I’ve never been to Madrid before. In fact, before this here tour, we’d only ever played Spain once (a festival, last summer). This is, clearly, a ridiculous situation, so I’m glad that we’re making some headway in rectifying that. The show in Barcelona last night was stone cold awesome, and I have high hopes for Madrid.

The last day of any given tour is always a day of mixed emotions. On the one hand I’m pretty tired, and looking forward to heading back to the UK to see family and friends (and do an absolute ton of promo for the new record – more on that shortly). On the other, every tour is like a travelling family, that inevitably shatters at the end as people go their separate ways. This isn’t my first tour with the Dropkick Murphys and it’s also not my last (hello Australia) but still, they’re basically my favourite band and crew to be on the road with and I’ll miss them all after tonight’s blowout.

Beyond this tour, life is starting to get interesting. Tape Deck Heart is nearly finished (mastering and sequencing are left to do) and the machine is starting to grind into gear once more. I have a lot of talking to do, a lot of planning. The runs of shows in the UK and the USA both mostly sold out pretty fast – don’t panic on either score, people, there are more shows coming later in the year, as well as shows in other parts of the world, and festivals, and everything. There’s a logic to the ordering of announcements, so please, hang tight. You know what I’m like – I tour the entire time!

But beyond all that admin side of things, I’m also just happy that the record is nearly done, and is everything I wanted it to be. I can’t wait for you all to hear it. The first fruits are coming soon.