Greetings my fine, feathered friends. It’s been so long since I blogged that I can barely remember how.

I’m currently sitting on the plane en route to San Francisco for the start of our North American tour. (I know, it’s taken us a ludicrously long time to come back to the States. To cut a long story short, they wouldn’t let us in.) I’m pretty sure I keep getting small electric shocks from the armrests on my chair. Is that normal? I wonder if it’s because I’ve got my computer on my lap.

Anyway. It’s been a busy and immensely pleasurable couple of months in the world of Keane. Now, let me think. After our race around Latin America we had a couple of weeks of interesting bits and bobs to attend to which I think are worthy of mention. I went to a couple of great gigs, the first being a collaboration between Tinariwen and Tunng. I have to admit that before going I was kind of wishing it was just Tinariwen on their own, only because I’ve never seen them live and am easily confused. But the collaboration was both interesting and inspiring, and the slight air of first-night chaos onstage only added to the buzz. A couple of days after that I went to see La Roux in Brighton, which I can only describe as utterly brilliant. While I’m on gigs, I saw Amadou and Mariam the other day at the Jazz Cafe. The groove and musicianship were really pretty astounding. They make it look so easy! Still, something to aim for. I’d really recommend their new(ish) album if you don’t already have it.

But anyway, after a few days of sleeping and gig-going we went off to Marseille for a radio show. The only notable thing about this was that I got the train there and back. I was strangely excited about this, probably because it enabled me to suppress my fear of flying for a couple more weeks, and reduce my carbon footprint very slightly of course. It took 3 hours and 10 minutes from Paris to Marseille, which seems unbelievable to me. If I could travel everywhere by train I’d be a happy man. I think this probably dates back to reading Emil And The Detectives when I was a kid.

I spent the next few days working on a demo for our collaboration with K’Naan, and then (after the 3D gig at Abbey Road, about which everything has already been said!) we went into the studio with him for three days. We got the bones of three tracks together, which is really good going, and hopefully at least one of those should be finished soon. Not sure what we’re going to do with any of it, but they sound really great and it was exciting to be back in the studio and making new music between tours. It puts your head in a different place, and I think we felt fresher going into the Australia/Japan tour because of it.

The Oz/Japan tour is another thing that’s been comprehensively written about on km.com, so I won’t say much about it except that I thought it was possibly the most fun tour we’ve ever done. I loved Australia and I loved Japan. The latter was a frustratingly short visit but definitely the most enjoyable Japanese shows to date. Can’t wait for Summersonic.

So, that’s us up to date. It will be very nice to be back on the bus for this tour, rather than flying everywhere. I’m looking forward to sitting in the back lounge writing songs and chewing the fat. And, of course, it will be wonderful to catch up with the lovely people of America at long last.

tim