaway children have been making in the big smoke.

Our two-star hotel in the city centre looks more suited to a remake of The Shining. A never-ending labyrinth of grand staircases and deep red carpets leads to our rooms, which, for reasons still unknown, smell overwhelmingly of porridge. It isn’t much, but for the next two days, it is home.

We have sold around 80 per cent of the tickets, but the cliché fear for most bands is playing to an empty room – something that never really goes away. Fortunately, we are reassured by the size of this small room at Oporto, which has the potential to be a sweatbox – just how we like it.

We have brought a small number of vinyl copies of our sold-out debut EP, Return the Day (available online and on all streaming platforms). This show is the first time we experience the demand for the record in person. Before we’ve even gone on stage, every copy is gone, ensuring we have enough petrol money to get to Manchester in two days’ time. Merch is something we have erroneously neglected in the past. But we’ve since learned it’s the only way to really keep fuel in the tank and food (beer) in the bellies. Manning the merch stand is also the best way to meet fans. Nothing beats coming offstage to a steady stream of people not only handing over their hard-earned cash but also telling you how great you are while doing so. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it.

The rest of the evening goes how most of our shows tend to go, starting with “Tonight will be a quiet one: I’m saving myself for tomorrow” and swiftly ending with a drunken arcade Mortal Kombat tournament until 2am. When the beer is finished, so are we. We head back to our porridge-scented ode to Stephen King and get some shut-eye.

Day 4: Leeds

Our day off in Leeds has been earmarked with a specific goal: write a new song to fill out our set for the London headline in two days’ time. We have booked a rehearsal room for the day and assure ourselves we won’t leave until we have something ready to perform live. 

Our writing process varies, but our best moments usually come when we’re putting ourselves under pressure, realistic or not. ‘The Leader’ was created under similar time constraints: an instinctive, no-time-to-overthink creation. Contrastingly, we have tracks that have been works in progress for months, seemingly wrestling with us at every turn, determined not to exist.

A full day of rehearsal follows, complete with the usual ebbs and flows from catastrophising to superlatives. By the end, we are fairly certain we have written the best song of our music careers – a euphoric and often fleeting high that is usually demolished the moment we listen to the playback. The following day, we give it a test run in Manchester to ensure we can actually play it live.

Egos inflated with the swagger of a new track under our belts, we celebrate with a Nando’s (not a sponsor), using the money we made the previous night. It’s a rare moment of sophistication for our otherwise uncultured palates, which are more accustomed to Greggs and reduced-to-clear sandwiches. Scurvy is not something most people have to think about, but to a band on tour, it represents a very real and ever-present threat. 

Day 5: Manchester

Next up is Manchester. We make the short hop over and load into one of our favourite venues, YES. This show marks our first in-person meeting with our new pals Flip Top Head, who will be supporting us for our short run of headline shows. It quickly becomes apparent that we will get on just fine, sensing they also have a penchant for mischief.  

The show, like most we play in Manchester, is great. The crowd is always engaged, the new song – remarkably – sounds like it was supposed to, and we have once again sold out our small stack of our debut EP, Return the Day (still available online and on all streaming platforms).

With our London headline show looming the next day, the smart decision would be to get an early night and wake up fresh. Unfortunately, Manchester has a way of coaxing out the karaoke side of us, and tonight is no different. Our new pals Flip Top Head are more than happy to indulge our pursuit of vivacity, so off we set into the night, our bellies full of beer and hearts full of songs.

Day 6: London

This is the day of our only London headline show of the year, a sold-out night at The Lexington in Islington. With the beers of the previous evening still lingering on our breath, we make a bleary-eyed journey back to the capital. Load-in complete and with two hours to spare before soundcheck, we all retreat to our respective homes for shits, showers and shaves. A rare moment of luxury during a week of depravity.

The Lexington is our biggest headline show to date and, unofficially, the launch party for our debut EP, Return the Day (yep, still available online and on all streaming platforms). This show, like most, is a perfect hot and sweaty mess of weirdos all coming together for an evening of good vibes and even better music.

Post-show comes the spectacle of the inaugural Dog Race DJ set (available for birthdays, bar mitzvahs and weddings). Technical difficulties plague the first hour, but oddly, the reaction to the set, as well as the tempo, is increasing in direct correlation to the amount of Buckfast we consume. 

The notable moment of the evening comes when Geese (Cameron Winter et al.) burst through the old wooden doors. The Lex falls silent, collectively taking a breath. Our audience looks to us, like infants awaiting further instruction. Sensing we are on the precipice of something historic, we load up our best tunes and hit them with 140BPM of pure slut pop. They stay for one song.

3am rolls around, and after learning that we have a 9am travel time the following day, we repress our desire for further high jinks and call it a night.

Day 7: Paris

With sleep in our eyes, and Paris firmly in our sights, we hit the road once more. After a Groundhog Day-esque journey consisting of little more than a perpetual cycle of naps and service-station coffee, we are back in Europe once again. 

With budget being the most primary concern, we find ourselves in a one-star hotel an hour outside the French capital. After years of shows in multiple cities and countries, we’ve experienced our fair share of ropey accommodation, but blood-soaked towels (leaving Dillon to dry himself with his bedsheet) and nefariously stained bedding are new additions to the list. 

Too tired to care, we very quickly make peace with our respective stains and the situation, and before going to sleep for the night, vow never to become a band with egos too big to resort to drying ourselves with bedding.

Day 8: Paris

The following day, we drive into the centre of Paris, well rested and reinvigorated with the potential of what the city has to offer. We are playing one of its most reputable venues, Supersonic, and after load-in, have press duties to fulfil: a photoshoot ahead of an evening interview.

Out on the side streets around the venue, we are instructed by the world’s loveliest photographer to do our best to ignore the faecal aroma cascading out of the drains beneath us. We have since come to learn that the city of love, patisseries and fashion is also known for its ability to produce smells that can leave you struggling to keep down your pretty little morning croissant. 

One of touring’s great ironies is that you travel the world but rarely have time to see it. Load-ins, soundchecks and any media duties often leave time for little more than an on-the-go dinner. However, with half the band in Paris for the first time, we at least want the illusion of culture before an inevitable night of depravity. With two hours at our disposal, we excitedly make the pilgrimage to Notre-Dame Cathedral and are enamoured by its take on Gothic industrialism, being covered in a few metric tonnes of scaffolding. Not bothering to walk the circumference of the building to see what we now know is the front, we instead celebrate our fleeting brush with culture on a Parisian side street over a glass of France’s finest Stella. 

Our first Paris show experience isn’t one we were prepared for: the place is packed. Whether they are there for us, the free entry, or for the club night running until 6am, we’ll never know. What we do know, however, is that nothing, not even the sulphuric smell, which at this point seems to be following us, can dampen our spirits.

After the show, we are invited to a house party conveniently close to the venue. Once we stock up on essential supplies, we are ready for an evening of sophistication among the capital’s bourgeoisie. A lesson we learn that evening is that if you put 20 beers and a bottle of Smirnoff in a Parisian fridge, the beers will vanish, but the Smirnoff will remain untouched. It truly is nature’s greatest survivor.

As 4am comes around, the party is winding down. We return to the venue to collect our gear. However, with pockets heavy with unused drink tokens and two hours of prime club time left, not staying would have been rude to our gracious hosts. 

As the sun rises on Paris, we head to our next one-star hotel for a few hours of well-earned shut-eye. 

Day 9: Reims

Our last show on the tour is in Reims, which, until now, we thought was a mere hop from Paris. Three hours later, we arrive. With a couple of hours to spare after soundcheck, we treat ourselves to a collective nap. We often choose to nap in a possum-like configuration, with one person acting as the “mother” in the centre, one on the peripheries keeping guard, and the rest clinging on. We’ve found this technique offers the best protection from rival bands looking to steal scraps of food as well as half-finished songs.

This last show also has friend-of-the-band Jessica Winter on the bill. It’s our first time seeing her since she produced our first single, ‘Terror’, way back in 2021. Unlike us, she has seemingly not changed since then, still a vision of magnificence, leading us to wonder what kind of Dorian Gray deal she has made, with whom, and how do we get in on it.

Despite Reims being in the heart of the Champagne region, our appetites have been sated by the events of the previous night. In bed by midnight, we tuck ourselves in and dream of ‘breakfast included’.

The realities of touring are far less glamorous than the romanticised expectation. It’s less about throwing TVs out of hotel windows, and more asking why we never had one in the first place. And also it looks like someone’s shit the bed. 

With all of us juggling full-time jobs, being on the road often means working on a laptop from a cramped car or hotel lobby or taking every annual leave day you can grab. With an average of 20 days a year, you unfortunately become very picky about what shows to confirm. Countless opportunities have been declined because they didn’t fall on a weekend.

The reality is, the industry often feels like a succubus, feeding on the passion and ambition of bands, who are often treated like a commodity to be milked until their last drop. Being independent means self-funding tours, scraping together money from UK shows and hoping European dates will recoup the costs. Europe often provides a lifeline for bands like ours; the fees allow us to keep rehearsing without subsidising ourselves, and the hospitality keeps us fed. Touring demands constant personal and professional sacrifice, yet we still count our lucky stars that our weird little songs resonate with so many people.

Being on the road represents the duality of both the highs and lows of being in a band. The peaks are euphoric; the lows, often self-induced, can be exhausting. Balancing careers, relationships and sleep has led to cancelled shows, stress, and the occasional mental and physical burnout. Yes, the Hannah Montana lifestyle is exhausting, but making the music we love, with the people we love, discovering cities we didn’t know existed, and sowing the seeds of countless future supergroups with our new pals across Europe, is a constant reminder of how lucky we are.

It’s not easy, but we wouldn’t change a bastard thing.

Also, for those keeping tally, that week we killed Charlie Kirk and Robert Redford.